We already do. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others, as Orwell observed (with some exception made for working and companion animals like canines and felines).TigerNinja wrote:Although does this then give us permission to see ourselves as better of we are playing the same game?Greta wrote:[long-ish post, quoted enough already]
To a fair extent our human senses and morphology lock us into our species-centric view. From there, relationships developed from day one corral much of our focus. For any social species, it's usually more consequential to pay attention to your own than to others (barring the occasional charging rhino or tsetse fly infestation). If there is a predictable development path for biospheres I expect that species-centrism of dominant animals would be usual, as would a dominant species' general tendency to treat the rest of nature as resources rather than peers.
In context, growing environmental awareness is interesting. I suspect there was a cock up along the way during colonial times. An awful lot of indigenous environmental knowledge was lost because colonialists were not sufficiently advanced to appreciate it, too caught up in apelike asserting of status. Today we are playing catchup with the environment and undergoing some development pains that may have been avoidable.
Had the oceans been wider and more treacherous then, by the time colonial cultures traversed them, they may have been more cultured and willing to accept and try to understand the knowledge of the indigenes they displaced, and maybe even cooperated.