The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths

The Silence of Animals is consistently fascinating, filled with unforgettable images and a delight in the conundrum of our existence - an existence which we decorate with countless fictions. We twist and turn to avoid acknowledging that we too are animals, separated from the others perhaps only by our self-conceit and our insistence that human life has a meaning that their lives lack. In modern times, we have created this meaning through the myth of progress-the faith that, alone among our fellow-creatures, we are ascending to a higher form of life. In the Babel we have created for ourselves, it is the silence of animals that both reproaches and bewitches us.