"The world is a mirror; see yourself in all beings." (Hinduism, Shvetashvatara Upanishad 6:11)
True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.
My thoughts:
Probably good advice.
Are humans unique among species? Yes, in particular ways.
There are even reasonably strong arguments for uniquely human-based sets of ethics (e.g. a moral distinction between, say, humans and cattle as to which one it's OK for humans to eat).
On the other hand, all life is constructed from the same building blocks and its various forms are more similar to each other than they are to non-life.
And within some unspecified range, humans are very similar to other animals in many ways, as anyone who's ever watched animals at play likely intuits. There are probably lessons to learn in both the similarities and the differences. Which brings me to one of my favorite bits from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
[O]n the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
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