I've just finished reading John Grey's Feline Philosophy which I preordered in the summer. I loved it. He combines insights from philosophy and literature. There are some wonderful stories about cats - one, Meo, who was found in Vietnam and taken to America by a war correspondent and another, Gattino, who was adopted by Mary Gaitskill and disappeared as a very young cat. Grey says, essentially, that for cats life is lived with exuberant courage in the moment, with complete focus - when they are awake.
Oh and talking of being awake, or rather, of being asleep, some very interesting research about REM sleep. OK, so our brains wire up and rewire so fast that dreaming might be a way to keep the visual system active when our eyes are shut! Apparently, the most neuroplastic creatures are those which have the longest infancy - us. And we have the largest proportion of REM sleep. That's a cool little factet.
Less cheerily, I am now reading David Benatar's Human Predicament, which is about why it is so shit to be a human and that immortality would be even worse than death, which, in itself, is shit. I think that John Grey might agree with much that Benatar has to say - he's something of a grump too.
Possibly, I should be reading David DeGrazia's Taking Animals Seriously. But, well, maybe I will when I've gone back to the squirrel.
The good news (on a bad day - I have had a migraine for 60 hours so far) is that I almost think the human enhancement essay is moving toward viability.
It does feel like survival, rather than exuberant courage, is as good as it gets right now.
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