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| Mental rabies means distance from humans, closeness with dogs | | | Dr. Satyawan Saurabh | 7/18/2025 11:48:00 PM |
| We live in a time where people leave their mothers in old age homes but buy velvet beds for dogs. Where paying child’s fees is difficult but throwing an anniversary party for a pet is considered ‘cute’. This is the age where the direction of compassion has changed, not expanded. It is not bad to love animals and birds, but when this love turns into distance and neglect from humans, it is not a sign of mental balance but of mental confusion.
Nowadays people say that dogs are the most loyal. True, but should we make loyalty so great that parents, siblings, old neighbours and needy society all become secondary? To what extent is it justified to disregard humanity in the name of loyalty? This question is disturbing today’s modernity. There are expectations from humans, questions, and demands for responsibility. On the other hand, dogs, cats, parrots and rabbits only take affection without asking for anything. This is why people are now more attracted to creatures who have no social responsibilities attached to them. This is not compassion, but convenience-based love.
On the one hand people order birthday cakes for dogs, make them sit in the front seat of the car, and dress them in expensive clothes, while on the other hand they frown if a poor child’s clothes get dirty. If they find an injured bird, they take a picture and express compassion, but they consider a labourer crying out of hunger on the roadside as a ‘problem of the system’. What kind of compassion is this that is for the innocent but not for the needy human being?
The market has sensed this trend. Now there are bathrooms for dogs, cakes for cats, and toys for rabbits. This has become a multi-crore industry. The media also promotes this ‘compassion-love’. One who is emotional for animals is civilized. One who is emotional for humans is called a fool. This is the new global form of empathy, in which not emotions but ‘coolness’ sells.
A new disease is growing in today’s society - mental rabies. Just as a dog becomes mad and starts biting when it has rabies, similarly this social rabies is forcing people to bite, despise and ignore fellow humans like themselves.
This disease is spreading wearing the mask of love. This disease says that loving humans is a dangerous task, but loving animals is safe and prestigious. It has also been observed that many people impose their unfulfilled feelings on animals and birds. Those who did not get affection in childhood start calling dogs their sons. Those whose relationships broke, start considering cats as their life partners. This is not love, but emotional escape. This is an attempt to escape from the truth that the mirror shows. Animals do not show the mirror, so they are now becoming the ideal.
The biggest problem with this trend is that priorities have been distorted. Now we adopt animals, but not orphans. We feed birds, but do not spare a single roti for the neighbour’s widow. We pay a thousand rupees for a dog’s haircut, but hesitate to spend ten rupees for a poor person’s medicine.
This mentality is making the society insensitive. Empathy is that which is for everyone without any discrimination - for both humans and animals. But when it is limited only to animals, then it is not empathy, it becomes a pretense. Humans build society with mutual cooperation, affection and co-existence. If we start hating each other, then this is not civilization, but suicide. Animal love is necessary, but not at the cost of crushing humanity. If someone loves a dog, it is commendable, but only till the time he does not forget his mother’s medicine, father’s care and neighbor’s help.
The most ironic aspect of this topic is that this trend is increasing with education, understanding and prosperity.
Even today a poor man cuts his roti in half and feeds it to his guest, but the rich class now feels proud in adopting animals, not humans.
There is only one solution to this – balance. We should love animals and birds, but not by keeping a distance from humans. Compassion is an instinct, it cannot be limited to a particular class. The day we understand that every living being, every creature and every human being deserves our love and help at their own level, that day this mental rabies will end.
A society is healthy when there is food for the birds, biscuits for the dogs and support for the old people. When birds chirp in the house and the elderly smile in the yard. When cats are in the lap and children are in school.
The true form of love is that which values every life. If your compassion is only for those wagging their tails, and not for a hungry child with tears in his eyes, then it is not love, it is pretense.
Dogs are loyal, but not as loyal as parents. It is good to keep birds, but it is necessary to teach children. There should be a place for every creature - but not at the expense of humans.
If we cannot maintain this balance, it will become a social epidemic. And then we should really be afraid – not of a virus, but of the ‘brain rabies’ that will force us to bite humans. |
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