Humans’ Ordeal and the Dead Sparrow
Was it a catastrophe, I wondered? But it seemed not, what was it then?
In the continuum of existence and our perception thus, it followed. The way we divide day and night and do we for that matter? Regardless, by the virtue of our amassed understanding and our way of getting coaxed by patterns, I had put myself into the cycles of different sleep states, altering the states of awareness, each time thinning the boundaries between the purported and the experienced. However, at one point in time, when the sleep cycle was in a more wakeful state, I heard a voice. The voice crossed the threshold, allowing me to recognize that it was not from within a dream. It called my name, the voice was of my mother. Apparently, she seemed distressed about something, thus raising my level of alertness. “A sparrow just died by the fan in the corridor”, she said, sad and horrified, “there is blood all over, it was decapitated”! That was unfortunate and saddening, I thought. Making an exception to my usual way, I got up immediately and went to the scene. The moment I stood up and started walking, I was still connecting the dots, trying to consolidate the picture.
What emotions am I supposed to feel or favor? I wondered. It was an accident, albeit something that happened in the space that we, by the societal rules, consider as our property; where “we” is understood as the locus of a fixed identity that we, whatever we are, presume ourselves to be (ah! Sorry for the circular definition). It can be argued that there may not be much point in asking a question as to what emotions should one feel, maybe one should simply go along with what the natural flow is. Favoring might be subjected to questioning but not feeling, more so when it is instantaneous! However, this doesn’t obscure the fact that the instantaneous reactions are based on preconceptions and notions, and those which are primarily biological or inherent can also be trained to an extent. Feelings are in part important as they provide subjective information and insights, helping in molding our behavior for the future. Awareness of one’s feelings takes one closer to themselves, rather than making them a yet another industrially produced unit. Our feelings and outlook are highly dependent on the contemporary culture. Thus it is not very enlightening to always behave on the instincts, be they inherent or socially produced. But what is inherent and in the flowing stream? Doesn’t it become perplexing and paradoxical? How can we ever know that we are not being overwhelmed or duped by our instincts? Moreover, are instincts really some sort of demonic culprit that they are being made out as here? Instincts save our lives, they had for hundreds of thousands of years.
A sparrow died, lots of them die every day, lots of humans die every day. What’s the point in anything at all? What are we anyway? We are all, at least in terms we see and can fathom, going to cease to exist. The life, had it not existed, would it have made any sort of difference? What’s the big deal about anything that happens in existence, it all just happens, and it’ll keep on happening? Some argument about embracing what is, at least in terms of what perception or reality seems like to one, is something important, probably the vital thing that matters; that is, to enjoy and live the life well, whatever it may be, and in whatever way possible, but then again it isn’t so simplistic. We are not all living blissfully, are we absolutely enjoying our time? Are we in acceptance with ourselves and everything around us? Maybe or maybe not. Can’t we live blissfully while in a state of complete delusion or illusion? Can’t we just pace through life on the basis of instincts, all other creatures seem to do it well enough, some better than others. Are we only supposed to enhance our survival or maybe our psychological state to create blissfulness? But what if not? Not to say, accidents may happen at any point in time and space, and life as we perceive it may change drastically unless of course, your life itself is terminated. Are we really supposed to focus on or get affected by the events in life drastically? And is cognizance of any importance? What if our life, the way we feel and fight is based entirely on reflex action? What if we do not introspect, not to say that introspection is not an inherent or reflex action, but it is called reflection because it has the capability to change and modify the general way of the inherent actions. Although the extent or capability of this change is a different matter of concern. Maybe at some point, instinct or reflexivity is distinguished from introspection by the virtue of the timespan of the decision-making, along with a little to no chance of altering that behavior unless one shifts to the reflective action at the instant.
There are reasons one can conjure up to justify their way of life and their perceptions, the way they would like to think and feel. At times there may be dissonance, clashes, blocks, but it’s all an appealing interconnected network. Is there a right way to think or feel? A right one, if something like that even exists, should have a property that makes it constructive, not to say a wrong one can have the same property. It can be pretty well patched up, also ideologies differ all the time. The point of this article is not to debate upon different views or present a case for any specific one, but just to make a short dive into the realm of human talkativeness! Could it have been possible to prevent the accident that happened today, the death of that particular sparrow? The incident wasn’t a common occurrence, it only happened for the first time. The sparrow entered through the small opening of the main door and the fan was on, it just went straight into it. It was indeed a quick and easy death; regardless it was death!
How is it that we look at life and death, and why exactly do we care about the life of others, extending into various domains of intimacy? I would have felt more grieved if it was one of the squirrels or the puppies nearby. I watch them closely every day. There is no specific sparrow I watch every single day. Moreover, there are so many of them, I don’t have a count. Do our feelings of empathy arise due to fear or false attribution? We are more affected by something that happens to someone else in our vicinity, and rightly so. We cannot expand endlessly if we cannot even expand our domain into what is there in close proximity to us. Are all these deep feelings of empathy and love just evolutionary tools to make society stronger? Of course, all tools have their pros and cons, but can we identify the proportion in which we are supposed to use these tools in a particular situation so as to lead to one of the best possible outcomes? Or is it belittling to call something an evolutionary tool and foolish to reach a conclusion by claiming that they are indeed evolutionary tools? Possibly, we can again conjure up some justifications to make our way more appealing. However, it is so very interesting that humans think in similar ways, and why not? Many individual justifications become paradoxical when the power of a different lens is also added to them. Were we certain that nothing unfortunate or saddening will ever happen to us regardless of whatever we may do or feel, would we still have felt empathy? Were we not concerned about diversity and beauty in the environment, as it seems appealing to us naturally, would we care about the wildlife? We seek to preserve more of what is endangered, after all, you may lose the sight or the idea of sight of that specimen forever. Is it really one’s compassion for the world? How would you define what is loving or respecting nature? Destruction is part of nature itself, all creatures make their niche environments, and it becomes a cycle. How are we to say that our destruction is artificial or out of the way of nature? Is it not just being afraid of the consequences that our doing will infer upon us or our future generation? Is the addition of flora and fauna not akin to adding more details in a video game? Do you care about the creatures in a video game unless removing them will make the game less diverse and as a result less appealing?
I saw the decapitated head of the now-deceased sparrow, cleaned the blood, and threw the body and the head outside. I didn’t take a picture; I didn’t feel like it. Had the sparrow died as prey to some other animal or bird, I might not have such issues with taking a picture. Humans do not like to be seen as vulnerable, issues surrounding one human affect multiple humans. Humans have great sentiments attached to the physical body of the other. It doesn’t mean that animals don’t feel the same way, they mourn their losses as well. Humans probably remember it for a longer time, although living in wild may shift the attention more towards survival. Anything vulnerable to an already dead human hurts the sentiments of others largely. But what if you do something to a human corpse without the awareness of others, thus not hurting the sentiments of anyone, probably just your own virtue and integrity (use of cadaver for medical purposes is a different issue, ah! The contemporary culture, there it seeps in again!)? Is it the overriding of the primeval instincts that is an issue here? Empathy certainly plays a role. What if someone else does the same thing (defiling or deriding a human dead body, that is) with yours or the corpse of a loved one for that matter? If you feel empathy for your dog or family, you might harass the snake out in your backyard, but what if you feel empathy for that snake? Maybe you’ll just relocate it. Back again, what is disrespect? How is it defined? What emotions are to be favored? It all seems to happen, we perceive the world, we fathom the grand cosmos (maybe unfathomable, but fathom here stands more for being able to talk about or bring a topic rather than understanding it), multi-universes, time scales in billions of years, and all the events around. Is it the insignificance due to the grandiosity of existence in large, or is it the archive of preconceptions and notions at the individual level?
Is there any question which is more worthy to be asked? Is there anything that is not important enough? Is there anything which is trivial or otherwise?
A sparrow died today, and that’s what I am talking about, not about the hundred thousands of human deaths every day. I am talking about the issue arising or not arising over the capture of a photo of a dead sparrow. Isn’t that a scale too narrowed down into some sort of triviality? Or is it not?
