Lol. Yeah. I started out trying to be concise, but then I just could t help it, and I was too lazy to delete that part.

We as a species split the atom. Energy from matter. Enough to never go without. Why isn’t my car nuclear powered? The goal of the scientists chasing fission/fusion was this. But it became a weapon. A weapon these scientists built hoping for peace. The goal of a thing- a philosophy- a tool- all the same thing, all in the pursuit of “becoming better” is not important. Once it leaves the drawing board and people get involved human nature becomes a factor. You define communism in its lofty goals but don’t recognize capitalism is likewise meant to motivate and reward working for societies good. Humans use the tool for their purposes. Twist intent. How do you reconcile your statement that people can choose to remain as animals, with a system that requires everyone to participate in social ownership? What of those who wish to remain “animals” and cling to individual ownership? A “perfect” system is useless if people don’t use it.

Tl:dr- ask. There’s no real danger, you’ll likely only know these people 1-4 years max and then never see them again, and you don’t need to worry about a teacher thinking your “stupid.” If you knew everything you needed, they wouldn’t have a job. They spent 4-8 years extra minimum to get their job on top of all the grades of school you haven’t done yet. And honestly... they did the work to become a highly paid professional with an easier job, for a job they knew was over worked and underpaid/appreciated. So unless they did it for passion and principal of doing just that- educating young minds and answering questions, no one in the room can consider the other “stupid.”

I suppose it depends on who, and some other context. There are some people who can make certain things work that you’d think by default were guaranteed to fail, and overall mood plays a big part.

As opposed to saying nothing and having her leave of boredom or think you’re dissinterested? Some people won’t like us, no matter how much we like them. It’s ok. If we give people the best version of ourselves the choice wether they want to get to know us or not is up to them. Of course- trying is up to each of us. It all comes down to what we want out of life. It’s our choice is we let irrational fear prevent us from doing the things we want or not.

... which is food wrapped in food. Or putting cloth over cloth in the case of a coat over clothing or sheets over a mattress cover etc.

Oops. Typo.

Bonus points for critical thought.

That’s pretty much a (somehow longer) version of what I just said. That was my point. The scenarios are not the same. The movie was specifically designed to give the least “humanity” to the villains, the most “justification” to John Wick, and enough generality as to not get bogged down in details. There’s no question that in real life, killing even 1 person for the unjust death of a dog or theft of personal property would be hard to defend, near impossible if you spent a length of time tracking them down and killing them and anyone who got in your way. My point was that John Wick can’t be viewed simply as: “man goes on a murder spree over his dog.” It’s not a straight forward narrative about a guy and his dog, it’s all place holders for emotions and situations that are fairly universally human. It’s about grief, human emotion, coping, anger, revenge, power/powerlessness, the quest to heal after trauma. All the particulars are just dressing to set that up and aren’t meant to be literal.

Ideally neither animal would be. If one has a pet snake that will only eat live mice though- the options become limited, and aren’t free of ethical question. There’s still the ethical question of wether it’s any better to have someone else kill mice en masse so that you aren’t culpable. I can say that given the choice of death sentence between being caged, then frozen and killed- or being able to fight a giant snake and possibly survive- I can’t say either speaks to me, but if it were my life I’d likely choose the only choice that at least offers some chance I’d survive. A mouse of course is not given that choice, nor is known to be capable of fully grasping it, but the nature of most living things is that between certain death and unpleasant but possible survival we tend to choose to try and survive.

I applaud @funkmasterrex. I knew many snake owners who “enjoyed the show” of feeding as opposed to seeing it as an unpleasant reality. I personally don’t enjoy watching animals eat each other, I don’t find entertainment in watching snakes eat live or dead prey. The fact is however that no matter how uncomfortable reality makes us- some things are beyond our control, and like “carbon credits” we can try to offset harm, or shift our guilt, but when you feed something meat or eat it- unless you cloned a mindless hunk of meat- something suffered or died regardless. Animals do get to “choose” to be predators or prey. We are all born with strengths and weaknesses. Prey animals are simply those that get eaten. Nice kill snakes too. Not every mouse will. That’s how evolution works. The strong are meant to survive and pass genes to make the species stronger. No one wants to be eaten (well... maybe some parasites etc.) someone’s gonna do the eating, and someone is getting eaten.