Giraffes

There has been a backlash; a defence of love. It was inevitable, I suppose - nothing in the history of man has as many followers - but it has made me a little cross.

Humans are unique in one respect and one respect only; the ability to forget that we are animals. Take an animal - any animal - and give it intelligence and consciousness of any kind, it will eventually (over a number of years, perhaps thousands) start to behave like a human. Moreover, give more than one of these animals consciousness, and they will form a community that behaves exactly as a community of humans behave. They will believe in the same things, fight for the same things, despair of the same things, die for the same things. And they, too, will forget that they are also animals.

Take an animal; say, a giraffe (I like giraffes). Make the giraffe aware: aware, for the first time, that it will die; aware, for the first time, that it will eventually become nothing; aware that it eats to survive; aware that it is alone, even when it is not alone; aware that it mates to reproduce or because it feels nice; that it has territory to protect and territory to attack; that - to survive - it must ensure its place upon the earth. Then give the giraffe opposable thumbs, sit back and wait for the inevitable to happen.

First; war. The giraffe, to protect itself and the giraffes it has produced and give itself the best opportunities, will want more space. It will want to defend this territory from other giraffes who want exactly the same thing, and so the giraffes will fight; first to expand, and then to protect. Eventually giraffes will form groups - so that they are stronger - which will force the other giraffes to form bigger groups, and so on, until the individual battles become organised wars.

Second; religion. The giraffe, suddenly aware of its own mortality and vulnerability and loneliness - and the fact that it will eventually become nothing - becomes terrified and childlike and seeks something that will undo this knowledge; something like a large giraffe that they cannot see but who will act as an all powerful mother that will be with them always - thus removing the loneliness - and will protect them - thus removing the vulnerability - and will make sure that they never disappear entirely from themselves by offering them an alternative; thus removing the terror of mortality. They then - while they`re at it - give the Big Giraffe the ability to see everything, which removes the knowledge that they are alone, and the ability to control them, which removes the fear that they are directionless, and the ability to avenge and reward, which removes the overwhelming realisation that nothing they do means anything or is noticed by anybody.

Third; love. The giraffe, needing to reproduce and simultaneously ensure protection, stability and constancy for its offspring - as well as legitimise a constant desire for sex because it feels good - takes the biological sensations that arise in order to provoke this outcome and intellectualise them into an emotion that will make them stay with another giraffe and reproduce further. This, however, has a second - equally important - effect, because neither giraffe is now alone: which - along with religion - makes sure that there is no longer a fear of loneliness. This made-up emotion thus becomes celebrated; mainly because it allows each giraffe to have both sex and company without ever having to admit what has driven them to want either, and because - by being `loved` by another giraffe - it makes them feel better.

Fourth; art. The giraffe, having created religion, war and love, and - much more importantly - now being aware of them, even if no longer aware of the fact that they created them in the first place, feels a need to express each; first, to reinforce their existence; second, to convince themselves further; third, to show that their existence makes them non-animal; fourth, to show that they have opposable thumbs and nobody else does. So they bang things and draw things and say things to show how very deeply they feel about each topic, and how individual they are; thus quenching the sudden overwhelming awareness that they are all exactly the same.

Thus the giraffe, quite neatly and without knowing it, creates war, religion, love and art, and manages to convince itself that these things are what make them superior to other animals, rather than that they have been created so that they can believe exactly that.

Love will always be defended, just as organised war and religion will always be defended, because to admit that it does not exist is to admit that none of it does; it means admitting that we are animals with a collective overimagination, developed over thousands of years, who simply seek to quench our own self-awareness as completely and as swiftly as possible; who seek to shut out the loneliness, and the fear, and the desire with reasons and stories and excuses. Who seek to deal with the self-destruction that our own intelligence has inevitably bought with it. Who have created an internal culture - regardless of type of religion, or type of war, or type of love (and how else to explain their existence in every culture, in every age?) - to stop them from crumbling under the weight of knowing.

I don`t blame the giraffe, but I can`t believe in something that I don`t think is real; worse, something that I believe causes more pain, more hurt and more destruction in the search for it and belief in it than in the discovery of it, which always comes from a need within ourselves that has been projected outwards. I already write, to believe I am a different type of giraffe when I am tangibly not: I can convince myself of nothing else, no matter how much I desperately want to.

So, please, whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever you believe: defend love, and defend religion, and defend art, and defend war - because you are entitled to - but don`t make me try and defend them too. Don`t be angry with me, or indignant with me, for not thinking the way you think. Don`t be cross with me for attacking them, or sad that I have done so. Life can still be happy, and full, without any of those things. It will just be slightly different.

We each have a private collections of the things we believe in, and the things we cannot. And - for me - love has now joined the second list. I didn`t want it to - and I fought against it - but I have been given no choice; as with religion, I am simply no longer one of its followers.

And, for the record, I still like giraffes: very much. Even if they are just animals.