How Connected are We?

By Anonymous -
"Intimate contact with animals was a part of daily life in the premodern world. Animals were everywhere" (Classen,93) 

What has become of our connection to what and who is around us? Is out lose of connection to the animals and nature surrounding us play a role in our increase hostility and fading compassion as a society?

How important are animals to human life? Beyond that of serving as food (for some). What have we lost as a people when we cut off connections to animals? Since when have animals become denigrated as lesser than humans?

It's despairing that we live in a world where the only way we can connect with the natural world around us via animals has to be sanctioned - but the same cannot be said vice versa. Our regular contact with animals in the Western world is under control and defined by domestication and segregation. We eroticize the exoticism of species of foreign terrain but why must it suffer for our amusement? Is this all connected to our connection to the world around us.

According to Robert Fuller, our faith resides in the emotion of wonder the most -compared to other emotions. The sense of wonder is most extenuated when experienced in nature and conspiring with the earth. Animals are included in this human experience eluding to faithfulness. Interestingly enough, despite animals being part of the human experience with nature - overall we treat them so poorly. But why does all of this matter and how does it connect to religion and spirituality?

Well, according to David Abraham, spirituality comes from connectedness to the earth. For example, laying on the grass. Could this be another (non-scientific) explanation as to why when we're around animals we live longer? Is this why being outside and interacting with animals reduces stress? Does this all connect to nature's deep connection to man that we ignore until we realize it benefits us? Instead we use the beauty of nature for commodification. So, if we follow this train of thought, aren't we essentially selling our souls?

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