So I’ve got a book manuscript, and the shortest description I’d managed to write was 650 words. But authors get pushed to develop their “elevator pitch.” Or, even worse, their one-sentence pitch. I struggled with this because how can you represent an entire book in a single sentence? Let alone my crazy ambitious book that works through big chunks of philosophy and related topics? I was really stuck. But now I think I’ve got it:
We are only animals. But we are animals who need each other.
I like that this so briefly represents so much of my thinking. Let me first unpack what I mean by saying that we’re animals, and then what I mean by saying that we need each other, and then what I mean by the framing that we’re only animals but we need each other.
Saying that we are animals is a brief way of gesturing toward my conclusions that as incredible as human beings are, we are ultimately just another species of animal, just another assemblage of matter. I don’t see adequate reason to believe in any supernatural realities beyond the natural realities that we know from scientific inquiry and sensory experience. And I think those natural realities are enough to in principle explain all the wonders of human consciousness and normativity, even where we don’t know the full explanations yet.
By saying that we need each other I mean several things. First, we are a social animal that survives by cooperating. We evolved to live and hunt and gather in groups. This was the mode of living within which our psychology evolved, since long before we were human. And while few people today survive through such intensely social means, the slow pace of evolutionary change means that we’re all still wired as if we did, and psychologically driven to connect and cooperate.
But even if we leave all that aside, it’s still clear that today we do in fact need each other for survival. A person’s work might happen in private, but her producing and consuming are extremely cooperative. Our work is typically pooled with that of dozens or hundreds or thousands of others, and our daily consumption depends on countless farmers, cooks, truck drivers, factory workers, etc.
This economic interdependence is part of our broader political interdependence. In the face of COVID and climate and inequality and fascism, the people of whole countries and even the whole planet rise or fall together. And I think that we need to leverage these facts, and the cooperative and social resources within our evolved psychology, to move our politics in a more social and equitable direction, toward solidarity and social democracy. And I also think that even if that effort might be doomed for various reasons, the losing fight could still be the best option for many sincere and thoughtful people.
Now for what I mean by the framing that we are only animals, but we need each other. By saying that we’re only animals, I mean to acknowledge the countless views to the contrary, and the way that any transition from such views to mine tends to seem bleak and disappointing. That bleakness is what sets up the “but” in “but we need each other.” Our moral values, and our concern for ourselves and each other, may not be written anywhere in the wider universe. But still those values are written within us, in our evolved psychology. And still those values have driven genuine progress throughout history, and are necessary for meeting the giant challenges of the present.
That’s what I’m happy to have crammed into two short sentences. An evocative little sweep from my materialistic or nihilistic philosophical conclusions all the way toward my political hopes.
We are only animals. But we are animals who need each other.