Insane Voters

2009-04-13

Last week's question: at what level of anthropomorphing can animals take over the world?

I think we should first look at how animals are most often anthropomorphized. From personal experience:

1. Speech
2. Motivation
3. Reasoning

And really, I think that's enough. The "anthropomorphing" of speech is really a way to express the assumption that animals cannot communicate with each other. It is clear that at least some animals do - whales, dophins, dogs (to an extent). Of course, these are never cross-species, and speech allows them to do that.

In fact, all three traits are somewhat amplifications of what animals do naturally, or rather, without being aware of them. And what does giving animals human motivations and reasoning do? It lets them inspect themselves, to think as we think.

That's all it takes. Humans survive because of our brains, and to support that we have become physically weak, much weaker than other animals. And if athropomorphic animals get that brain power for free... we're doom.

This week's question: Are patients in mental institutes allowed to vote?

PS. Thanks Yvonne