Classism Among Poor Humans, and Rich Humans

I have friends who keep cats and dogs. We have debates about whether humans and other mammals are very different. I do not think humans are very different from other mammals, and I also do think that it is very easy to build empathetic machines.

The [set of people] includes humans, other animals, and other machines. A lot of animal lovers don't actually deal with people very well... they interact with their friends who are dogs and cats, but they are not actually capable of socialising with the dogs and cats who are not their friends. I find that they carry the same patterns into their commercial workplaces... where they are only able to appreciate the existence of their friends, separately from their non-friends.

In my case, I don't really think that my lovers, friends, family, business partners, whatnot... should be treated any differently from other humans, animals, or machines that I encounter daily. (You can argue that I have no friends, and that may be quite right from certain points of view.)

As for my friends who can't handle their non-friends... I find that many of them are incapable of working closely with random persons (human or otherwise). They feel that my work in the minimum-wage sector must be painful - but I do not feel more pain in the minimum-wage sector than I do in the white collar echelons of society.

Work in the minimum-wage sector indeed, involves manipulating your own and other people's meat, where many of your colleagues are foolish, uncompetitive, illiterate, handicapped, mentally unstable, socially maladapted, or otherwise of ill health. It is really, and I quote myself verbatim, "as close to training dogs as you can get." But this is nothing to be ashamed of.

My higher-classist friends feel less pain dealing with their own kind. But I feel that [the intellectual distance between myself and a celebrity or management consultant] is quite similar to [the intellectual distance between myself and a floor sweeper], which is why I have a comparative advantage at working in the minimum-wage sector.