“Empathy, he had once decided, must be limited to herbivores, or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between successful and defeated…As long as some creature experienced joy, then the condition for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. However, if any living being suffered, then for all the rest the shadow could not be entirely cast off. A herd animal such as man would acquire a higher survival factor through this; an owl or cobra would be destroyed.”—Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick