OH SO CUTE Animals vs. The Horror Of Being Human

Why are SO CUTE animal pictures and funny animal stories so popular on the Internet? Maybe because they help us cope with the terror of existence:

Pets sit mid-way between a global civil society and a global horror show…. [H]uman beings can’t all partake in a single rational discourse about the nature of scientific progress, but they can all laugh at a cat that plays the clarinet. I saw the film of Disgrace at the weekend, and if there’s one way that the film actually supplements the book, its with the constant canine imagery. I suspect that this is Coetzee’s point, that between the sexual animal violence of the wild and the judicial order of the city lies the intermediary of the pet dog, representing both our connection to nature, and our miniscule distance from it. A cat or a dog turns out to be the most comforting thing to look at, for beings that can’t work out if they’re animals or not.

Also, they are frigging adorable. [Via]