About a month ago I re-read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick 1968; aka Blade Runner), in which people have this very special relationship with the few animals that they've managed not to kill off yet, and it's a huge status thing to own an animal but more than that, it's almost the only remedy for the spiritual deadness the remaining inhabitants of earth feel.
And then today I was watching animal videos and was so mushified by this little buddy
it got me thinking about how much people seem to have this - it seems - increasing relationship with videos of animals. Of course there's easier access than ever. Maybe people living in industrialized landscapes have always had this sense of longing and greater peace when they watch animals? So maybe it wasn't exactly prescience on Dick's part, but at the very least pretty perceptive.
Of course it turns out that the slow loris is an endangered species and that the traffic in them as pets is illegal which makes the cute video a little sad.
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