You remember how it was on Orwell's Animal Farm, with the pigs taking over, and gradually becoming more and more like men, and Comrade Napoleon establishing his dictatorship, and the oppression that gradually returned to harden the lives of the other animals on the farm....
It may be easy to forget that all of the animals who weren't pigs were deeply affectionate and actually comradely in their own society.
I visited an organic farm yesterday, it had almost a full complement of farm animals, the usual suspects including pigs, and I observed with great interest that the animals, at least within their own species, were completely gregarious and at least seemingly friendly to each other. There were no obvious outsiders, no apparent outcasts, no isolated animal anywhere.
It seemed like there were no strangers in the chicken run, or in the combined goat/sheep enclosure, or in the pig pen, or the rabbit hutch, or the turkeys' patch....
You get the picture.
Humans are pretty smart animals....how did we invent "loneliness"?
Why do we tolerate it?
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