Find the prompt here:
A new owner. A new owner. A new owner. What's the difference, really, between animals and people? It's language. Written language, specifically, because sure other creatures communicate with one another, they have their own kind of languages. But only humans have written language. And by speaking, we create. We create our reality by speaking our thoughts out to one another, by creating together. This is something Friere talks about in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. And at first, I reacted they way some of my classmates did, that they talked about during class discussion last week. They took an ecocritical view of it, it was so human-centric and that kind of rubbed them the wrong way. It did me too, at first, but then he kind of expanded upon the topic in the next chapter and I came to feel less that way, came to feel he knew what he was talking about. And I don't even remember why, exactly, he felt it was so important (I mean, in one part, if I remember correctly, he even said, "And I cannot stress enough..." something about how humans and animals are not the same). He was talking about how animals don't have a consciousness about what they are doing, they only exist in the moment. Even when they are building something, say, to nest, it is...what did he say about that? I don't remember, exactly, but it wasn't about how they were thinking about their future babies. There's the timer, but lemme just finish this though. It was about how humans plan for the future, how we remember the past, how we can change our reality. And not just in the way, say, a beaver can dam a river. I think he even brought up that point. But something more along the lines of...history only exists because of humans.