[steve_adams_86]

It took me around 20 years to kind of key into that, but then it took almost another 20 for it to properly click.

I find it pretty hard to get on the same wavelength as most people about it. A lot of us feel distinctly human as opposed to, I don’t know, like a smooth ape that is neurotic enough to develop space travel.

I’m half joking. I’ve found the revelation made me love animals a lot more than I had. It brings a sense of unity to my life. Dogs really are family, birds are not nearly as different from us as they seem, and even creatures like fish or squid share remarkable traits with us. These fundamental aspects of being animals.

I really enjoy it. I think it’s a great thing to contemplate and embrace.

[michael1999]

This is more broadly held than you might think. Just look at the outcry about Harambe.

My sense of kinship is weak with arthropods. Vertebrates are clearly kin. Birds and mammals are so clearly fellow beings, that I simply can't imagine caring about people if the concept of people must be narrowed to exclude them.

It goes the other way too. I find it easier to love my fellow human animals when I remember they are neurotic hairless apes wearing hats. Our intelligence is so new (in an evolutionary sense), we are just barely smart enough to pull this all off.

[steve_adams_86]

I totally agree. Coincidentally my son keeps some isopods as a sort of hobby in a terrarium, and yeah, I do find it hard to see them as quite the same.

Your latter point is a very important one. I think of intelligence as a very tenuous, fragile thing. We can barely utilize it the ways we intend to, and it isn't a guard-rail against all kinds of bad behaviour. It's almost useless to us in all kinds of common scenarios, or barely accessible. We get enraged, drunk, turned on, depressed, etc. and suddenly these faculties are barely function in the ways we need them to be.

So, it becomes much easier to forgive people for making mistakes. You begin to realize we're holding onto this potential by a thread most of the time, not wielding it like a trusted tool. The more you observe this, the more it's a wonder anything works at all.