Word: non-human
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There are hundreds of news groups (once again, a better name may be bulletin boards) on the Usenet. As many groups deal with such sensitive issues as free speech, legalization of marijuana and human (as well as non-human) sexual behavior, many UNIX system administrators feel obliged to shield their users from these potential hot spots...
...extremists on the political scene. I imagined a wild-eyed animal lover with faulty judgment; he would declare to the world his heartfelt belief that "animals are people too." The converse of this slogan-- "people are animals too" --came to mind. What is the opposite of extreme commitment to non-human life? Well, cartoons have their own internal logic: for my purposes, it would be extreme indifference to human life, in the form of a redneck death penalty enthusiast. I decided to build the cartoon around this bit of wordplay. (see below...
...Human beings are animals, whether we choose to consider ourselves as such or not. Our every choice affects the environment in which we live. The rights of human and non-human animals are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, to consider one out of the context of the other is to posit an unreal world--a luxury we cannot afford when planning seriously for our future. The achievements that make us most proud--in technology, in medicine, in philosophy--must make us more, not less, responsible...
Except for the tone of the entire article, which I found to be quite negative and void of a stabilizing "scientific" analysis, there were sparks of intuition and awareness concerning Irven DeVore's lecture. True, Professor DeVore did concentrate quite heavily on non-human animals in his explication of social behavior...
...apply his social theories to a rabbit warren or a nest of squirrels; by the same token, someone who has spent his life studying insects or baboons should not try to explain human phenomena--which is qualitatively different--by causal theories based on the observed motivations of non-human creatures. This is a question of academic imperialism...