The Journey of Survival and The Risk of Failure

Many, probably most, people believe animals are probably better off in the wild rather than the zoo. This is true despite the fact that zoos offer the resources that animals spend most of their existence trying to acquire in abundance and at no risk.

We reasonably understand that their evolutionary drive provides them with purpose and that merely giving them the ends of so many of their goals make them weak and depressed. Zoos put animals in a state of existence that robs them of purpose and meaning. The journey of survival and the risk of failure is what animals are bred for.

What I find interesting is how the people who so readily see it in animals so rarely see it in humans.

We, like every other animal, are evolved for the journey of survival. We are programmed to seek the necessities of life, and to gain abundance … But we aren’t programmed to merely have abundance.

In the studies I have seen that rank quality of life, they usually base it on having security of resources and most often having a strong government to secure safety and ensure a basic means of living. Sadly, this just makes for a human zoo. I would bet the highest suicide rates exist in the most efficient human zoos.

Few people should envy spoiled rich kids. They most often live depressed and without purpose. Unfortunately, we have a culture that is blind to the journey, and inevitably sees rich kids as ‘privileged’.

I am not claiming zoos should be illegal, though I find them pretty depressing. I also don’t mean to crap on abundance. Abundance is great … However, unearned abundance most often kills the journey, and the journey is vastly more important.

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Aaron White, married to a swell girl, is a business owner and unschooling father of two, going on three. His hobbies are music and poker. He resides in Southern California.