Have I got this right? The judeo-christian god made man in his image. Ok, doesn’t that mean that humans will therefore be metaphysically special? There will be a division between the human world and the animal world? Humans will have a “soul” manifested in mentation and the creation of cultures and all that bullshit. Apparently, that makes us pretty fucking special.
Too bad that whales and dolphins (and other primates) have human-like cultures as well, based on the cognitive capacities produced by the size of their brains:
“The long list of behavioural similarities includes many traits shared with humans and other primates such as:
• complex alliance relationships—working together for mutual benefit
• social transfer of hunting techniques—teaching how to hunt and using tools
• cooperative hunting
• complex vocalizations, including regional group dialects—'talking' to each other
• vocal mimicry and 'signature whistles' unique to individuals—using 'name' recognition
• interspecific cooperation with humans and other species—working with different species
• alloparenting—looking after youngsters that aren't their own
• social play.”
K. Fox (et al.), “The Social and Cultural roots of Whale and Dolphin Brains,” “Nature: Ecology and Evolution,” (2017);
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Basically, human primates came to dominate Earth by means of their capacity to be able to handle weapons, which combined with language/cultural ability, enabled them to gang up on every other fucker who threatened them and kill them off. Higher extraterrestrial life could be more impressed with whales and elephants than the human grunters they might find, and perhaps would delight in exterminating the human rats for sport:
Everyone will be “White,” which is another word for “prey,” then.
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Dolphins seem to have a limited degree of capacity for abstract thought (ie. self-awareness). But nowhere in the animal kingdom do I see anything more than the survive/procreate imperative, even among primates.