I was talking with my best friend yesterday and this is a snippet of the conversation I think was kind of interesting.
Me: Drusilla’s sick
Her: Are you taking her to the doctor?
Me: I like that you said doctor.
Her: Well, you talk about her like a person so I think of her like that sometimes.
As you may have predicted, Drusilla is my dog (and she’s feeling better). I think this conversation is interesting because it made me realize that I almost never refer to Dru as a dog and because a lot of people seem to take so much care to distinguish (non-human) animals from people. We call almost any medical professional as a doctor. It does not matter what kind; pediatrician, general practitioner, psychiatrist but with veterinarians it is inappropriate. I also had a class on the same day where the teacher said that we are not animals, we are people. All of the science majors looked at him like he was an idiot, but it was somewhat disturbing to me that nobody said anything about this statement and that some people seemed to simply accept it. A few over the course of the discussion agreed to it saying that there is no way people’s technology does not make them superior to animals. Cheetahs are not faster, for example, because people have airplanes. I also saw a T.V. show a friend wanted to watch where one of the characters, portrayed as one of the few moral characters, said that animals, of course, have no soul. I swore at the T.V. character, which the people I was watching with found funny, but I do wonder why so many cases of people professing themselves superior to animals occurred in the span of about three days.
Why do you think so many humans feel they are superior to non-human animals?
Responded to your post. :)
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