Self-awareness and consciousness as curses

Several weeks ago, I had a very disturbing experience while swimming at the local pool. When I arrived, the sound of a goose constantly honking was in the air. As I walked to the ladies changing area, I saw two people, a maintenance man and another swimming, looking over to the left. There was a goose with it's head low and its neck in a bit of a loop crying behind a low barrier. The woman speculated that something was wrong with its neck. The man just seemed to be confused about what to do. I suggested they call animal control to have someone with expertise come and look after it, but the maintenance man said that that entity got angry at being bothered over a goose last time this had happened.

After my visit to the changing room, I walked by the distressed goose and his audience again and suggested that perhaps the parks department might be able to help out. I don't know if anyone was ever called, but while I was putting on goggles and shoving in earplugs, I saw the maintenance man try to "coax" the goose, which was clearly suffering horribly, to leave the area by nudging it with a wheeled trash can. It was clear that he cared only about getting the problem out of his bailiwick and didn't care about the goose's pain. Between this callous behavior and the knowledge that this animal was suffering, I was very disturbed.

During the time of my swim, I could hear the goose continue to cry. It was at first quite loud and frightened. As time went by, it grew weaker and more strangled. To me, it seemed obvious that it was dying and the fading in cries were the result of its strength ebbing away. I was in the pool for about 40 minutes, and somewhere between 30-40 minutes, I noticed several people milling about in the area where the goose was located. When I got out, it was gone. I don't know if it died and they removed the body or if someone eventually came along to manage this suffering animal, but the entire situation was on my mind for quite some time while I was swimming and I was filled with sympathy and emotional turmoil at being witness to this animal's pain.

With that much time to ponder, a lot of varying thoughts went through my head. One was that this type of thing happens all of the time in nature. Birds, especially those which reside in close proximity to humans, will not infrequently eat the wrong thing and die as the substances gum up the digestive works. My guess is that this is likely what happened to the goose as there are flocks of these birds in the park next to the pool. Also, it's slow fade and prolonged distress would indicate slow and painful processes at play. While I was very upset to be around a bird in this condition, I'm sure it happens many times to animals in the wild and I am not there to witness it. This is, most sadly, a part of nature's process. Animals suffer and die. It's no worse for the bird because I'm hearing it. It's only worse for me. I may want badly to stop it because I don't want the bird to be in pain, but it's also a desire to relieve my own empathy-driven misery.

Another thought that I have had more than once was about the nature of what an animal thinks and feels in these moments. Humans, by virtue of their ability to be self-aware, anticipate and know about their eventual deaths. We often even know that we are dying. My paternal grandfather, on the day that he died, said to my grandmother, "I'm sorry, but I can't hold on any longer." He not only knew he was dying, he knew it was going to be at that moment and he could not escape it.

I've wondered when animals are sick, injured, or in pain if they have the cognitive capacity to realize what is to come. People say that animals can smell "fear" and given the myriad chemical reactions in the body during moments of terror, this makes some sense. I don't know enough about bird biology or that of other animals to say, but it seems logical that something in sweat, pheromones, etc. would be discernible to an animal's senses during times of acute distress.

Some even speculate that they can anticipate death and fear it coming. I recall something about how cows heading for slaughter seemed to sense that they were going to die and became stressed. However, we don't know if they smell the hormonal reactions that come along with the fear and momentary pain of dying of other cows in the area or if they have some sense of their eminent demise. Until we develop human to cow psychic abilities, we'll never know for certain.

As I was swimming, I pondered, did the goose merely cry because it was in pain or was it in that state because on some level it "knew" that it was dying? Was it's honking a "I hurt, I hurt, I hurt" message or was it a call for other geese to come near to comfort it as it knew it was finished here. Was it pain or was it fear or some combination of both that elicited the crying? I should note that no other geese ever came near it. If it was a distress call, it went unanswered despite the fact that it definitely would have been overheard by many other birds of a feather.

I cannot know, but my feeling is that animals have no complex sense of anything. They act on instinct, and despite humans bandying that word about in reference to their own behavior, humans do not have instincts. For the record, instincts are pre-programmed behaviors, often complex, which animals are born with. Nest building is an instinct that birds have. Humans don't necessarily come with a clean slate, but we have to learn our behaviors. Animals come with a lot more programming already written on their hard drives than humans. However, there are little things which we do as reflexes (simple, unconscious actions) for survival which are often mistaken for instincts. For example, a baby immersed in water will hold his breath.

Animals, in my opinion and based on their lack of a cerebral cortex or any of the brain areas or activity associated with consciousness, likely do not have self-awareness. What is more, I think they don't have a sense of the future or past as humans do. One of the essential elements of consciousness is that you can remember the past or imagine the future as a narrative. I think animals learn and have memory, but they don't have such narratives. For example, they remember food was here or there and might go to that place when hungry in hopes of locating food when their stomach is empty. They don't remember the day when they saw one of those big things that walked on two legs and was always reaching down to touch them putting down a bowl of dry edible stuff and how they should avoid eating the food when those two-legged things were around because they don't like being pawed at. I think it's much simpler than that for animals. I believe it's simple and associative, not complex and story-like.

Humans, of course, balk at the idea that animals lack complex understanding. We impose our narratives on them. I recall a video which spread like wildfire of a dog using its nose to splash water on a fish writhing on the pavement. People were constantly anthropomorphizing the scene and saying that the dog cared enough about the fish to help it survive. There is no evidence that dogs care about inter-species survival. In fact, it is more likely that the dog perceived the bad smell of the fish and was using the only available substance on the paved surface of the road to try and bury it (an instinctual behavior).

When this video made the rounds, I could not say what I felt to people because the need to assign complex thinking to animals, especially with noble and positive emotional contexts, is so powerful among those who possess such thoughts. They want to believe animals are self-aware, caring, kind, and "pure" of thought and deed. They want to believe it so strongly that they'll ignore all sorts of evidence to the contrary like the fact that even domesticated dogs will kill or act aggressively toward other smaller animals (squirrels, cats, etc.) as well as each other. A dog trying to save a fish would indicate self-awareness (a desire to offer compassion and to see itself as a compassionate entity) as well as awareness of others (the fish's suffering), but there is no evidence that dogs possess this capacity. They can perceive and respond to stimuli including their owner's emotions, but there is no evidence that there is an underlying complexity to their thought patterns.

When I consider this point (the self-awareness of animals), it is not with an eye toward justifying the fact that animals die in the service of human needs. I don't need to make any such justifications despite not being an active vegetarian because the cycle of nature and life is that everything occupies a space on the food chain. The only reason your dog isn't setting up a human farm and harvesting you for man-steaks is that he doesn't have the big brain or opposable thumbs to manage such a thing. If that thought upsets you, I suggest you look up the word "anthropomorphize" and take a good hard look at your own navel. As an aside, I will say that I'm a vegetarian by default these days. As I approached 50, I lost nearly all of my desire to eat meat. It wasn't an ethical choice. It was just a change in appetites and digestion, but the truth is that few animals die in service to me these days. Lots of legumes are losing their lives, and perhaps the very rare chicken or turkey, but I'm not in need of justification for my choices.

Returning to the matter at hand....

Humans spend a lot of their lives in a state of reflection and no small amount of the time spent in that state revolves around anxiety and fear. We can do this because we are aware and possess consciousness. In fact, it is the ability to weave a narrative about the future and our death that creates the most distress. It's why we hook people up to machines to keep them alive. Imagining the end of us is very painful to sit with and we comfort ourselves by proving that end can be put off by forcing others who are nearer to death to remain alive. If animals are spared this speculation as a result of a lack of consciousness and self-awareness, wouldn't that be a blessing?

I consider myself to be a very self-aware person and I continue to find that more of a liability than an asset. Despite this perception, I strive to make sure no little psychological nook or cranny of me remains in darkness from myself. This has been a powerful tool in helping me cope with the difficulties that life has sent my way. It has empowered me by insuring that I will not be caught off-guard by revelations by others about me. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but often people's self-image and understanding is out of sync with the reality.

In fact, sometimes, it is dramatically wrong and is a source of much perplexity among those who have issues finding partners or making friends. They can't see themselves for who they are so they can't know how others see them. I not only see myself for who I am, but I know exactly how others may perceive me inaccurately and why they do so. I see it the moment it occurs by the looks on their faces or their reactions, and it's okay because I know myself well enough to know that they are reacting not to me, but to something in themselves which can't emotionally tolerate some aspect of me or is unaware of something about my life or experiences. This is my generally highly attuned sense of others. As I've said before, this is a survival mechanism that I developed unconsciously early in life and have been fine-tuning and honing consciously for decades now. And, as I said in the post linked to in the previous sentence, this enhanced awareness is not something that has brought me much in the way of happiness and has been an incredible burden.

When you know that others are in pain or can contemplate your own death or suffering, this is a product of self-awareness and consciousness. Humans rarely dissect this experience and they impose it on other creatures because they take it for granted. It is so much a part of the human experience that it doesn't even occur to them not to impose this style of existence onto other entities. It's why we imagine that trees can "think" and "feel" and it fuels imaginative characters in stories like ents. We talk to plants and imagine they must "hear" us on some level because there is a positive growth reaction. We do this despite the fact that they have no ears or sensory capacity to detect the sound of voices.

Though it is very difficult to pry ourselves away from imposing our thoughts, feelings, motivations, etc. on other creatures and even objects, I think that it is important to do so if we want to understand and accept the world on its terms rather than our "humancentric" view. I also think that the lack of conscious awareness that animals likely possess is not degrading to them, but rather an acknowledgement of the likelihood that animals, plants, and other entities have a different way of perceiving reality. This is not damning them to a lower perception or existence, but freeing them from the curse of self-awareness and consciousness. They may die, but they don't think about it for years ahead of time. They may perceive another animal suffering, but they don't contemplate the motives behind it happening. They may fear something, but they don't have to contemplate whether that fear is rational or irrational and whether to act or not to act. They may be in pain and cry piteously, like that poor goose, but they aren't wondering all the while whether or not some entity will rescue them from their pain or if this is a momentary experience or the end of existence.

To be free of self-awareness and consciousness is to live more in the moment. It is to live in attune with the environment and the body without the distraction of ruminating. Of course, it is also to live free of the capacity to plan and to survive using creativity and imagination. It limits potential, but it liberates the mind. All in all, as an aware being, I'd rather be aware despite the "curse" it brings, but I wouldn't necessarily wish that curse on animals, trees, rocks, the sun, the moon, or the stars. It's not an underestimating of their potential or a mitigating of their value which makes me conclude that they lack what I have. It's taking the available evidence of their behaviors at face value and an appreciation for freedom such a state grants them. Why would I take that away from them in order to comfort me in the suffering humans alone appear to experience as a result of their consciousness and self-awareness?