Anyone else find equating pets and animals with humans to be rather strange?

[Prophet 451]

159. I honestly don't know

The dog who attacked me acted on instinct. I bent down to pet him, he assumed I was going to beat him and he reacted on instinct to defend himself from a perceived threat. As it happens, the dog was euthanized despite my forgiveness (my friend, who owned the dog, pointed out that it could easily have been his infant child).

Humans can act on instinct, of course, but generally, they have a level of sapient reasoning which other animals lack. That is, we can (generally) choose whether to act on our instinctive impulses. When my partner and I argue, I can choose whether to respond with learned violence or not. Adult humans can, in theory anyway, excercise control over our impulses.

And yet... I have only been violent to her once, a verbal threat in the heat of the moment that horrified me once it was pointed out what had been said and steps have since been taken to resolve my anger issues. But the fact that I had those issues, that my life had taught me both the availability and acceptability of violence as a response...

The more I learn about human psychology (a lifelong interest which I'm currently turning into formal qualification; 5/6 through my degree), the more I become aware that a very great deal of what we consider to be choices are dictated by our past experiences; that we are, at some level, simply the victim of drives inculated into us by the surrounding world and which we do not fully understand. The children and teens who bullied me felt, I know now, threatened by me, by my intellect (I'm a genius and that's not a boast, I fall into the top 2% of the population)... And I was marked out as different by that intellect, by my accent, and SIT has proven that we all unconsciously favour our ingroup (those who we perceive to be like us or aspire to join) and against our outgroup (those we perceive as different from us)... The teenager who sexually abused me as a child, I don't know the details of his trauma, but the fact that he was in my grandmother's care tells me that he came from some form of abusive or neglectful home... The mother who physically abused me such that I ended up in my grandmother's care saw me, looking so much like my father, the man who had abused her, that she subconsciously feared me and that fear turned to violence.... My stepfather came from a home where alcohol was always available and so, when my mother was in one of her moods, it was easier to escape into a bottle...

The honest answer, as this disorganised collection of thoughts would indicate, is that I don't know. My mother and I were able to eventually repair our relationship but it took many years and teh death of my grandmother to bring us together. Whether I would be able to forgive those with whom I didn't have a pre-existing relationship, I honestly couldn't tell you.