In America, we have made a national ideal out of minimal involvement in the growing, preparation and cooking of food. Our economists and politicians have greedily and shortsightedly embraced the centralization of our economy, the corporatizing of business, the globalization of trade and the gathering of productive, political, medical, media, cultural and economic power in fewer and fewer hands – always in the name of efficiency while garnering more and more profit.

You do not have to be an economist or a politician to see that this has resulted in the destruction – everywhere – of local traditions, economies and institutions, from farms to small businesses to community medical practitioners to work and the law and  affordable home ownership, freedom of choice in life,   affordable retirement, and most dramatically, to the notion that politicians represent people, and not entities. Sometimes I wonder just how much we are willing to give up to support the corporate economy. It seems pointless to me to Occupy Wall Street when our own communities, schools, libraries are emptying out because all of our money seems to have gone elsewhere.

It is not surprising that we turn to animals for community, or that we grieve so much for them when they die. For they are doing the work – dogs, cats, horses, donkeys – of community. They connect us to one another, give us support, provide enduring and unconditional love and stand by our sides in times of trouble, challenge and loneliness. Just consider that thousands of Americans compulsively, even obsessively, who rescue animals, even to the point of traveling to other parts of the country and world in order to have something to rescue, while politicians dine with lobbyists,  children go without health care and nutritious meals and the elderly retreat into living rooms to live for want of heating oil.

By watching how important animals have become in our loves, we reveal what it is that people and community are no longer providing. If we ever can rescue ourselves and the communities we live in, and the notion that the national ideal ought to be that food, work and life ought to be available,  satisfying and secure, perhaps animals will return to their glorious role of accompanying us through life, rather than defining what we wish it to be.

We are seeing what animals are for.  What are people for?