i hope you dont mind me sharing my thoughts on the matter as well, haha. the way you think is quite interesting to me, i relate! 🐁
the concept of niceness and utilitarian based morality and ethics hold no place in life without their antitheses. the only way to measure a certain quality is through the comparison of a lesser or superior alternative. possession of one singular attribute perpetuates a sense of normalcy and regulates the human to a certain dopamine baseline, and with a humans natural need for novelty and change, consistency and routine isnt a plausibility. the only predictable aspect of a human is their neurobiological functions hardwired into them through evolution. even those very functions expected to operate at a predictable, tuned rhythm comparable or exactly to other humans vary greatly in synchronicity and oftentimes are completely dichotomous from one person to another through means entirely interior without (much, or at all) extrinsic intervention. this traces back to my original statement regarding the nonexistence of objective criterion without the involvement of biased moralization. morality exists, but its only through the existence of contradictory concepts and conflicting ideas and predjudices that syntheses such as definition and the concept of sup/inf/eriority begin to emerge. humans cannot comprehend what "good" is without the existence of "bad", and stripping that down to its most fundamental counterpoints, its merely our central nervous systems debating our responses to external stimuli. the illusion of choice and the brains need for identity and liberation from a hard-deterministic "truth" our reality likely entails is what complicates morality and our understanding of it, eventually leading to the moralization, and - inevitably - compartmentalization of present and newly coined topics and ideas.
unfinished, incomprehensible, straight fucking yap. sorry, i am a bit of a scatterbrain and lose my train of thought pretty quickly.
i wouldnt say animals and plants themselves are cruel, id say that the action of survival in itself is the cruel part. they dont comprehend things on a human level, all they are thinking is "i need this to live and thrive, so i will take it from you."
other people are not used to thinking outside of what they are told. if you dont fit into a box, you are different. you are different. you are different. but we are as normal as we say we are, arent we?
That's a lot of text. Well, simply put, I understand what you meant, and I think you're a much more lucid person than most of the people I've spoken to. I bet you spent quite a bit of time reflecting on the same subject, since you delved so deep into your own mind.
Even if we talk about what causes people to act and think the way they do, I refuse to see myself as equal to them. Not better, not worse, just different.