What Our Relationship with Animals, Our Fellow Beings, Reveals About Us

5 April 2014

 - John Berger examines the evolution of our relationship with animals and how they went from muses for the very first human art, as cave men and women adorned their stone walls with drawings of animals painted with animal blood, to spiritual deities to captive entertainment.

Berger traces how animals went from caves to carts to cages.

“With their parallel lives, animals offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species. Such an unspeaking companionship was felt to be so equal that often one finds the conviction that it was man who lacked the capacity to speak with animals — hence the stories and legends of exceptional beings, like Orpheus, who could talk with animals in their own language…”