Becky asked, "what is the meaning of live for animals?"
I think this is the wrong question to ask. It's a very anthropocentric question, tied in to our species' fetish for having meaning and purpose. If something has no meaning or purpose, then it is useless. The question of the meaning of life may have some bearing on humans, who have the ability to understand and contemplate such things, but it is inappropriate to ask of animals.
Take, for example, cows. They eat grass. All day. (How this is a sad truth is beyond me.) What is the meaning of their lives? Simply, to exist. Do animals really need a meaning beyond that? Is an animal's life unfulfilled if it does not live up to some sort of "meaning?" I do not think so. Survival and perpetuation of the species. That is the purpose of an animal. But to try to apply some romanticized, human notion of a meaning of life is absurd.
Perhaps cows are not the best example, then. Let us look at wolves. Wolves have a sort of basic society. The pack is led by the alphas, who get first pick of the food, and prioritized breeding. The rest of the pack is subordinate to the alphas, who attain their position by means of their being the biggest, strongest animals in the pack. In a way, they are not all that unlike primitive human society. So what is the meaning of life for these animals? The same as the cows above -- to exist, to survive and perpetuate their species. They certainly have more complex mechanisms to do so than cows, but that does not change their basic nature.
To end with an (unrelated) question: Is "meaning" a necessity for life?
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You took the thoughts right out of my head. Well said.
ReplyDeleteNo, they don't need a reason to exsist beyond that. We don't need a reason to live beyond that. And it is a sad truth that all cows do is eat all grass all day because they are useless. Sorry, that's how I feel. I don't even like hamburgers and eat steak maybe 5 times a year. I'm not trying to say, "yeah, let's kill all those cows and eat their flesh down to the bone because they are useless!" I'm just saying because they don't have complex goals their life has a tad bit less of a meaning than a human one.
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