Should people own animals?

[Weatherlight]

Yup, if I had to push a button to kill anyone I didn't know to save my babies, I think I would. Then again, this is probably quite "normal"--how many parents would NOT save their child before a stranger?

Not all endangered species, of course. To kill many small, sentient endangered species would be taking more lives. It's the number of beings involved that's relevant, not what "species" humans classify them as.

 

[Susan9608]

Well, that's an interesting point on view, at least.

 

[Access]

Access,
is prompted. If you're going to keep slaves, at least care for them right.

Weatherlight,

People can argue theoreticals all day, but theoreticals are theory because they are not real. You can call pet-people slave keepers all day long, but to me this just seems like baiting or name-calling based on false pretense only you believe. You can talk about killing people in ways you could not in real life but this kind of thing is pointless because you could not and would not ever do that.

Don't get me wrong, I used to spend my days in boring lecture class debating the same things with my equally bored friends like the Anthropic principle or the origins of the universe or life or god to pass time. But at the end of the day, it didn't stop me from doing things that were important to me, like having pets, and nobody felt compelled to assert things about others own relationships because of the debates we had.

 

[Weatherlight]

I imagine that when human slavery was socially acceptable in the U.S., people who spoke about abolition often weren't taken seriously either.

Philosophical principles are not always mental masturbation, but guide us (or should) in our day-to-day lives. Pushing a button was an unrealistic example of a way I could take another's life in a physically convenient way, but it illustrates what I would do in similar real life situations (for example, buying a can instead of pushing a button). It defines or at least describes what is important at all.

Neglecting a dog's emotional needs is just as real as neglecting a dog's physical needs.

 

[Sabriel]

Yes but following the principles yourself (which you have admitted you don't always do when it's inconvienent) and pushing your principles on others are 2 very different balls of wax.

 

[C&K]

You shop at non vegan stores, you actively participate in a society that is very destructive to these "sentient" beings that you care about so much, all I really hear is a bunch of blither blather with very little action on your part other then trying on-line to recruit supporters to your rather "interesting" theoretics.

When someone calls you on this, you get rather nasty and rude, asking rhetorical questions about what "they are doing" to support their causes. (Rhetorical, only because you hope it will shut them up! Uh oh, she caught me, I am not doing anything... duh...gee... what now... I'll keep my mouth shut from now on, tisk tisk, she sure taught me!)

Well, I can assure you, many many people on this forum put their time and money where their mouth is, and do a great deal.

My understanding is, this is a guinea pig forum, dedicated to spreading the word about proper guinea pig cage sizes. Hence "Cavy Cages" or as it seems to be changing too, "Guinea Pig Cages".

The people here are very passionate about animal rights, I don't think you could call anyone who sticks around here, disconnected with animal welfare, (hence, going against the grain with cage size recommendations that are much larger then long established, excepted norms).

You, may talk all you want about taking animal welfare to new heights, places that most of us would not dream of going, but, on the other hand, so nonchalantly condone the slaying of an entire endangered species. Sure, they may not number in the tens of thousands, high estimates predict the blue whales numbers to be at 2,000 world wide, having very narrowly escaped mass extinction in the 1960's. The problem is, any grade 5 student in Ontario can tell you, what happens when you start pulling species out of the food web, generally, things find themselves in very sharp decline, entire ecosystems become unbalanced, and ultimately, become very fragile. This, apparently does not concern you in the slightest, so, I have a very hard time believing that you are any sort of animal welfarest. Again, when you start to have difficulty arguing your point, you turn to cheep shots at those asking questions, demanding to know "what they are doing" or "are your kids adopted?" or stating "you should shop at vegan only grocery stores" Good grief, you readily admitted that even you yourself, do not shop at a vegan grocery store! (Safeway?)

Your viewpoints are interesting, you have certainly gained a fair amount of attention with them, but I actually think they undermine the biggest issue at stake, which is improving the live of animals that are currently in captivity. We can all sit around and talk about how it is horrible to have any animals living in our homes as our pets, but that takes time away from other conversations, such as educating newbies, discussing ways to eliminate meat from our diets, or posting about rescue pigs / working out transports just to name a few things.

This is an anti breeding board. That actually fits fairly well with your long term goals, if severe limitations on breeding where actually ever achieved, there will be less animals left in captivity of those left, demand would be very high, through proper screening, bad homes or adoptive families could be weeded out. Which even you agree, is a drastic improvement over today's conditions. You keep stating that most people don't take care of their animals the way "we" do. That is the point! To get people not like "we" to not have the ability to have an animal, unless they are willing to subscribe to better animal husbandry / practices and become a responsible pet owner!

I know that if I where a "slave" I would rather be a pampered household family member (even if against my will) then being beaten, treated harshly and starved half to death! So, why can't we just focus on that?

You take what is a somewhat realistic goal, to reduce the number of pets available, increase animal rights, and educate people in their responsibilities to the animal kingdom, and make it very unrealistic. With any large task, it is best to break it down into pieces. I know that I sure as heck would never want to live in a world, in which pets where not a part of it, however, maybe in the future, in a more advanced, animal welfarest state, that may not be such "crazy talk", and the "slavery" of animals will be indeed, a thing of the past!

What is your goal? And may I ask, what are you doing about it? Because I know, I am doing something to make a difference in the lives of the animals in my community right now. Live by what you preach. You preach radical views, then live by them! If you can't live up to them, then zip it. I don't ask anything more of anyone around me, then I am personally able to do.

 

[Weatherlight]

Ok, some people need to improve their reading comprehension and stop putting words in my mouth.

Let me point out the following, which should have been obvious, especially from my previous posts:

-Discussing things online is not all that I do, no more than it is all that anyone else here does. I don't think I was out of line to point this out when I was attacked for wasting time posting when the people criticizing me were doing the exact same thing with their time (posting on an online forum).

-I do not mean to be rude. I may be rude to others' perception but tbh, I see myself as being a lot less rude than others are to me. (Ok, this one may not be so obvious. It seems that for neurotypicals, deciphering intent, tone, etc is a new difficulty when they can only go on text.)

-AR and AW are not the same thing.

-I do not condone slaying any sentient being, regardless of species.

-When someone must be killed, it is the individual beings that matter, and they all have the same inherent worth. They may have less or more usefulness TO OTHERS that can be calculated in making such decisions, but it is judging their value as tools, not as individual sentient beings.

-I do not demand to know anything. I ask questions I am curious about, and people can answer questions they want to respond to.

-I never told anyone to shop only at vegan stores, although shopping at vegan stores is preferable to shopping at nonvegan stores. I merely made a comparison between shopping at a nonvegan store and buying a product made by a nonvegan manufacturer.

-I am not forcing anyone to spend any amount of time reading or responding to any of my posts. If you think your time is better spent on other threads, please use your time on other threads, instead of using them in threads I post in and then blaming me for the way you choose to spend your time. I never saw any rule stating that threads/posts are not allowed unless they are proven to be a better use of time than any other threads/posts. If there is such a rule and I missed it through my own fault, I will apologize when it is pointed out and the mods enforce it by deleting all my comparatively useless posts.

-We can focus on the welfare of slaves rather than the issue of slavery all we like. I'm not the who started asking "What if everyone stopped breeding GPs?" and other such things. I just found it an interesting discussion and decided to share my thoughts...like everyone else who posted. If no one else cares for the AW vs AR discussion, they can just not participate, and it would die.

-Your stance is neowelfarism, which actually does have some strengths when it comes to companion animals, but I have been convinced fairly recently that it is otherwise useless. A certain ARA I know has converted me to a true abolitionist ^^ Abolitionism actually can use incremental change to lead up to the long-term goal.

-Ad hominem tu quoque is way overdone. I ask that you judge my ideas on their own merits, rather than according to your personal opinion of the person who you first heard saying them. If you don't like me, fine, but that doesn't prove that what I say is wrong. You may ask all you like, but I stopped doing these "I am a gooder person than U!" online public contests years ago. If others wish to post brags about all the nice things they do, that's cool with me; I just prefer to not participate, especially if I am urged to just so others may attack me. If you are ever interested in me as a person, and wish to share ideas and learn about my actions in a constructive, nonjudgemental way, feel free to PM me or something.

Some people sure get defensive and misread a lot of things

 

[Sabriel]

But in the end you are turning this into a "I'm a better person then you" argument. Becuase very few of us will subscribe to your views you come off as viewing our efforts and intent as inferior. Even though you admit that we are similar in our methods you treat my intent which incorporates some very different philosphies (mainly that we do in fact want to be here and that my animals are family not refugees and therefor they are not my slaves but pamperd loved family members) as inferior.

Words can only get you so far. Actions can get you a lot. Maybe you should focus on living these ideals, and aiming higher in making your life style more harmonious with the Earth and tone down on the online activism.

I also think you have a lot more to learn about how the Earth works. I think you should really listen to what C&K has to say about eco-systems and I think that if you looked into that you'd see how killing off an entire species dooms a lot of individual creatures. Sometimes you really do have to deal with the lesser of two evils. And in every situation you have to deal with a less then ideal world where sacrifices sometimes have to be made.

I think you are projecting our disdain of your methods and tone as a disdain for you. We don't know you. We don't know what hobbies you have, what kind of person you are. All you have really presented is your theories. I think you should spend more time getting to know people and less time telling them how to live. Especially here, where animal care standards are all ready the aim of our game.

 

[fairysari]

-I do not mean to be rude. I may be rude to others' perception but tbh, I see myself as being a lot less rude than others are to me. (Ok, this one may not be so obvious. It seems that for neurotypicals, deciphering intent, tone, etc is a new difficulty when they can only go on text.)

Neurotypicals? It seems to me that you then exclude yourself from this group? Although perhaps the rudeness you feel directed towards yourself is just as 'perceived' as the rudeness other feel coming from you. The impression I get here is that you are trying to be condescending, which I don't think is constructive or appreciated. I will give you the benefit of the doubt though, and will not assume you are trying to be condescending, but rather ask you for a little more clarification on this statement?

-We can focus on the welfare of slaves rather than the issue of slavery all we like. I'm not the who started asking "What if everyone stopped breeding GPs?" and other such things. I just found it an interesting discussion and decided to share my thoughts...like everyone else who posted. If no one else cares for the AW vs AR discussion, they can just not participate, and it would die.

I really think that semantics are the problem here - the word 'slave' is not how most of us refer to our pets, and is not even close to how we think about them. If your pets are your slves, then fine, but I think that many people here take offense to having their beloved pets be referred to as 'slaves' by you. If you honestly wish to have a civil discussion, it might be to your benefit to choose to use a more neutral vocabulary.

I ask that you judge my ideas on their own merits, rather than according to your personal opinion of the person who you first heard saying them. If you don't like me, fine, but that doesn't prove that what I say is wrong.

Okay, we don't know a thing about you personally, all we have is the ideas which you have given us, so that is all we can judge you on. No one has an opinion of you personally, just of what you say.

You may ask all you like, but I stopped doing these "I am a gooder person than U!" online public contests years ago. If others wish to post brags about all the nice things they do, that's cool with me; I just prefer to not participate, especially if I am urged to just so others may attack me.

People have different ways of feeling good about themselves. This is just an inconsequential discussion on the internet, I really hope that no one is taking it too seriously.

Weatherlight, I think that you have a lot of ideas that are good in theory, but the are not feasible to put into practise. History has shown us that not every good idea on paper works in the real world. Obviously a lot of us disagree on whther the topics we've been discussing fit into the "good on paper only" category. I think a lot of the "you do it too!" arguments are based on that.

 

[Susan9608]

I want you all to consider something.

There are so many people out there who don't give a damn about animals. There are people who could care less that chickens and cows and pigs go through unspeakable cruelties, as long as their dinner tastes good. There are people who could care less that rabbits painfully lose their eye sight just so they can have make-up. And there are people who don't care that animals in circuses and such are tormented and driven insane, just as long as the circus puts on a good show.

You all (and yes, I mean you, too) have been ganging up on each other and fighting each other because you have different perspectives on how best to achieve an end to animal cruelty. Isn't the important thing that you are all on the same side? Of course, you have different opinions on how to best achieve your goals, but essentially, what we all want here is what is best for the animals.

Personally, given that there are so many people against animal rights in any form or fashion, I really, really hate to see animal rights people beating up on each other.

Just something to think about.

 

[CavySpirit]

Thank you very much, Susan. THAT is actually one of my biggest issues!

And to that end, I think we've beat this topic quite enough. I would definitely prefer we focus our energies and emotions on those that really need changing.

I'm glad we have people who care here. Let's just be productive.