postscript on flight and anthropodenial

as usual on sunday morning, i began the day by looking for what gifts wiley miller and gary trudeau had left for me overnite. i discovered wiley had provided me an afterthought to yesterday's edition. he combined the fantasy of flight with a gentle, but all to real, commentary on a current example of human's lack of superiority to animals. i offer it as a link, non sequitur today, since i haven't yet mastered the art of getting non sequitur to fit on my page.

meanwhile i'm already in love with anthropodenial as a word and concept. in my lawyer world i work with professionals of all sorts who deny their part in the system's discrimination and prejudice and clients who deny how they've taken their anger out on others who don't deserve it.

on a more personal level, i hear the denial of the holocaust by certain loudmouths and cry when i some special people deny their own anti-semitism. appropriately a jewish congregation offers another special non sequitur on the subject which it calls simply in memoriam.

the author of my newly discovered term finishes his piece with an appropriate last word:

we must be very careful not to exaggerate the uniqueness of our species. The ancients apparently never gave much thought to this practice, the opposite of anthropomorphism, and so we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves.