The Meaning of Human Existence

by Edward O. Wilson

Wildly searching, sometimes shocking in effect, the creative arts and much of the humanities scholarship analyzing them are nonetheless in an important sense just the same old story, with the same themes, the same archetypes, the same emotions. We readers don’t care. We’re addicted to anthropocentricity, bound to a bottomless fascination with ourselves and others of our kind. Even the best-educated live on an ad libitum diet of novels, movies, concerts, sports events, and gossip all designed to stir one or more of the relatively small range of emotions that diagnose Homo sapiens. Our stories about animals require human-like emotions and behavior understandable with well-worn guidebooks of human nature. We use endearing animal caricatures, including even those of tigers and other ferocious predators, to teach children about other people.