“Just animals”

Several issues ago, I took exception with a friend who proclaimed that “we are just animals.” My daughters listen to pop music on the radio and there’s been a song with the line, “You and me baby are nothing but mammals.” I wish to underline the words “nothing but” and ask, “what do you mean by those words?” Or to take my friend’s phrase and underline “just”. There is nothing “just” about being an animal. I find nothing spiritually degrading about being an animal. I love to feel my lungs breathing hard and my skin sweating during a long uphill hike. I enjoy squatting in a forest and defecating, giving back some of what I received. I like taking young kids on my tours to a patch of miner’s lettuce and getting down on our hands and knees and eating the leaves directly without using our hands (and mooing occasionally). Being an animal is good; it’s fun. We should savor our animalness.

But there is a profound difference between saying, “We are animals” and “we are just animals” or between “We are mammals” and “we are nothing but mammals”. What is meant by “just” or “nothing but”? In my mind, it is simply the flip side of the view that draws a line of spiritual superiority between humans and the rest of the world, that views much of the world as base with a small human island of upward intent. The “nothing but” people seem to counter that notion with “there is no spiritual island for people. We are just down there on the same level as the other animals.” I walk away from either position because for me, the entire world radiates with upward intent. There is no spiritual island; instead there is a vast spiritual mountain for (and partially created by) all of creation. There is nothing “just” about being part of this universe. Every molecule is blessed.