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[김성렬교수의 시사영어] The Pleasurable Kingdom
This story is about animal evolution, but it is not about general evolutionary theory. Rather, it is about evolution based on pleasure. By raising the level of adaptability to the environment, pleasure has ultimately enabled animals to survive, a biological result that perhaps has something in common with a golden saying associated with the human world: 'if you have to do it, you might as well enjoy it.'
Exploring the correlation between pleasure and evolution through detailed examination of a variety of cases and examples, 'The Pleasurable Kingdom' is a book that analyzes animal emotions. In spite of the difficult subject matter, science and psychology, the book is surprisingly interesting. The reason is possibly due to the discovery that there is no major difference between the animal kingdom, which people presume to look down upon, and the human realm.
The book, from the point of view of the slightly uninterested reader, first asks, 'why should we humans pay attention to the pleasure of animals?' The question is posed because evolutionary theory hitherto has sizable limitations. There is more to evolutionary theory than natural selection and successful reproduction, the book emphasizes. Even in relation to animals, what is needed, the book assumes, is research into their experience, feeling, and emotion.
Thus another question is asked. "Why live?" A person answering this question might reply, "to reproduce," or "to pass on my genes to the next generation." Perhaps. The point of the author's argument is that in this regard animals are no different. To consider preservation of the species as the sole reason is only a human prejudice against animals. "Animals certainly do not open bank accounts after they retire, but they need not be completely absorbed in spreading their genes" ('The Pleasurable Kingdom,' p. 21).
The author states each animal in its own way pursues pleasure, living in the moment. The behavior of an animal, therefore, is the product, in other words, of its hopes, fears, instinct, past experience which have joined together according to the particular circumstance. Chapter 2, 'The Pleasure of Animals,' is full of such examples. There are various kinds of play, food, copulation (even love), and forms of non-physical pleasure. It is not only vertebrates but also insects like flies which pursue pleasure. Each example is shocking, making one feel keenly how entrenched is the human prejudice against animals.
Copulation offers a vivid illustration. For the sea duck and two different monkey species, copulation and sexual play occurred outside of the reproductive stage during pregnancy, menstruation, and incubation. Sex for these species was mostly rather non-reproductive copulation engaged for the sake of pleasure, the book reports.
It is the same for food. It is nothing more than a prejudice that animals eat only to preserve their existence. Following their sense of taste, animals behave differently, sometimes their palate more discriminating than that of humans. The fact that a species of carp can perceive concentrations of sugar 512 times lower and of salt 184 times lower than humans is amazing. A German biologist concluded from his research that raven young rejected the same feed for several days.
The book asserts that the will to pursue pleasure has brought direct benefits to existence, ultimately allowing organisms to survive in a barren environment through adaptability. Pleasure is not only God's gift to humankind, the lord of all creation, but also the gift of evolution to all animals, the book concludes.(한글 내용은 www.busanilbo.com 1월 12일자 14면) urizen@dau.ac.kr
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 / 입력시간: 2008. 02.12. 10:15
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