So is man an unnatural animal?
I'd say that man is a denatured animal.
In fact, that's the title of a very fine book by Vercor, Les animaux dénaturés, or in any case, in him, nature is very discreet, just look at a little human animal at birth.
A baby.
That's right, if it had to rely solely on its nature to survive, it wouldn't get very far, and would probably even die quite quickly, its instincts being far too weak to guide it.
Whereas, for example, a small foal will instinctively succeed in walking, and even trotting, within a few dozen minutes,
the little human animal - the one you call a baby - fails an average of 2,000 times before succeeding in putting one foot in front of the other.
2000 failures before succeeding in walking?
On average, of course.
It will take 18 months of painstaking learning to succeed in doing what the foal knows instinctively how to do in less than an hour.
In short, we're failed animals.
That's a great expression.
Yes, well, that's precisely why we're accomplished humans.
Let me explain, our natural instinct is faulty, because we were born too early, we're all very premature, what scientists call neotenes.
It takes about 18 months for the embryo's cells to develop all the way, but as you may know, after 9 months we're thrown into existence,
unfinished and dependent, intangible and fragile.
But this is also our greatest opportunity.
Why is that?
Well, because we don't know how to do things instinctively, because our nature supports us so poorly, we compensate with culture.
Receiving advice from elders, being educated by parents or older people, going to school, reading books, watching tutorials, relating to others.
Because we don't know how to do things instinctively, we'll proceed by trial and error, by failure and learning, by trial and error and progress.
And in the end, we'll get much further than if we'd known how to do things instinctively.
So there are virtues in failure.
Exactly.
The little foal may be able to walk in 20 minutes, but I've never seen a single foal succeed in riding a bike, drive a car, fly a plane or even just play rugby.
I'm sure it must exist on TikTok, but I'm kidding myself, but go on Charles.
Because our nature supports us so poorly, we will turn to others and receive their love, support, empathy, precisely to compensate for this failure of our natural instinct.
Basically, we develop our culture because our nature is failing, and that's fine, but there's more to it than that.
So what's even better?
Better than culture is freedom.
Because we are failed animals, not defined by our nature, nor determined by the solidity of our instinct, we can invent ourselves.
Invent ourselves as this or that, become progressive or reactionary, kind or mean, just or unjust, competent or incompetent, luminary, luminous, pardon, or obscure, or luminary, luminary it's funny.
Well, this failure of nature within us opens up an immense space for our freedom.
So, to quote one of the most famous quotations in philosophy, existence precedes essence.
Well, that's exactly what it means. If we had a nature, then we'd have an essence, and we wouldn't be able to invent ourselves in this freedom.
This freedom is our opportunity as well as our anxiety, it's our water as well as our responsibility, it's as exciting as it is tiring.
In the end, we have to ask ourselves if it isn't this freedom, our freedom, that makes us so happy.