People who love animals who. I love animals more than people - is this bad? Repeating the path of humanity

...The more people I know,
how more life I'm studying
the more I love animals.
A. Fedotov

It's easier to love animals - that's true. I love animals more than people. They are simpler, not so insidious. Most often you know what to expect from them; they are more predictable. The dog always waits, wags its tail and loves, exposes its belly, runs around you, licks your hands. Not hysterical. There is no need to force her to do her homework, no need to argue, take into account her opinion, etc. You can even sterilize, so as not to be afraid of what it will bring in your hem! And he won’t become a drug addict!

I love animals more than people!!! They are loyal and kind... AND I JUST LOVE DOGS... I hate those people who don’t love animals and cause them suffering... I would kill all these moral monsters...

Why do some people love animals more than people? Or maybe that's not a bad thing?

How cruel we are
With different eye shapes,
Feelings for people are deep
Often they don't touch us.

Cats, dogs and others
May cause tears
We stand in line to help them,
To buy sausage.

Not indifferent to suffering
Animals of different colors,
We just don't have any compassion
To the problems of unhappy people.

Tragedy does not touch us,
It's someone else's problem
It's easier to turn on comedy
To preserve peace of mind.

You've probably noticed that animal lovers fall into two categories. The first are those who love animals and get along well with people. They are not fanatical about animals, and prefer human communication more.

The second category of animal lovers are those who attack other people for disrespecting their charges. There are any number of cases where owners of cats and dogs harm children for neglecting their pets. (We are, of course, not talking about sadism - when a child tortures an animal, and certain measures must be taken to re-educate such a child.) Such people are sometimes ready to sacrifice own life for the sake of a beloved animal, but at the same time indifferently pass by a person lying on the ground.

Why is this happening? Why do some people prefer animals to people?

Every person wants to be happy. All our experiences, feelings of joy or melancholy are associated with the presence or absence of emotional connections with others. People cannot be happy without other people. Because man is a social being. A child cannot grow up as a human among animals.

But sometimes it is not possible to achieve happiness in life. We often expect from others what they cannot give us. This happens because we don’t really understand ourselves and other people . We look at them through the prism of our ideas, our value system. Without thinking that people are different from us, not so much externally as in internal qualities.

They may not like animals, but still save a child from a burning house. Or they may not love anyone at all in the usual sense, but at the same time remain cultured and decent.

The fact that some people love animals more than people indicates that they have unfulfilled desires. If a person feels inner emptiness, dissatisfaction with life, he splashes it out on other people in the form of hostility.

After all, when everything is black inside, then those around us seem bad. And only a beloved animal will console you and distract you from sad thoughts.

Not feeling joy and satisfaction from life, a person resorts to the easy way to get joy - to your favorite animal. After all, you don’t have to learn to understand him, to adapt to him as you would to a person. You can simply love him unconditionally. And receive reciprocity in return. And this is easier than loving people.

Why learn to love people if animals are already so good?

And how does it happen,
What abilities do we have?
Love animals desperately
And see only dirt in people...?

Maybe at least a little...
Maybe at least a little
Let's give each other joy
Shall we console someone else's sadness?

Let's not just animals
We will give our love,
And the world will smile more readily.
After all, we have humanity in our blood!

Why is it not enough to just love animals and not people? Because we are born human! We were not created by cats and dogs - “we have the blood of humanity!” And without other people we wouldn’t exist; we simply wouldn’t survive alone.

Loving people does not mean giving up loving animals. On the contrary, a person who loves other people has a good attitude towards the whole world around him..

But how can you not love animals more than people, if communicating with people sometimes brings pain? This happens because No one taught us how to interact correctly with others. Until recently .

Now there is new knowledge about the human psyche, with the help of which you can learn about its structure - the thoughts, desires, motives, intentions of people. “System-vector psychology” by Yuri Burlan helps you understand yourself and recognize others as yourself.

Having learned to understand the psyche of other people with the help of the training “System-vector psychology” by Yuri Burlan, you will no longer ask the question of who should be loved more - animals or people. Because when you know and understand another person, communicating with him brings incomparable joy.

Word to the specialist

“Everything in nature is created in such a way that it exists close relationship, complete harmony of man with the entire animal world. No one is superfluous. As soon as someone is excluded from nature, an imbalance arises and flaws appear in the whole. Man, as a supreme being, is obliged to preserve, protect animals, feed and water them. These are the requirements for people who are given the opportunity to enjoy the entire world around them, including living beings living with them or near them. They must fulfill their duties towards them. Where do people come from who not only do not love animals, but treat them cruelly, beat and kill them?

From birth, a person has a reflex of a kind attitude towards animals, birds, and other vertebrates. However, in the course of life, the wrong, sometimes malicious, cruel attitude of parents towards animals and, above all, towards abandoned animals that have become homeless, forms the same attitude in their children. At first this manifests itself as imitation of adults and adolescents, then this behavior becomes more and more consolidated, acquiring pathological forms of an asocial, aggressive, psychopathic nature.

Observations of mentally ill children show that everything seems to begin with something innocent and insignificant: just think, an earthworm was cut into pieces with a piece of glass, or the wings of a butterfly were torn off. Then he hit a sparrow or a pigeon with a slingshot, knocked out a cat’s eye, and threw kittens or puppies into a garbage chute. Children imitate adults; before their eyes, they drown kittens and puppies, mutilate them, and throw them out into the street. If in the evening someone, feeling sorry for a freezing animal, brought it into the entrance, then by the morning it will disappear forever - it will be thrown out or killed. Exceptions, unfortunately, are rare.

Special studies have shown that 90% of criminals in childhood and adolescence showed sophisticated sadism towards animals and were flayers. However, not only children with defects in upbringing and deviant (due to developmental disorders) behavior, but also some adults cruelly abuse animals, while experiencing pleasure.

Thus, the main subjects (I don’t even call them people, because they are devoid of true human content) who show cruelty to animals are psychopaths - subjects with antisocial character traits, aggressive, destructive tendencies. They are especially dangerous when they decompensate from their psychopathic state. Despite mental disabilities, they are completely sane and must be held accountable for crimes in accordance with the articles of the Civil and Criminal Codes.

Some mentally healthy people are indifferent to animals - they do not love them, but they do not show cruelty towards them. The third category consists of those who do not like animals and do not tolerate the people who love them. People endowed with the ability to sincerely, humanly empathize (“sympathy is given to us, just as grace is given to us,” remember?), to love animals unselfishly, cause hatred in them. Unfortunately, often the means mass media add fuel to the fire, provoking the latter to commit crimes. This happens when incompetent journalists get down to business, do not know the roots of the problem, are not responsible for what they write or say, in a word, do not know what they are doing. Propaganda of intolerant attitudes towards animals is also criminal, because it makes a significant contribution to the tightening of morals in society as a whole.

People who take care of animals, especially homeless, abandoned ones, feed them and birds, worthy of respect, are real people, people with a capital “P”. They should not be insulted or condemned, but should be set as an example. They personify the spiritual health of the nation, as the author of an article about such “white crows” published in Izvestia once accurately and succinctly formulated. As a doctor - psychoneurologist, I can state that this normal people. Yes, they are “white”! If there were more “white crows”, there would be fewer black crows.

Raising a child in isolation from the animal world is an abnormal upbringing, the upbringing of narcissists, egoists who, even if they do not show obvious cruelty at first, will still treat coldly not only animals, but also their parents. In old age, they will feel this and understand that they raised their children incorrectly, but it will be too late.

Workers of disinfection stations, disinfection departments, housing offices and regional distribution centers, fighting rodents, lay out in basements residential buildings poisons. However, instead of rats, they destroy abandoned cats and kittens, which find the only shelter there, especially in winter. Everything is walled up ventilation holes. No measures to prevent poisoning and mass death Animals are not accepted. This is a clear manifestation of cruelty, for which the perpetrators must be held accountable (see the section “Environmental Crimes” of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). By the way, they seem to have completely forgotten that cats themselves catch rats. The same goes for children's and medical institutions, where dogs and cats are mercilessly destroyed. Animals that have become homeless (note, always due to human fault) should not be destroyed, but kept in shelters and specially designated places of residence for the purpose of transferring them to old or new owners.

Catching animals should not be carried out by subjects (and the overwhelming majority are asocial types) who hate them. Catching, and only sanitary (there can be no other way), must be carried out mercifully, with minimal mental trauma to those present, without provoking heart attacks and hypertensive crises in them. The reality of this, to put it mildly, is far from it, so it is better to give the animal to sympathizers, they will find a home for it themselves - they will leave it with themselves or with friends for a while, and then find a home for it.

A significant part of people have a negative attitude towards animals because of their selfishness, limited intelligence, lack of basic knowledge about animals, and misconceptions about them. Some, barely getting out of barracks and crowded apartments, react hysterically to animals. God forbid, a sparrow or a dove lands on their windowsill, and if someone nearby is also feeding the birds... - screams are heard from the window - threats to kill both the birds and the people who feed them.

A callous attitude towards animals is characteristic not only of ordinary people, but also of those who are involved in the moral and aesthetic education of children. One winter I picked up a dying kitten that a homeless person had thrown on the asphalt. The closest building was music school. There I managed to stop the bleeding, but the kitten was in a comatose state (profound impairment of consciousness). School workers ordered the kitten to be thrown outside. I took him with me and went out. He grew up and became a member of our family. Passing by this school, I remember the story with the kitten.

There are people who do not like animals because they suffer from neurotic disorders and experience unreasonable fear: how not to get infected! Moreover, their argumentation is so primitive that it reaches extreme absurdity and indicates the presence of mental disorders. There are patients with obsessions and fears. Some, for example, are afraid of becoming infected with psittacosis from birds, worms, lichen from cats and dogs, etc. Others insist that AIDS and syphilis are transmitted from birds, which is why they maim and kill them. This category cannot be corrected in any way; it is impossible to convince such subjects.

We have touched only a small part of the complex problem of animal cruelty. Much remains behind the scenes. As you can see, this problem affects both children and adults. It has great moral significance and characterizes the moral content of society.”

"Let's save the animals!"
“The little dog needs a home!”
“Do not be indifferent to the suffering of our little brothers!”

Similar calls can be seen in hundreds in social networks, in advertisements on poles, in newspapers, and even in subtitles for television shows. There are more and more people concerned about the fate of animals. More and more often, news reports contain columns about elderly people who keep dozens of cats in their cramped apartments. The number of shelters for dogs and other pets is growing. No one is surprised anymore by the volunteer teams that go every autumn to the ocean coast to rescue dolphins that have jumped out of the water. Charitable foundations in favor of endangered breeds of animals are growing every day. The level of culture and the value of not only human life, but also the life of animals, is rapidly increasing.

Analyzing all this, we believe that the world is becoming brighter and kinder. But is this really so? Does the level of hostility between people decrease with increasing love and attention to animals? After all, each of us usually thinks: “he loves all living creatures so much, he’s probably just as kind to people.” But do the ardent defenders of our little brothers have a friendly attitude towards people?

It turns out that this is not always the case. The lack of tolerance for people and even a modicum of love for them among lovers of four-legged animals can be seen in news reports and in complaints on various forums.

Thus, people living next door to cat owners note their hostility and high degree of hostility towards other people. They often complain about threats coming from their animal-loving neighbors.

The image of such people is very colorfully reflected in the heroine “Crazy Cat Lady” of the series “The Simpsons”. This character is a woman who surrounds herself with cats and uses them to protect herself from people by throwing small kittens at them.
Where does that warmth, that awe and love that these people show towards animals go when they have to interact with other people?

The defenders of our little brothers explain their hostile attitude towards others by the fact that they are insidious, cruel, and greedy. This is not the case in animals. They will not betray, they will not kill for profit, they do not have that pettiness, bile and hatred that is inherent in people. But is this really the reason for such a tender attitude towards animals and dislike for people? No! These are rationalizations that people seek to justify their behavior. The real reason is the insufficient development of the visual vector.

Mysteries of our vision

As soon as a person began to feel his neighbor, he had one desire - to eat him! He felt hostility towards his neighbor, because every person carries a danger to another. But along with hostility came a feeling of complete dependence on each other. People could not and still cannot live alone. We depend on each other, we need each other. But the feeling of hostility from the feeling of dependence does not decrease. And then the need arose for a force that counteracts hostility - love. And this power was endowed with one vector – the visual.

Until now, only people with a visual vector are able to love as fiercely and sacrificially, as is sung in songs and spoken of in poems; the rest are only able to create emotional connections on this basis.

When we love the wrong ones

There are four levels of development of the visual vector, as well as all other vectors: inanimate, plant, animal and human. At the “human” level, the visual vector is capable of boundless love for all humanity - for highest degree humanism. At the same time, he can create strong emotional bonds with both individuals and animals. But these emotions cannot fill the visual vector at the “person” level; the greatest satisfaction comes from connections with other people.

If the visual vector is at the animal level, then it is not capable of love for all of humanity, but only for individual people, as well as living creatures, plants and inanimate nature– to art, for example. Well, if the visual vector is at the plant level, then a person is able to experience love only in relation to four-legged animals, without being able to love a person, and, even more so, all of humanity.

But this is not enough to fully realize the visual vector and get maximum pleasure from life. That is why such people need not just one pet, but many at once, in order to create an emotional connection with each of them and, having filled their vector, enjoy life.

They cannot fall in love with a person, rarely create families, and remain lonely. This is confirmed by life examples– people who create nurseries or keep dozens of pets in their apartments, as a rule, do not have their own families, loved ones and children. Boundless love for pets can also appear in the event of loss loved one, due to a sharp break in the emotional connection with him. Then a temporary attempt is made to fill the deficiencies in the visual vector, creating smaller and more multiple emotional connections.

If people with an undeveloped visual vector do not create an emotional connection at all, do not give love to their pets, do not empathize with them, sympathize with their pain, then they will remain in fear and severe phobias. Surrounding themselves with animals protects them from fears, but do they benefit humanity?

Are all animal lovers incapable of loving people?

Of course, we can give many examples of people who carefully take care of their dogs or cats, but at the same time do not forget about people. They have children and full-fledged families, which means they are able to love both animals and people. And this does not at all contradict everything written above, it only means that the vector is at a level above the inanimate.
Any more high level includes the abilities of levels below it. But if a person with a visual vector in a developed state has to make a choice between saving another person and a cat, for example, he will give preference to the first.
People with an insufficiently developed visual vector are ready to cry at the sight of a homeless puppy, but they do not feel a drop of compassion for a child in a wheelchair.

The role of the visual vector is to reduce hostility through love, to create culture and secondary restrictions on primary urges, including murder. It is only thanks to the visual vector that we still exist in a team; without its influence, people would not be able to control their hostility towards each other.

With their emotionality, ability to sympathize, sympathize and love, people with a visual vector should reduce hostility in society. Make him truly kinder and more tolerant. And a developed visual vector copes well with this role. Advanced viewers are volunteers who travel to African countries to save children from serious diseases. They are regulars at nursing homes, orphanages, and homes for the disabled.

With their sensitivity and ability to compassion, they instill hope in the hearts of sick people and the elderly. They create incredible kindness art films that instill cultural values ​​in people. They write books and poems, sing songs about love and the brightest feelings. With such activities they help not only individual people, giving them their care and attention, but also humanity as a whole, reducing the level of hostility in society.

But remaining at a low level of development, inanimate or vegetative, they are not able to fully fulfill their species role. They are not capable of love for humans and are content with love for animals, which only gives them liberation from fears.

Why doesn't the visual vector develop?

Our vectors develop before puberty, after the end of this period a person cannot develop them, he can only realize himself. The development of each vector requires certain conditions. The visual vector develops, creating emotional connections, learning to love and compassion.

If a child with a visual vector does not create an emotional connection with his parents or with the people who are raising him, he begins to create these connections with his toys - teddy bears, bunnies, dolls. He sees them as living beings, talks to them, making up for the lack of connection with loved ones.

You can help a child develop his visual vector by teaching him compassion:
“Look, you dropped the doll, she’s in pain, let’s take pity on her.”
“Do you see a homeless dog? “She’s hungry, let’s feed her.”
“The child broke his leg, now it hurts, I feel sorry for him, what about you?”

But, if a child, right up to puberty, does not receive proper attention from the people around him, if he does not learn compassion and cannot create an emotional connection with people, then, having passed puberty, he will never be able to do this. And in this case, he will have only two options: to remain in fear for the rest of his life and suffer from phobias and panic attacks, or surround yourself with animals, never loving a person.

Written based on training materials on System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan

Alena Nikolaeva, marketing specialist

They are more popular than pop stars and politicians. Their photos receive millions of likes on the Internet. They are with us all our lives. Animals. Why do we love them so much? It turns out that scientists have even found answers to this difficult question.

Imitation theory

“The results of imitation give us pleasure,” wrote Aristotle in his treatise “Poetics.” According to his theory, in any phenomenon we are attracted primarily by something familiar, recognizable, similar to our own “I”.

It is not for nothing that the strongest emotions are evoked by fauna whose actions are similar to ours. Monkey antics at the mirror; sea ​​otters holding each other in their sleep so as not to be carried away by the current; a lioness desperately protecting her cubs. In countless fairy tales and cartoons, animals speak human language, wear clothes, overcome the same social problems. In the circus, four-legged animals will be taught, first of all, to copy certain actions homo sapiens: walk on hind legs, count, ride a bicycle. It turns out that in our little brothers we find and love our own reflection.

Sublimation

This hypothesis partly contradicts the previous one. Thanks to animals, a person makes up for what he does not have at his disposal. real life. But we, lonely residents of megacities, lack, first of all, connections with nature, sincere love and reliable friends. Pets (that is, living in a house as a member of the family, and not performing any utilitarian function, like draft or meat and dairy cattle) are a phenomenon of modern urban culture. On the contrary, the peasant, as a rule, looks at the inhabitants of the barn in a purely utilitarian way, as a source of resources - a milk cow, a laying hen.

Now think, are there many such examples of love and loyalty in modern highly urbanized society as the Japanese Akita Inu Hachiko, who spent nine years waiting in the same place for the return of his deceased owner? Or can a representative of the current " office plankton» to feel his significance otherwise than by giving food and joy to a cat or dog who is completely dependent on him?

Thus, love for animals is a sublimation (manifestation) of our own complexes and unfulfilled ambitions. For example, many eyewitnesses indicated that members of polar expeditions, stern and not at all sentimental men, treated the dogs from their Arctic camp with genuine tenderness, thus receiving the necessary support. difficult conditions North emotional release.

Rudiments of animalistic beliefs

“The tribes are divided into totemic clans, each of which is responsible for the propagation of its totem through magical rites. Most totems are animals and plants used for food.” James Fraser. "Golden Bough"

U primitive people each genus traced its origin to one or another animal (and not in the symbolic, but in literally). You couldn't hunt your own totem; the astral ancestor beast could help in trouble. Echoes of animalism remained in Christianity - for example, the biblical Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a dove.

So the adoration of pets, which for some develops into blind worship, can be considered a vestige of ancient nature cults that persist in our society along with many other pagan beliefs. “The owner feeds me because I am God,” as the famous joke about cats says.

Actually, animals, like messengers of a deity, can warn about life or death in the age exact sciences. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first submariners used to take on board a cage with white mice: if they felt unwell, it meant that the air on the submarine was heavily polluted and would soon become unsuitable for the crew. And even today, sailors get a ship’s cat and feed it the best cuts precisely as an animated talisman designed to ward off misfortune.

Archetype of the collective unconscious

Carl Gustav Jung believed that our psyche is largely determined by the collective unconscious - the generalized result of centuries of cultural and historical experience of humanity as a whole.

From this theory it follows that each individual in his life, at a symbolic level, unconsciously repeats the development of the entire civilization. The most important stage the formation of which was the domestication of animals. Therefore, by getting a four-legged or a feathered animal, we are actually reproducing the most important historical experience from the ancient memory of humanity.

Attractive image

Continuing Jung's ideas, the structural component of the collective unconscious is the archetype. And one of the most powerful visual images that evokes a positive response in any normal person is the image of a child, a baby, when looking at which the maternal or paternal instinct is subconsciously triggered.

Now let's remember the stars of the Internet - cats, raccoons, koalas, bears... What unites them? That's right, body proportions reminiscent of a human child: a large round head with big eyes, short thick legs, small toes... Now do you understand why pictures with puppies get much more likes than photos of white sharks?

Toxoplasmosis?

Master's shadow

And yet: why do we love dogs and cats? Scientists are seriously concerned with this issue. Thus, a joint study by felinologists from the University of Tokyo and the University of South Florida showed that adult cats accurately distinguish the timbre of the owner from the voice of other people, even if the sources of sounds are out of sight.

Experts from Washington University in St. Louis sequestered the genomes of one of the oldest cat breeds, the Abyssinian, comparing its DNA with other mammals, both wild and domestic. As a result, an increased number of genes responsible for nerve cells regulating the meekness and obedience of cats.

Animal psychologists from the University of California at San Diego conducted an experiment: dog owners, in the presence of their pets, demonstratively caressed plush toys in the shape of dogs - and the four-legged animals experienced real jealousy, trying in every possible way to regain the attention of their owners.

So, perhaps, one of the reasons for the reverent attitude towards animals is their ability to experience the same complex and contradictory feelings that we experience. And sincere affection for dumb brothers is one of the few joys available to everyone.

Humanity has been living with domestic animals for more than twenty thousand years. And throughout this period, the co-evolution of our species worked in such a way that humans and domesticated animals easily got along with each other and cared for each other.

Scientists talk a lot about how our hormonal mechanisms of interaction with pets are similar to the mechanisms of interaction with children. In this article, for example, you can read that when looking eye to eye between an owner and a dog, approximately the same process occurs in their bodies as when exchanging glances between a mother and a child.

If we move from the hormonal system towards higher nervous activity, then it is worth mentioning the realization of subconscious aspirations through communication with animals. Here, the variety of breeds allows you to realize a variety of needs: the desire for intimacy, parental instincts, the need for a feeling of strength and security, the desire for control.
It is easy to project almost any relationship onto animals. You can project onto them your own image (dogs truly enjoy life, they can, but I’m a serious person), the image of a friend (all bastards, only Barsik is faithful at home waiting), a partner, a child - everything will fit perfectly.
Please note that even if a person channels his desires for intimacy or parenthood through an animal, this does not mean at all that he is capable, interested, or that in any way it would be “more right” for him to have a partner right now or a child instead of a cat.

Another factor is the children's imprint. Often a dog or cat can truly be the only supportive creature in a child's life, associated with the happy days of childhood. Or, conversely, a dog may be an unfulfilled childhood dream that you want to catch up with as an adult.

And even if everything is not painted exactly like that bright colors, people who grew up in prosperous families with beloved animals often tend to keep animals and perceive life with an animal as a significant part of their well-being. They already have formed habits for caring for animals, they know how and even love to overcome the difficulties associated with them (or it simply doesn’t matter to them).
And at the same time, they have a lot of pleasant habits associated with animals, which it is completely unclear why they should be replaced with some others: feeding, walking, playing, sleeping together.