Unlike us, animals don't have civilisation to confuse them. If you are smart enough you can rationalise your most idiotic actions. Human intelligence has created many more problems than it has solved. The trouble with talking to yourself is that you don't get a sympathetic hearing. Philosophy Inconsistency is the first human freedom.
Life is a gradual process of discovering one's mortality.
Narcissism and the lust for power pay little attention to details of superstructure such as communism, democracy or religion. The greatest inhumanity, and the source of all evil, is not fear, greed or lust for power, but simply the denial of the humanity of another. Too much moderation is not good for you. Life is like a railway system - long delays are possible, sudden arrivals are not. As for eating meat and killing cockroaches, man cannot live on karma alone.