a find while researching hyenas

from "Life o the Ancient Egyptians" by Evžen Strouhal-
(on other domestic animals they kept)
"..They took pleasure in breeding them successfully, but did not see them merely as utilities. We know from many illustrations what care they took of them. When a flock had to ford a canal or creek, the shepherds would pick up the little ones gently in their arms and carry them across. We can see men stroking an animal's muzzle when feeding it. In Kagemni's mastaba in Saqqara we can even see a farmer feeding a piglet from his own mouth. It was part of the moral code that (other) animals should be humanely treated and adequately fed.
"A balanced relationship between people and beasts was seen by the ancient Egyptians as one element in the eternal global and cosmic order. ... In contrast to Graeco-Roman civilization and Judaic and Christian culture, which placed homo sapiens on a pedestal as a privileged being distinct from the rest of creation, the ancient Egyptians saw themselves as the children of nature, members of a single, remarkable whole along with the (other) animals and plants."
i added the bold and parentheticals :P

well just last night i admit to laying in bed crying over the earth's plight. i've read about how there were other mass extinctions happening before, and some people even believe this is why we shouldnt be bothered by the enormous amount of life we are destroying. what they dont understand is, since we aren't doing much to stop and reverse this, its just going to accelerate. this in itself wasnt what upset me so much as the fact that hardly anybody cares about the truly amazing amount of beauty thats going to be lost..all of these results of billions of years of life and change wasted, such an incredible amount of variety and beauty and the majority of people dont for one reason or another care. it made me so sad to think about all of these lives cut short, and what did they do to deserve it? they dont even know whats happening, i watched a show about how elephants are going insane as a result of human intrusion, so then we just go and kill them. i cried because i just watched all these videos of cheetahs, and i realized they dont have a chance or choice in anything. because the majority of people are too full of themselves to truly care and the ones who do don't have any power to change anything.
its simply not fair to destroy the world we live in, but i suppose that would be better than continuing on with the mindsets our society tells us we need to have.