If People Are Animals, Why Do We Get Offended by Being Called an Animal?
One of my students raised this question via the following quote by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec:
“If an animal were to kill intentionally, it would have been a human act.”
In other words, animals kill instinctively for the sake of fulfilling their survival needs, whereas people can kill intentionally, beyond mere survival necessities. Why, then, do people relate to being called “animals” as an offensive and derogatory term?
It is because we people need to realize our place in nature and understand that we must consciously intend to develop and fulfill our destiny. Being human is not merely walking upright, thinking, or creating. It means rising above the instinctual nature that binds animals, to use the unique ability within us — our freedom of choice — to consciously grow.
Animals act instinctively. If they help or harm one another, it is not out of moral consideration. It is according to nature’s programming. Humans, however, are different. We have a choice. We can choose to belittle, humiliate, and even kill one another, or we can choose to rise above our egoistic desires for personal benefit at the expense of others and care for others as we care for ourselves. This is the key difference between humans and animals.
Despite our vast intelligence and technological advancements, we can act worse than animals. An animal does not kill for personal pleasure — it acts to survive. But humans? Humans can destroy, disregard, and harm each other simply to feel a momentary sense of superiority and satisfaction.
To become truly human means to rise above this egoistic nature. It means to discover the laws of nature — laws of love, bestowal, and connection — and to align ourselves with these laws. The most general of these laws is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” When we live according to this law, we align ourselves with the very force that sustains and develops life itself.
Of course, the path to aligning with nature’s laws is not easy. At first, we might choose to do good for others simply because it feels good. Even this is a step forward, but it is still egoistic — we help others to fulfill ourselves. Becoming truly human begins when we no longer act out of self-benefit but in order to resemble nature’s very quality of love and bestowal — to give and love without expecting anything in return. This shift in intention is the change that elevates us from being animals to becoming humans in the fullest sense of the term.
We then reach a perception and sensation of others not as means for own pleasure but as parts of a single interconnected whole, feeling others as we feel ourselves. When we attain this state, we experience a harmonious, peaceful, and happy sense of life. We enter into a common feeling with nature itself, which is the purpose of our existence and evolution as human beings.
Therefore, remaining as animals or rising above our animalistic state and becoming humans involves rising above our inborn egoistic desire for personal benefit at the expense of others, and developing love above hatred, unity above division, and giving to others above receiving for ourselves. We then enter into alignment with nature’s laws of love, bestowal, and connection. This is why the word for “human” in Hebrew, “Adam,” comes from the word for “similar” (“Domeh”), i.e., from the phrase “I will be like the most high” (“Domeh le Elyon”).