this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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By treating animals like people, do you mean respecting them and not killing them or letting them work as senators?
IMO treating animals like things is definitely wrong, in the same way treating people like things is. Neither of them is a thing, all us animals are alive.
you shouldn't treat animals like smartphones, either. you treat different things differently.
I think recognizing what is alive and what is not is a question of basic science education. I agree animals shouldn't be treated as smartphones.
bacteria, fungus, plants, protozoa, and (arguably) viruses are all alive, too. bed bugs. rattlesnakes. being alive isn't actually that special, nor a reason, in itself, to refrain from eating or killing that thing.
I agree fully. If you were not allowed to eat other life, you would be left with licking salt. But that's not what I meant. What I meant was people use the "thing" label to make it easier to drop empathy - to do shitty things to both humans and other animals.