What does our relationship with animals say about us‪?‬ Interconnected

“The shame I felt was because I was human.”
I recently finished reading Jane Goodall’s book Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey. What a gift she is - a true Big Thinker & Deep Feeler. I’ll be doing a more holistic reflection on the book, but I wanted to set aside some space to specifically address one aspect of it - her observations of our relationships, as humans, with animals and her insight into this given her in depth study of chimpanzees.
In Reason for Hope, Miss Goodall takes us on a journey ranging from beauty to horror. From the magical green forests of Gombe to the cruel, torture chambers that we call laboratories. This journey covers much ground experientially and emotionally. Many of the stories were painful to read. It isn’t easy to hear that the incredible chimpanzees, clearly capable of intellect and emotion, would at times maul one another - ganging up to mutilate a selected target. Stories like this pierce the fantasy that Nature is all beauty and grace. (Nature has always been brutal, but I think that sometimes we romanticize it.)
Worse though, were the stories Jane recounted about visiting laboratories doing testing on animals.
“I am still haunted by the memory of Barbie’s eyes, and the eyes of the other chimps I saw that day. They were dull and blank, like the eyes of people who have lost all hope; like the eyes of children I have seen in Africa, refugees who have lost their parents and their homes. Chimpanzee children are so like human children, in so many ways… And their emotional needs are the same – both need friendly contact and reassurance and fun and the opportunity to engage in wild bouts of play. And they need love.”
“I knelt down in front of JoJo, and he reached as much of his hand as he could between the thick bars that formed a barrier between us. The bars were all around him, on every side, above and below. He had already been in this tiny prison for at least ten years; ten years of utter boredom interspersed with periods of fear and pain. There was nothing in his cage save an old motor tire for him to sit on. And he had no opportunity to contact others of his kind. I looked into his eyes. There was no hatred there, only a sort of gratitude because I had stopped to talk to him, helped to break the terrible grinding monotony of his day. Gently, he groomed the ridges where my nails pressed against the thin rubber of the gloves I had been given, along with mask and paper cap. I pushed my hand in between the bars and, lip smacking, he groomed the hairs on the back of my wrist, peeling the glove down.”
“He and many others of the three hundred or so chimpanzees earned their keep; their bodies were rented to pharmaceutical companies for testing drugs or vaccines.”
These stories are disturbing because we can’t simply chalk it up to, “Nature is brutal.” We have the capacity to understand the effects of our actions. Choosing to ignore that, and to harm another living creature despite it, is a sickness of mind, heart, and soul. It is a disorder of Disconnection. The irony is that we create this Disconnection between ourselves and our mammal family because we are “higher functioning.” Does this seem so from the current vantage point?
The kicker here is that this Disconnect is only our perception, we can’t actually change our relationship with Nature. All of Life is Interconnected, so when we try to (artificially) Sever that Connection - pain is caused on both sides of that severance. In this case, the animal pain is obvious while ours as humans is much more subtle. We cannot see the pain that we inflict on ourSelves by doing this, but it is there. There is a spiritual wounding that occurs deep below the surface, one that goes unnoticed to the Disconnected heart and soul, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there - or that it doesn’t manifest in dis-ease of the spirit. Chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and purposelessness don’t come from nowhere - these aren