Palestine
I saw a video on Twitter of 2 golden retriever-type dogs sitting at a table facing the camera. One dog, on the left, had a pink birthday hat on, and apparently the dog on the right was her “brother.” In front of, and exactly in between both dogs on a paper plate was two pieces of birthday cake.
As the dogs were told to “eat their cake” by humans off camera, the “Birthday Girl” dog stuck her tongue out to taste the cake first — instead of just grabbing it with her teeth — which tipped the piece of cake over to her brothers side of the plate — which he promptly scooped up with his mouth and instantly swallowed.
The look of disappointment and sadness was evident for a moment in the Birthday Girls reaction of looking to her brother — then quickly back to the human off camera — then quickly back to her brother. It was quite cute and funny and got alot of likes.
But it got me to thinking about something that makes animals and humans so different: our need for justice. For example, let’s replace those two dogs with two human children — even toddlers — and see what happens!
The same sadness would be plain to see on the human Birthday Girls face — but immediately AFTER that is where humans and animals differ so much. The Birthday Girl would have gotten very angry and DEMANDED justice, demanded retribution for being wronged in such a manner, maybe even to the point of physically ATTACKING the person who took her cake.
Dogs and other animals do not do that. But, what if they did? They wouldn’t be able to function in groups, they would attack each other for the slightest perceived injustice.
It would be a comedic evolutionary blunder for non-human animals to have a sense of being wronged and then get angry about it. A Wildebeest who ran into the back of another Wildebeest as they were all running in a herd would end up in a fight.
But what happens when a human runs into the back of someone in traffic? Anger at being wronged. That sense of injustice then arguably compounds the original problem! So, is our human desire to right wrongs that have been perpetrated against us an evolutionary blunder in some way?
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict seems to embody, in a nutshell, our need to right injustices against us. It goes on and on without a seeming solution because maybe there is no solution. Maybe we have discovered the limit of what our desire for Justice can achieve.