I think people also just find hyenas to be less aesthetically compatible--in short, they don't look or sound quite as impressive or glorious to most humans. But I am always amazed at how often people ascribe cultural mores to animals--scavenging, sexual characteristics, etc, get filtered through the morality.
The trouble with OWS is it's a one-way analogy: we may tell fables that are based on our economy, but if you to start with an ecological model and use it to justify social constructs, you're definitely rationalizing on some level--the justification of the 1% is another iteration of Social Darwinism, which is a corruption of a solid biological model. So animal stories and actual animals--two different things, and people are unclear on that. (Like I said further up the page, it says a lot about humans that we equate an interspecies ecosystem with a social structure--and put the one animal that eats all the others in the same position as "king.")
As for the Nazis, I'd say it's a defense mechanism--we have to distance ourselves from people who might commit atrocities. Of course, we're all human, so statistically with the right factors the same sort of thing could happen anywhere. But nobody wants to believe that about themselves. People have to tell themselves the others are defective so they don't have to worry that the same thing could happen again. It's shortsighted, but understandable.
no subject
The trouble with OWS is it's a one-way analogy: we may tell fables that are based on our economy, but if you to start with an ecological model and use it to justify social constructs, you're definitely rationalizing on some level--the justification of the 1% is another iteration of Social Darwinism, which is a corruption of a solid biological model. So animal stories and actual animals--two different things, and people are unclear on that. (Like I said further up the page, it says a lot about humans that we equate an interspecies ecosystem with a social structure--and put the one animal that eats all the others in the same position as "king.")
As for the Nazis, I'd say it's a defense mechanism--we have to distance ourselves from people who might commit atrocities. Of course, we're all human, so statistically with the right factors the same sort of thing could happen anywhere. But nobody wants to believe that about themselves. People have to tell themselves the others are defective so they don't have to worry that the same thing could happen again. It's shortsighted, but understandable.