Humanity and the Denial of Animality: Why It Prevents Us from Becoming Human

Human beings consider themselves distinct from and superior to other animals, yet their behavior remains deeply rooted in instinctual drives such as fear, desire, dominance, and attachment. This paper argues that human civilization does not transcend these instincts but restructures, suppresses, and legitimizes them through social and institutional frameworks. Furthermore, it challenges the common assumption that emotions such as jealousy, envy, hatred, and attachment are natural and inherent, proposing instead that they are psychologically constructed patterns sustained through thought, memory, and repetition. The central thesis is that the denial of both our animal nature and the constructed nature of our psychological life results in unconscious living. Only through direct awareness of these processes can a genuinely human mode of existence—free from compulsion, illusion, and conditioned patterns—emerge.