Just a Crow Paying in the Snow

I believe that war, racism and meat eating, all have the same argument behind them, the perception of lesser beings. These three things are forms of violence that our mind needs to find a reason for, and in most of the cases, personal superiority is all it takes to motivate our actions. I won't get in the discution of war and racism, but I will briefly touch upon meat eating.

The most common argument is that animals do not have a soul or consciousness, that they are solely driven by instinct and because, we people, have the power to dominate them, it's ok to do whatever we want.

To my mind, the presence of playfulness is the most obvious argument for consciousness. With cats and dogs having playfights, we can say that this is just instinct preparing them for real fights, but in this video, we have a crow that is playing by itself with no apparent gain, just like a child or a lucky and free adult.

Personally, I see the same consciousness in all life, the only difference being in the way it manifests. Only human arrogance is able to create a hierarchy in which we are at the top and I hope we will be able to change this soon.