Imagine the strange experience of being a warm-blooded, hairless primate who has developed the ability to feel emotions – which is to say a human being – and being used to the idea that human beings wield power over each other and have the ability to cooperate with each other on the basis of trust and the expectation that they will do their fair share.
Then one day, walking home from work, you are chased by a confused seagull, which pecks at your face and legs. You’re irritated, and the seagull is full of emotion as it attacks you. It looks like it’s being wildly over-dramatic. You think that human beings don’t act like this, and it’s normal and natural that human beings act like this, and you expect a seagull to act like a seagull. So you feel alienated from the gull, which is acting weird.
And you think, “hey, I would expect a seagull to act this way” and that would be normal and natural to a human being, but human beings are alienated from this seagull.
It is weird and unusual to feel alienated by a seagull.
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