Don't you think that we are all one?

Yes, all life forms sprang from the same source of life giving components. Some organisms evolved into humans, others mammals, plant life, sea life, etc. We are all one, meaning that every speck of life sprang from the original primordial soup pot.
Therefore, as much as we humans like to elevate ourselves to some mega superior status, the truth is, our beingness was just another spin on the roulette wheel of evolution and we could just as easily manifested as a watermelon or an earthworm.

Yes, from a cosmic standpoint we are all one. It’s not experiential nor is it developmental, but it is a reflection of the interconnectedness of things.

Your abeyance of judgment when speaking with someone is a mature approach, one that it would be nice if more people (including myself) used more often.

Certainly all one species with a shared fundamental nature. Certainly not all one organism.

Definitely, but rarely do we get this.

You express some noble sentiments, but I disagree about all being one. Adding to what @josie said, we have similarities due to all of us being human and being sentient, but being human allows for greater varieties of behavior than other species. We need to accept our differences as well as our similarities.

@LostInParadise I’d disagree, most animal species possess superior abilities over humans.
Can we fly? Can we spin a web? Can we navigate by magnetic force or echo location? Can we see, smell, hear with the amazing senses of a Bat, an Owl, a Dog a Wolf?

Can we out run predators like a Gazelle, do we possess teeth and claws that can shred our enemies with one swipe like a Bear or a Cougar?
Do we have the ability to hibernate or go into a torpor in extreme weather conditions?
The human animal is most inferior, minus our great brains that have primarily down nothing more than set in motion our ultimate demise. Some problem solving ability ey? haha

Plus we look pathetic naked, no fur coat, so we steal the skins of animals to warm us. lol

Through mechanical means we can move faster on land and in the air than any other species. Our hairlessness may be pathetic, but we can cover ourselves with a vast array of types and colors of threads. Our species extends to all continents.

Our defining characteristic is the ability to make a range of choices that far exceeds that of other animals. It is in these choices that we differ not only from other animals but from each other as well.

My thoughts on this are similar to @zenvelo.‘s I agree with @Coloma‘s first post, but I hold humans in slightly higher esteem. However, the statement, “there is no right and wrong,” can lead to a life of vacillation and indecision. Not knowing the difference between right and wrong is a basic definition of immaturity.

Having a moral compass sometimes necessitates judging other humans, but not falsely; you judge them according to your own convictions—which you may have to defend someday, so keep it real. The trick is to keep it to a minimum and stay true to your beliefs. If things change—as you wisely noted they will—and you begin having trouble with some of your convictions and therefore your judgement of others, it’s time for some self examination and reconsideration. Life is a work of art, but you have to do the work to get the art. Don’t be a hypocrite and delude yourself in believing there is no right and wrong (That would be an incredibly cowardly way to live, in my judgement!) Of course there is right and wrong. It’s slightly different for everybody. But, mostly, there are general agreements among us on what this is. Here, I’ll show you.

For example, there is a right way and a wrong way to treat your environment. Do it wrong, and you will be living in a cesspool. There is also the responsibility we have toward each other. Is there no right or wrong in working toward the greater good of this world we live in? To leaving this place a better one for being here? Feel you no inner mandate toward this? Well, you might be a bit young yet.

How about something simpler: Do you litter with impunity? If you don’t, why not? Does it bother you when you see others litter with impunity? Why? Are you wrong to judge people who litter with impunity?

How about something even simpler. How about pedophilia. Does the idea of pedophilia bother you? Is pedophilia wrong? Are pedophiliacs wrong? If you think they are wrong—like most humans who are interested in living in a stable society—are you wrong to judge them as being wrong?

It is impossible to live a life deluding yourself that there is no right and wrong. Besides, if Oscar Wilde couldn’t do it, neither can anyone else.

@Espiritus_Corvus I agree.
It’s the new agey influence that touts the “there is no right or wrong” mantra as in some, predestined, karmic “it’s all good” nonsense.
“Well ya know, you chose to be raped as a 3 yr. old because you were the raper in a previous carnation” crap.

What I have been saying all along. It comes down to choice. You are what you choose We are all our own creations, and you can’t opt out. You must choose.

@LostInParadise We can choose not to choose too, let the shit hit the fan. haha

If you go whichever way the wind blows, that too is a choice.

Using tools developed by my species I can do more than all the other species combined. I can fly and stay under water indefinitely. I can see in wavelengths from the far infrared to the vacuum UV. I have sonar and thermal imaging. I can genetically modify crops to feed the hungry and reproduce even without fully functioning components. I can swftly take down the largest predator at distances so great they do not hear the sound. I can cure diseases that used to ravage my species. With the push of a button I can communicate around the world. I can travel faster than sound and higher than the atmosphere. I can modify my habitat to make the hottest and coldest climates comfortable. I can predict and produce elements and chemicals that never before existed in nature.
I also have the power to destroy it all. With great power comes great responsibility.

I can’t grow removed limbs or go into suspended animation like a tardigrade, yet. Give it time.

^ “With great power comes great responsibility.”

…and that second part, we are struggling with.

We are one and we are different. Our brains happen to be more attuned to difference than to oneness; plus, we have an ego-driven compulsion to distinguish ourselves from everyone (and everything) else. That tends to keep difference in the forefront of our perception, and makes the oneness hard to see.

By “oneness”, I don’t mean similarity. Among human beings, we are more similar than we are different, but understanding oneness isn’t a matter of comparisons and logging similarities and differences. Oneness doesn’t stop at the borders of our species, or even with sentience.

We are one in the sense that nothing exists in isolation, and nothing is immune from change. Everything affects everything else. All phenomena come into being and are sustained because of a congruence of an infinite number of contributing factors. Change any of those factors, and everything shifts. It’s only because our view is rather course-grained that we tend to ignore all of this.

People get infatuated with what we come to think of as our selves to the extent that we ignore the network of inter-dependence. Even who we’ve come to think we are as individual selves is the product of countless social and cultural influencs. But once we’ve latched onto some idea of “me” as a distinct self, then it becomes quite difficult to acknowledge oneness again. It’s as if some little eddy current in a river becomes enthralled with its own little swirl and the little collection of debris that collects there, and forgets the river. That eddy only exists because some rock happened to fall into the river at some point, and it will disappear when something moves the rock. From moment to moment, the water composing the eddy changes, and the debris comes and goes too, but the eddy persists in seeing itself as something special and distinct from the rest of the river.

Likewise, we get all enthralled with our little “private” corners of reality, especially our little thought-worlds.

I’m chiming in again to share something I just came across. This was written by Edgar Mitchel, one of the Apollo astronauts, about an experience he had on the spacecraft’s return to earth:

“It wasn’t until after we had made rendezvous with our friend (fellow astronaut) Stu Roosa in the Kittyhawk command module and were hurtling earthward at several miles per second, that I had time to relax in the weightlessness and contemplate that blue jewel-like home planet suspended in the velvety blackness from which we had come. What I saw out the window was all I had ever known, all I had ever loved and hated, longed for, all that I once thought had ever been and ever would be. It was all there suspended in the cosmos and that fragile little sphere. I experienced a grand epiphany accompanied by exhilaration, an event I would later refer to in terms that could not be more foreign to my upbringing in West Texas, and later, New Mexico. From that moment on, my life was irrevocably altered.

What I experienced during that three day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness. I actually felt what has been described as an ecstasy of unity. It occurred to me that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me. And there was the sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental but there was an intelligent process at work. I perceived the universe as in some way conscious. The thought was so large it seemed at the time inexpressible, and to a large degree it still is. Perhaps all I have gained is a greater sense of understanding and perhaps a more articulate means of expressing it. But even in the midst of epiphany I did not attach mystical or otherworldly origin to the phenomenon. Rather, I thought it curious and exciting that the brain could spontaneously reorganize information to produce such a fantastically strange experience.

Billions of years ago the molecules of my body, of (the other astronauts’) bodies, of this spacecraft, of the world I had come from and was now returning to, were manufactured in the furnace of an ancient generation of stars like those surrounding us. This suddenly meant something. It was now poignant, personal. Our presence here, outside the domain of the home planet, was not rooted in an accident of nature or in the capricious political whim of a technological civilization. It was rather an extension of the same universal process that evolved our molecules. And what I felt was an extraordinary personal connectedness with it. I experienced what has been described as an ecstasy of unity. I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it and experienced it sentiently. I was overwhelmed with the sensation of physically and mentally extending out into the cosmos. The restraints and boundaries of flesh and bone fell away. I realized that this was a biological response of my brain attempting to recognize and give meaning to information about the wonderful and awesome processes that I was privileged to view from this vantage point. Although I am now more capable of articulating what I felt then, words somehow always fall short. I am convinced that it always has been and always will be an ineffable experience.”

That epiphany plus a subway token will get you a ride on the subway.

Sorry, but these great revelations do not do anything for me. Are there extraordinary mysteries in the universe? Of course there are, but all those molecules forged in all those stars will eventually fade into oblivion. To what end?

Take each day as it comes and get the most from it. I am with Plato in believing that the closest we can get to hooking up to eternity is to understand the laws of mathematics. There is no way of knowing this for certain, but it is pleasant to think this way.

With that epiphany and a token, you are the subway

”Take each day as it comes and get the most out of it”
Exactly.