Frank writes: < I feel empathy and sympathy for the little baby Donald before the remote mother and the overweening father made their imprint on him.>
Steve writes: < I believe that suppressing one's pity/sympathy/empathy/compassion entirely is the "reactive" mode... I suspect our friend Donald started down that path at a very young age and has only the barest echoes or ghosts of those feelings remaining. I knew too many "western men" as a child who seemed to have done the same with their relationship to nature and animals... being brutal with predators/varmints leading to a certain brutality to prey (game animals) to their own working stock (cattle, sheep, rabbits, horses, dogs) and then ultimately their families (wives, children) and could-have-been friends. They were not devoid of this, but there was something about the lifestyle and circumstance (and social context) that seemed to strongly encourage, if not require, that suppression of empathy. > I grew up on a farm and was not taught to think much of anything about animals. We had a cow that had a grown calf that was in the neighboring field (fenced off) that was being bred. The mother saw it and became agitated. She took a run at a good wire fence and managed to punch a hole in it. It was an amazing display of strength. I suppose I might think of a young Trumper as a sort of raccoon. Superficially looks ok, but don’t try to feed it. It will rip your hand off. At some point, for our own sanity, we will have confront how we have treated animals (and how we may likely treat AIs) or at least why we treat some differently than others. I’d say if there is some kind of communication that can occur (verbal or non-verbal) that entity has higher status than those than cannot engage in communication. As baby Donald would mostly just poop and cry, he wouldn’t necessarily get very high on that priority list. Marcus
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