OP: I suppose death threats are considered religious expression. It’s the same throughout the western world. And more an more I think that if you are going to allow these Mesopotamian, prescientific tribal religions to be expressed, death and war and stupidity is all you’re going to get.
What of the animal kingdom? I think we are no whole as a human race, we are only a whole including the whole ecosystem. We are not alone, humans don’t matter that much.
What matters is valuing what is of value to you, and recognizing what is taking away from you. I believe that was also Pandora’s larger point. You will harm people who might like you whenever you step in harms way.
You must also consider rocks, air, the sun, the moon, the waters - humans are only of slight influence to each other, compared to the influence they all receive from the elements.
No human can be free amidst only humans.
This reminds me of something a German farmer once said to me: first learn to love a plant, then an animal, then another human, then yourself.
In this way you will naturally find that in loving all these you have been loving yourself. To love is to self-respect.
The other may feel the same way about you,
But you have time. In time, you will both know. Until then, you struggle. The world watches as you try to establish yourself. This is what life is.
Youth is thinking that others don’t respect you. Maturity is knowing what respect is. All mature beings have embraced the struggle, their part of it, and - as that is shown in a mushroom-trip - the suffering becomes enduring and enduring becomes pleasurable. From the pleasure in being resisted, life is born. Some minds stay barren as their organisms can not get used to the burden that it is to exist without a known standard for goodness.
I say leave every beast in his wilderness. Find out which wildernesses overlap. I assure you my idea of dignity and yours are not the same, and yet we will have a lot to agree on. Let man be man - after all this is a growing process. There need to be many levels in operation at once. There need to be Bodhisattva’s and beginners for there to be a process at all. The greatest Bodhisattva is the Sun. He teaches the basic rules, the ones we can not avoid knowing. His daughter, the Earth, and all the other offspring have many rules for us to learn and each rule is one of bliss.