Towards the Fire

The main difference I see between humans and animals is that we humans have reason. Animals only have instinct. But it makes me wonder about certain things sometimes. In animals, survival is based on experience. Animals learn by experiencing things. When they first encounter fire, the moment they get burned or sense it's hot, they retreat away from it. They learn that fire is dangerous. Same thing when they encounter a snake or a venomous insect - if it doesn't kill them outright. Once they get hurt, they become wary. That's how animals have survived for so long. They learn what to avoid. They don't "hope" that a snake that bit them once won't bite them again, they've learned that it will bite them.

That's the difference between us and them. We have hope.. and reason. When we get hurt, in an accident perhaps, we reason out that it was just an accident. When we get burned by fire, we know that it's dangerous, and yet we are still fascinated by it. We try to control it, and use it. We reason out it's importance. We hope it will be useful. But it goes deeper than that.

Animals shy away from what gives them pain. They don't go back thinking that it was just an accident. They don't have the faculty of reason to think that way. Maybe that's where the saying that "people never learn" comes from. Animals learn by experience, but it seems that we do not. The most basic of emotions drive the animal mind: fear, hunger, pain, survival. For us, there are a lot more, and most of them contradict one another: hope, love, apathy, happiness, etc. Most of these can override our most basic of instincts. When we're hungry and yet we see a starving friend, we share our food. Concern overriding hunger. When there's an obstacle to be passed at the last mile of a race, determination overrides exhaustion and aches. When we love someone, hope that we're loved back overrides fears and past pains.

Maybe we'll never really learn. As humans, we've used reason as our edge over animals in the survival race. The thing that drives us against basic instincts is both our advantage and our folly, because we are the only creatures that shun our basic survival instincts. We come to learn what can hurt us and maybe even kill us. We even embrace that which gives us pain. Once bitten, twice shy. But in our case, once bitten, hope it doesn't bite again.

I'll never learn.