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As little Chipotle, our resident toad, sat in his tank at the back of the office, we discussed the difference between the "selves" that each person has, ones that distinguish between and behave differently with the inanimate, the animate, and humans. The "self" that deals with a rock is not the same "self" that deals with your pet dog (or toad, as it were), and that "self" is very different from the one that interacts with other people.

For some people these selves are very distinct and rarely, if ever, overlap. But for some the lines are a little fuzzily defined: the woman who treats her cats as her children, who talks to them and interacts with them as she would interact with toddlers; the woman who is in love with, and is loved by, the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. Anthropomorphising animate objects (animals and other living things) is fairly common. Anthropomorphising inanimate objects isn't rare, either-- look at any young child with a favorite toy or baby blanket: the object of reverence will be carted around everywhere, treated like a human, given its own seat at the table and a place in bed.

The usefulness of clearly defining those selves, at least so much as to treat the object or animal (or person) with the most logical approach (the toad doesn't return your affections, Jessica, I'm sorry) is a matter of coherence. If we are to treat all things equally, the world falls into disarray and the process of inquiry gets a little... complicated.

"Dissociating" from non-humans, and even humans, is a useful approach for a changing, mercurial world.

Interesting to me, along this vein, is the idea of imaginary friends (in children and others), where the line between the "selves" is delineated there-- is an imaginary friend actually a "self" so harshly delineated that they become foreign or alien to the child?

(It calls to mind "alien hand  syndrome" and other instances where physical pieces of the body, still attached to the person, are regarded as something not belonging to the self.)

What about de-anthropomorphism? Destructuring a human into an animal, or an animal into an inanimate object?

And the social implications of "selves" and the delineation between one self and another-- when do a child's actions no longer reflect on the parents, if ever? When is the child a "self" of the parent... a piece of them? When do they dissociate and change from animate to human? When a baby is born, it does not possess the mental faculties to operate above the "animate level," as far as a I see it. They eat, they poop, they want to be held-- but none of that is uniquely human.

So when do they become "human?" How many selves, or types of selves, make you "human" over "animate?"

I guess it just makes me a little uncomfortable to put humans apart from all other living things... It might be wishful thinking, but I know that my dogs have personalities. I'm pretty sure they even have different selves, depending on who's on the other end of the leash. Are humans unique? Better? Or just different?