Is pet ownership hypocritical? (The value of non-human life)

@KHAndAnime: First I'll just say, you raise an interesting point that I haven't thought about before (domesticated pets essentially being an industry). Thanks for that.

But my issue with the whole argument is that you're looking at animals through a romanticized view, that they are on par with humans and thus need to be treated equally and given the same rights; ergo freedom. But you're not taking into account the fact that most animals are, in fact, assholes. I saw a video where a chimp tore apart a baby antelope with his bare hands. Or another where a male lion, when taking over a pride, killed all the cubs as his first order of business (not just an isolated incident). We've mostly evolved beyond that, earning the right to govern ourselves and attain a sense of "freedom." Animals wouldn't recognize that; they're not as noble as people think they are. Aside from some exceptions, most animals don't have the ability to be compassionate. That's what makes us uniquely human.

If the argument becomes, but it's their right to just be animals, think hard and remember a right is a social construction. If you want to talk about what's "natural," we really don't have a right to first-world comforts, although that's the dream. Where humans are killing each other for reasons beyond the mental capacity of animals (religion, ethnicity) or even just dying from starvation, that's your status quo isn't it?

Also, families of chimps take wild dogs as pets. They actually do beat them into submission and drag them up and down hills until they become loyal pets. Captivity isn't just a human feature.

TL;DR.

i love my 3 pets. and they are happy as can be.

And it seems you are pulling numbers out of your ass.

They're domesticated. We yanked them off the food chain. They can't survive as a species without humans.

Animals are meant to live in conditions in which they can survive. That domesticated animals exist proves that they were "meant" to live outside nature.

Pets don't have a choice, they need humans. They are ill-adapted to wild environments, they're neither the predators their ancestors were nor specialized enough to survive as a prey species. As to punishing them for what's natural, pets wouldn't be able to be an effective part of our society if they went around biting people and defecating everywhere. It's either change their natural behavior (which is something domesticated animals are good at, it's what made them able to be domesticated in the first place) or go extinct. It's not like conditioning techniques are harmful to animals either, unless they actually are being beaten in which case the problem is with individual owners and not pet ownership in general.

These animals actually do have a natural desire to be around humans, it's part of their survival method and basically ingrained into how they operate.

I would agree that most pet owners anthropomorphize, they think that the bond they have with their pets is akin to bonds people have with other humans. The pets do, at the very base level, simply need humans for survival. We shouldn't be mistaking a dog's instinct to remain with its dead master until he's discovered for human loyalty. That being said, there is some sort of emotional relationship, it's just predicated on the pet's need and difficult to understand as animals do not possess human emotions.

Now keeping pets in conditions in which they can't thrive is a different story. Keeping a large dog that needs a lot of exercise cooped up in a city apartment all day, for example, is not what I'd call a moral action.

Yup, humans have moved beyond the petty killings that take place in the animal world. Now how many wars are going on at the moment?

Trying to impose human morality on animal interactions is just as egregious an act of anthropomorphism as is assuming some sort of human affection in pet interactions. Animals don't operate in the same way as humans, they perceive the world differently, they feel differently, they operate differently. The most you can say about animal actions, such as infanticide, is that they work. They're part of the social structure of a species, and that social structure has persisted for thousands of years. If there were something "wrong" with it then evolution would have bred it out.

As for animals not being compassionate, depending on how you define compassion I would say it's almost impossible for any species to not have some sense of compassion, or the animal equivalent if you prefer. Almost every species that survives at least needs mothers to have some compassion for their children, and in many species other members of the community show compassion to young animals within their social structure. The difference is that such compassion in animals usually doesn't get extended beyond small social units, whereas the complexity of human society and the human brain necessitates extending compassion beyond small units. Again, though, I don't see all that much compassion in people on a daily basis. Homeless people die of exposure and most people don't even bat an eye. At least animals don't try to pretend that they're moral when they're doing something like killing young cubs. We're not the only species that acts without compassion, we're just the only species to lie to ourselves about it. In a way, doesn't that make animals superior?

@theone86: Depends on how you view the human condition. Aside from your daily news article that makes you say "faith in humanity = lost," I'm a little more optimistic most days. But you said it yourself: human compassion has the ability to extend beyond familiar social units or itself as a species. Lying to ourselves or not (we can't all be saints) we as a whole recognize the need to consider ourselves equal as human beings. Most animals don't. We have the capacity to do greater things than any animal, is what it comes down to for me.

This whole thread I've just been thinking of this scene in Always Sunny where Charlie comes up from the basement after bashing rats (whole generations of 'em) and he wonders if our lives are more valuable than theirs. Dennis replies: "...They are. Our lives definitely are, without a doubt."

i don't have to justify my actions to you.

i enslave my pets, eat animals and **** over the environment because i can.

as a part of the natural world that was entirely produced by nature everything i do is completely natural.

so to sum up.

**** off.

and here is a picture of the slaves that i keep because they comfort me in a totally one sided way that is only beneficial to me.

Have animals ever forced other animals to do hard labor? Have animals ever tried to systematically extinguish an entire sub-section of their own race? Have animals ever created weapons that can kill hundreds of thousands of animals in an instant? Now I know they don't have the capability to do these things, but that's entirely my point. They don't have the capability, just like they don't have the capability to consciously decide to extend their emotions beyond what is necessary for their survival. Given that, it's not really proper at all to judge them by our own standards. Are they moral? If they do have some morality it is far different from what humans call morality. Comparing our actions to theirs in this manner is like me comparing myself with a paraplegic and saying I can walk better than he can. It's not that extending human compassion carries some greater moral weight than animal actions undertaken out of instinct, it's that it carries moral weight within the context of human interactions. Similar to us doing greater things, how exactly do you define greater? Is human romance greater than animals, are human lives? We all live, we procreate, we die, and the cycle goes on, and will go on until every molecule on this earth is consumed by the sun and compressed into an incredible density. Of course human accomplishment and human lives mean more to us, but in the grand scheme everything has the same amount of meaning. Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust, the way of every single atom on this planet.

My Boston Terrier would be dead in a day if I let her into the Wild to fend for herself. It's been in the 20s here at night. They get cold super easy. They are indoor dogs.

I would use a bomb I have hidden in my tooth to disintegrate my body just to spite them.

There are people who already view animal life as more than food. Westerners have a way of over-analyzing everything from a single viewpoint and considering themselves superior because of it while simultaneously dishonoring many living beings. That is prevalent in every level of culture in the United States. In the East, people have respect for life other than their own and that shows. Not just animals which may be taken as food, but the water, the plants, and rocks are considered to have spirits in them.

Long story short, the idea of ownership is a part of our history. How we treat the lives of the animals we keep does matter and ultimately time will tell if minds change for the better treatment of them.

@KHAndAnime: My point is that animals shouldn't be continued to be bred into domestication because it creates a system where there's not enough resources to care of all the animals. You'd be shocked how many animals are destroyed by the system we have in place for pet ownership and domestication. The ones that are already domesticated? Keep them that way. I'm just saying perhaps it's not something that should be perpetuated. Similar to how we're trying to stop perpetuation of global warming.

that's a broad statement. are you talking about the breeding or the adoption process? for the breeding, a lot of states have regulations on the quality of life puppies are given. for adoptions, some people can afford the responsibility and some people can't. some people can afford to have babies and some can't, but that doesn't mean nobody should ever have babies again.

@theone86: Well okay, that was beautiful, man, but so... are you against pet ownership or not?