Agreed! We tend to forget that our assumptions are not facts. I think that's why it's important to really look at mythology (including religions) and art carefully, as well as modern psychology & neurology; because all of these things are telling us that reality is always more complex than our perception of it, and…

Actually I do have a way of knowing that, because plenty of stone-age hunter-gatherer societies exist today and Anthropologists have studied them. I suppose it's true that it's difficult to know when in their history that they worked it out, but they did. And as for being brutally violent to each other, well, that…

Thanks! Best of luck to you in your endeavours, as well!

But the French revolution was brought about precisely because just before it, it's rulers were so completely self-interested and disconnected from other people, that nobody could stand it anymore. It was too much self-interest that caused that.

Hey there—I just wanted to say thanks again for this extremely generous compliment. I wasn't sure what to say at the time—I was just echoing a lot of much wiser people than myself—but it really made my day to know what I said had meant something to you. I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, and I've decided to…

I dunno—plenty of hunter gatherer societies worked it out; they managed to respect all life, and yet realized they had to eat. But then, they didn't use legalistic conceptions of personhood to define that, they simply recognized the interrelatedness of all things, even as all things consume each other, which is…

But Annalee... you can't trust those robots. THE CAKE IS A LIE!

Well, okay then, I retract my statement. All life is not "equal". But all life is sacred.

But society is not a statistical aggregation; it's a group of other individuals. And sometimes they're justified in forcing their will on an individual among them. I mean... if the inhabitants of a city discover that one of their residents is building a nuclear bomb and intending to set it off and destroy the city,…

Look, please forgive the rudeness of my earlier comment. But Rand simply didn't get it. Altruism is not a self-interested act. Altruism flows from an emotion of compassion, and when someone is actually expressing compassion, they've transcended intellectual categories like "self" and "other." That's why it's…

Did you read the other part of my post? Life is sacred, but life feeds on life. Yes, of course killing a fly matters. That doesn't mean you let flies or mosquitoes eat you, or you freak out if you happen to kill one accidentally or in a fit of anger. But maybe it does mean you don't spray pesticides all over the…

Just because you can't think of a good reason not to eat a shrimp doesn't mean there isn't one. Or thousands, maybe. No way to know for sure.

Well, for starters, I wouldn't try to impose that idea on you by force; although I might try to make a convincing argument for it. But ultimately how you live is your choice.

No. It's not wrong to defend yourself against an organism if it's trying to eat you—even if it wants to eat you from the inside out.

You're right; they're not the same thing. But they're both true.

Well, they're competing directly for your food and/or blood. Sometimes you have to protect yourself.

Hmm—you raise some interesting points—and believe me, I take no offence at dissenting opinion—especially that so eloquently delivered. Full disclosure, though: You're far better read on these subjects than I am. I know the basics of Freud, and Jung, and Marx, but I haven't read Marcuse or Adorno & Horkheimer, or…

I dunno. I have a debate with myself every time I kill a bug in my house. On the one hand, I don't want bugs in my house. On a purely instinctive level, I don't want them competing for space/food/etc. in my territory. On the other hand, that's a living thing that feels and has goals and wants to survive and…

Calling a born human a person is a game of semantics too. Slaves weren't considered persons, and the reasons for that were even more arbitrary than the examples you cited. What matters isn't the semantics. What matters is how we treat the entities we apply these labels to.