IMHO most of the kids who do that are oblivious - they have no suitable empathy or self-awareness, and look at the animal without seeing it really. Those kids seem to grow up OK, at least the ones I've known. It's a developmental feature of mind - one reason you don't leave even a nice, cute four year old alone with the family pet for long. Every so often you get a kid who has empathy - who puts himself in the place of the ant, say, in imagination, and is aware of his own role and motives - and burns the ant anyway. That kid you want to keep an eye on, I think. No, essentially. The empathy is a false one, in that sense. But it is a real empathy. The next stage is what people call "respect" - what the Buddhists try to inculcate when they have beginning meditators thank the cushions they were sitting on.
Oh yeah, lightening bugs! My brother-in-law caught a few and squished them on my daughters arms. He was showing her how to make herself glow. She came into the house with a horrified look on her face, holding her arms straight out whispering "he killed them" I had to explain to him that we have a catch and release lightening bug program at our house.
Where do you live? My mom's from Washington State and had never seen lightening bugs either until she came to the midwest. Anyway, they're these cool bugs that fly around and have little glowing tails. You can rip them out and they still glow. Or just rub them on the ground and write your name or whatever. In the midwest it's common practice for kids to catch them and put them in a jar by their bed at night. Here's a close up view of one. Notice the bright yellow bit on the tail: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And here's a shot of a bunch of them at night: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
At first, I thought that was a picture of stars. And then I noticed the boats and got confused.... :bugeye:
I'm from NE and I never saw them til I moved to MI. Here I was a grown woman of 27 running around the yard with my 3 yr old squealing in delight. My neighbors must have thought I was a loon.
I agree even more. But how many older kids running around with magnifying glasses doesn't have the capacity to understand what he is doing?
God is a child with a magnifying glass... does this make him slightly psychopathic... i would say yes, from human understanding.
Let me illustrate with an example. sam: Gustav you're a star human perspective ---> compliment human science----> Gustav is a giant ball of volatile gas that is bound to implode some day shall we go back to discussing burning ants and the like?
