Those who know me will know how I feel about the lives of animals. They will also know how little I value my own life. Lately, I have been trying to imagine the situations in which I would give up my life for that of an animal. Laying in bed, transfixed by the idea, my immediate emotional feeling is that my life has more worth than that of a bug and less worth than that of a mammal. I'm sure that size and prejudice guide my thinking, for in the abstract, I think of myself as having only as much worth as the lowest and most generic form of being: only a step above inertia.

The warped emotional skew that makes up the entirety of my personality has a lot to do with this, but this is also an ethical ideal to which I aspire. To deplete yourself of all worth and esteem, and to be ready to lay down your life for the pain of another -- such a feeling is, to me, the fount of moral behavior.

ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος· καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος..