Peak Oil
Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

I want a dog.

Discussions related to the physiological and psychological effects of peak oil on our members and future generations.
Post a reply

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby MD » Sat 04 Nov 2006, 12:11:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'W')hippet, Should you ever become completely lost in a thicket of your own nuance, a lovable labrador can be relied upon to pull you out.


Damn that's good! Deserves a bump for sure!
Stop filling dumpsters, as much as you possibly can, and everything will get better.

Just think it through.
It's not hard to do.
User avatar
MD
COB
COB
 
Posts: 4953
Joined: Mon 02 May 2005, 03:00:00
Location: On the ball
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Sat 04 Nov 2006, 18:33:47

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'W')hippet, Should you ever become completely lost in a thicket of your own nuance, a lovable labrador can be relied upon to pull you out.


I am not lost in a thicket of nuance. Nuance is literally "subtle difference or distinction in expression, meaning, response, etc." I see this reflected in the biodiversity of an ecosystem. To be lost in a thicket of that is blissful. I feel no disconnect. They who are lost are not connected.

Owners who profess their singular attachment to a single animal as more complex, and richer than the thicket of natural biodiversity are the dull ones, the utterly lost. Codependency marks pet ownership like a scarlet letter. Emotionally whole human beings don't get lost in the fabric of life's mysteries. Enjoying a dog or cat doesn't mean you have to own it, and to own it confers no extra benefit.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Sat 04 Nov 2006, 18:34:25

Emotionally whole human beings don't get lost in the fabric of life's mysteries. Enjoying a dog or cat doesn't mean you have to own it, and to own it confers no extra benefit.

The above should be inscribed on a brass plaque in large type over the entrance to adoption agencies.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Sat 04 Nov 2006, 18:54:16

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '.')..but the dogs show their worth in return for a partnership. Classic symbiosis. btw, I like cats better.


Cat ownership is beyond reasonable levels and a moratorium on new cat ownership and breeding instituted immediately. I am serious.

I'd prefer this social movement to express itself as widespread leveraging of the social taboo form of social control as opposed to the government or regulatory controls. Naturally, this would require a large part of the population becoming aware that cats are dangerous to wildlife, a poor social and emotional choice as hobby or pet, and the disillusionment that cats are a hygenic species.

A far shot in this culture, like anything else that is fighting agasinst the tide of banal self-absorption to the calamity of all else. I predict, however, that the tides of change will bring new awareness and reach more people, lifting them up and out of their sorry condition.

I predict in the coming years, an increase of research corraborating my theory of unhealthful aspects of pet ownership, the adverse effects on psychology and physiology, and adverse effects on the environment. Naturally this will be countered by pet industry advocates and their soldiers of sentimentality, but the truth will be devastatingly irrefutable when it comes, and hopefully this will open up new possibilities for the next generation of people. This is the hope that gets me through the day in a world of disappearing value, as hubris ranges across the bleeding landscape.

PMS, is your trite pride in your own self-fulfillment something pet ownership taught you, or did you feel empty before you got a pet?
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby horsestoaster » Sat 04 Nov 2006, 21:08:45

I've had my yellow lab literally since he was born.I owned his father and mother too.He is 15 years old.We had his brother too until recently when he passed away.We have an evil jack russell as well.I do not understand all this over-anal-yzing of getting a dog.Dogs have been partners with man since prehistoric times.My dog has protected myself and my kids and my home without any special training.He is a great dog.He has even taught the jack how to guard "his" house and peopleand all the other animals we have.I trust Axl more than most people I know.His brother Gunther was just as kind and loyal.Stop over-anal-yzing and get a dog if you are willing to take care of one for its life with you and then look for a breed or crossbreed that suites you.Then enjoy it enjoying being part of your life.How hard is that?!
User avatar
horsestoaster
Peat
Peat
 
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue 07 Feb 2006, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby threadbear » Sat 04 Nov 2006, 21:57:14

Whippet, You would kill my pet with your bare hands if it trespassed on your land? Cool. Should that ever happen, I would hog tie you, then set you down and force you to read your last 10 posts and define your vague terms and unwieldy verbiage.

"Anti-sentimentality" types are amusing. They're very much a product of modern higher education and the emphasis on being a detached observer is as absurd in it's own way as cheese in a spray can, feather boas for dogs and and chihuahua tutus.

All of these detached "iconoclasts" are hysterically conscious of other's opinions of them. Utterly self-conscious, dead from the neck down--inhibition carried to extremes and reworked into an ideology and life style.
User avatar
threadbear
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 7577
Joined: Sat 22 Jan 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 00:36:10

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlisteredWhippet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '.')..but the dogs show their worth in return for a partnership. Classic symbiosis. btw, I like cats better.


Cat ownership is beyond reasonable levels and a moratorium on new cat ownership and breeding instituted immediately. I am serious.

I'd prefer this social movement to express itself as widespread leveraging of the social taboo form of social control as opposed to the government or regulatory controls. Naturally, this would require a large part of the population becoming aware that cats are dangerous to wildlife, a poor social and emotional choice as hobby or pet, and the disillusionment that cats are a hygenic species.

A far shot in this culture, like anything else that is fighting agasinst the tide of banal self-absorption to the calamity of all else. I predict, however, that the tides of change will bring new awareness and reach more people, lifting them up and out of their sorry condition.

I predict in the coming years, an increase of research corraborating my theory of unhealthful aspects of pet ownership, the adverse effects on psychology and physiology, and adverse effects on the environment. Naturally this will be countered by pet industry advocates and their soldiers of sentimentality, but the truth will be devastatingly irrefutable when it comes, and hopefully this will open up new possibilities for the next generation of people. This is the hope that gets me through the day in a world of disappearing value, as hubris ranges across the bleeding landscape.

PMS, is your trite pride in your own self-fulfillment something pet ownership taught you, or did you feel empty before you got a pet?
I said I like cats, not that I have one. I don't have a pet. But you are a nutcase, dude. I saw a show once, I think it was 60 Minutes, about a wife talking about her husband who couldn't stop his mind from racing. Constantly pouring a deluge of words and more words. The poor fellow couldn't stop. We need a new word for that when it's tawdry pseudointellectual bullshit postings: how about ideorhea. Witness this immense pompous bloviating to malign people who like having a dog or a cat. Why don't you give us another 30 page dissertation about how evil it is to see pretty faces on the magizine displays at grocery stores?
User avatar
PenultimateManStanding
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11363
Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Neither Here Nor There
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby EndOfSewers » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 01:08:15

I'd like to see some research done on my theory -- that the rationality of this forum would be measurably increased if a device was mounted under whippet's desk, consisting of a robotic arm that would punch him in the nuts every time he hits the reply button.
User avatar
EndOfSewers
Peat
Peat
 
Posts: 100
Joined: Thu 20 Apr 2006, 03:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby Wednesday » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 01:14:06

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EndOfSewers', 'I')'d like to see some research done on my theory -- that the rationality of this forum would be measurably increased if a device was mounted under whippet's desk, consisting of a robotic arm that would punch him in the nuts every time he hits the reply button.


I will donate parts for this robotic arm.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
~Friedrich Nietzsche~
Wednesday
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 763
Joined: Wed 29 Dec 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Central Texas
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 17:42:42

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I') said I like cats, not that I have one. I don't have a pet. But you are a nutcase, dude. I saw a show once, I think it was 60 Minutes, about a wife talking about her husband who couldn't stop his mind from racing. Constantly pouring a deluge of words and more words. The poor fellow couldn't stop. We need a new word for that when it's tawdry pseudointellectual bullshit postings: how about ideorhea. Witness this immense pompous bloviating to malign people who like having a dog or a cat. Why don't you give us another 30 page dissertation about how evil it is to see pretty faces on the magizine displays at grocery stores?


Bloviating? "To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner". Pompous, that I hold opinions against the norm? Boastful, because I argue points thoroughly? Pseudointellectual, because I string together concepts through natural science, culture and society to bring to light startling new perspectives?

My comment on this is: Where have I been pompous? "characterized by pomp, stately splendor, or magnificence"... if not in my words, perhaps my ornate headress and spectacular cultural costume? Perhaps your impression bears more than a passing resemblance to the sentiment of the drunken, uneducated Union soldiers as they stood, rifles in hand, overseeing the orderly evacuation of Floridan Natives along the "Trail of Tears"... having social superiority in numbers, not by principle, but by the tin badges of official liscense and provincial prejudice. I come from somewhere else, I have ideas, and the conviction to argue them. Quite startling, I imagine.

As for pretty faces, there is nothing wrong with it, I'm at a loss as to why you bring it up. Start your own thread, I'd be happy to participate, since I consider thinking and arguing in the dialectic to be enjoyable and interesting. I don't think that holding diverse opinions and having the philosophic rationale to back them up to be hallmarks of mental illness, I consider them the hallmarks of mental fitness. So go lift some weights and come back and try again.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 18:58:20

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'W')hippet, You would kill my pet with your bare hands if it trespassed on your land? Cool. Should that ever happen, I would hog tie you, then set you down and force you to read your last 10 posts and define your vague terms and unwieldy verbiage.

"Anti-sentimentality" types are amusing. They're very much a product of modern higher education and the emphasis on being a detached observer is as absurd in it's own way as cheese in a spray can, feather boas for dogs and and chihuahua tutus.

All of these detached "iconoclasts" are hysterically conscious of other's opinions of them. Utterly self-conscious, dead from the neck down--inhibition carried to extremes and reworked into an ideology and life style.


Threadbear, the only reason I have dominated this thread is because pet owners have so little to say on the subject of pet ownership. There is no interesting, meaningful discussion of the topic. Is it not possible, or just not expected? Lets consider a topic on cars. Get 20 people together in a room, and let the subject be cars. How long would it take before people heavily invested, psychologically or financially, in cars, start to question the motives, consequences, and impacts of their decisions in a heartfelt manner?

Do you think, that if all 20 people were uncritical supporters and enthusiasts of cars, there would be sufficient support for an alternative view, a critical view? If so, who would bring it up? And if no such person were present, would those issues ever be brought up?

So PO.com is like an open forum. You put a sign on the door that says "Pets", but you don't necessarily get people interested in talking about "Pets" that have the same viewpoint, perspective, access to data, valuation, investment, etc. That is why this thread is interesting. If I were not here, there would be nothing interesting about at all.

The thing that really bothers me about pet owners is that, in my experience, they really have very little to say about the subject apart from their own subjective sentimentality. Their stance is, "I believe this, I feel this, and that is all". To me, it is suspicious. Something is being left out, like 90% of the rest of the intellectual process.

Adept thinkers should fairly be prepared to defend and examine their own rationale. Being able to hold two opposing concepts in the mind at once, I heard, was a hallmark of intelligence. I doubt that the brainpower in this thread as demonstrated by the rest of you is incapable of thinking or reasoning impartially, that is- without regard to personal feeling or sentiment- about a subject. You are all capable of seeing the larger picture, so I will not condescend to your expectations.

You also cannot fairly typify me as "anti-sentimental" if I have only mounted an argument against sentimentality as peripheral to objectivity vis a vis this discussion. It is your senitmentality that clouds your judgement and colors your perceptions. To talk about pet ownership in terms of your own personal feelings is fine but you cannot expect me to support your feelings if I happen to disagree. I am anti-sentimental where that tends to erode the clear picture of reality which eludes the invested perspective. In order to get people to think clearly about cars, they have to be disabused of the notion that their personal impression of car ownership is defined by normalcy. This is an example of a subject where peakers are the enthusiastic agitating interlocutors to a resistive social cult. The parallel should be obvious here. I am using a third perspective to talk you out of Pets the same way you might talk someone out of Cars. What is highlighted here is the difficulty which people feel in disabusing themselves of responsibility for their own biases.

What pet owners are invested in is a manufactured, individuated, subjective relationship with an animal infused with their own projections and emotive reality, a mental cocktail which blocks rational thinking, apparently. Perhaps more so than politics, pet ownership synthesizes the cognitive, chemical, and hormonal aspects of experience of the mind into a tower of babel, defended by the best prejudice mechanisms the brain can muster. Convincing people of Peak Oil is easier than convincing someone that their ownership of a pet is even fractionally less profound than they think it is.

Contrast that reality with the expansive sentiment of pet ownership: first-hand experiences where you will be told that the experience "broadened" the mind, and "touched" the heart. No, this kind of pet ownership, I hold, is a turning of the mind away from the openness of experience, a theory which does a stark back-turn to the current status quo, the cultural norm at large.

I saw a bit on the CBS evening news the other day about Dogs in Japan. The implication was the falling birth rate lead to an explosion of dog ownership. The bit suggested that this represented the connection of human desire for parenthood sublimated in pet ownership. This, in the midst of perhaps the world's foremost manufacturer of culturally-driven Neotany.

Yet, for underneath the face of cuteness, Japan remains an engine of world resource capitalization. One of the few countries which still persues the hunting of whales, which has been instrumental in the decimation of wild fish populations. Heavily urbanized, Japan is a case study of the effects of outsourced cost to the environment. It suffers all the afflictions of being several generations now removed from the land, removed from traditional value pathways.

Japan's explosion in the population of dogs is not unique to "first world" industrial economies. If one were to mount a statistical analysis to try and discover what precipitated this increase, I doubt you could point to the fact that people have become more environmentally aware. No, I think a better fit for the data is that humans have become more seperated from nature.

Pet ownership seems to require a certain set of blinders, a set of assumptions about the practice and the owner's reasons for owning the animal. "Dead from the neck up", as it were, seeing as how difficult it is to find a pet owner able to talk about the subject.

As far as feelings goes, for me, I lack the callousness and self-deception of your pet-owning colleagues, so how does that make me less sensitive a detector of philosophic and moral shortcomings? I feel my sentiment toward domestic animals more closely resembles the values of a distant place and time. I do feel out of place in a world of withered, bruised hearts, narrow, limited perspectives, out of depth in the shallows of what passes for discourse and masquerades as wisdom. The people of this culture give up before they even begin to challenge its precepts.

The question I ask myself is, can these people defeat the enemy in their minds and raise a new generation which doesn't have to neurotically substitute pet ownership for human needs like companionship and love? How will this generation learn to be whole without knowing that they will not bleed to death should the pet be taken out of the void in their lives? That the void is illusion, and real human companionship and love possible in this world?

The dark truth is that illogic and misplaced values propigate through social norms. This is why social views must change on the subject. Between now and when that happens, many lambs and cows will be ground up into food for our little co-dep animal friends. Much habitat will be scoured and lost permanently. Many species will disappear, or be bred in little cages. The industrial pet-food industry will churn on. Fecal coliform will bloom in waterways, and toxoplasma gondii will achieve notoreity as a superinfection of the human race. Pet incinerators will run 24hrs a day. More and more humans will be deprived of the attention of other humans who were too busy indulging themselves... just more links in the chain of human unhappiness binding us all.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 20:00:13

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlisteredWhippet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy don't you give us another 30 page dissertation about how evil it is to see pretty faces on the magizine displays at grocery stores?


My comment on this is: Where have I been pompous? "characterized by pomp, stately splendor, or magnificence"... if not in my words, perhaps my ornate headress and spectacular cultural costume?
heh heh, no. :lol: pompous: characterized by an exaggerated show of dignity or importance; bombastic or self-important in speech or manner

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s for pretty faces, there is nothing wrong with it, I'm at a loss as to why you bring it up. Start your own thread, I'd be happy to participate, since I consider thinking and arguing in the dialectic to be enjoyable and interesting. I don't think that holding diverse opinions and having the philosophic rationale to back them up to be hallmarks of mental illness, I consider them the hallmarks of mental fitness. So go lift some weights and come back and try again.
you don't remember that do you? More than a year ago. You went off in a similar vein to this display here on just that topic. I guess I can understand forgetting it. Mind you, I like your stuff sometimes. This one just seems kind of odd. :) All these abstruse and suspicious meanderings (which is how it appears to some of us) for the purpose of maligning pet owners? come on now, you don't see that as odd? Naw, I think you are just having fun - esoteric elite fun. Sort of like some of those fantastic crop circle frauds that some avant-garde artists make in the cornfields of Wales. peace, BW.
User avatar
PenultimateManStanding
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11363
Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Neither Here Nor There
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 20:06:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlisteredWhippet', ' ')Pet incinerators will run 24hrs a day. .
why not just depolymerize them? the US could probably run for a few months on collies alone!

Image

or maybe we could depolymerize the whippets:

Image

and another btw, some of your observances do make sense. I grew up around the show-dog scene, so I know what you are saying. I just think that people ought to be free to enjoy pets if they want to. Why intellectualize it. I did have a cat once. He used to jump up on my car hood every night when I got home from work at 11:30 pm. nice cat. Nothing wrong with a simple pleasant relationship with a domesticated animal. nothing at all. people have benifitted from such relationships. People hurting from life may find solace there. Certainly the animals benefit from owning their owners, otherwise the cats wouldn't be spraying the front doors to mark their territory.
User avatar
PenultimateManStanding
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11363
Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Neither Here Nor There
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby threadbear » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 21:49:43

Whippet, I agree with much of what you say. You are a very perceptive and intelligent guy, but you are erecting a straw man here and then tearing it down. I don't see the people who have posted here as being callous or insensitive to nature. They're posting on a peak oil board, so they're likely more aware of the natural world and it's limits than most.

I saw the news segment on the Japanese fixation on pets too. The upshot was that people are babying their dogs because they're not having children. Is this such a bad thing? Dogs use up far fewer resources than children do, so isn't this a positive response to over population?

I completely agree that the Japanese sentimental approach to pet species, at the same time they allow their fishing industry to torture and kill whales, is crazy and absurd.

I feel the same way about the domestic animal holocaust on factory farms, on this continent, in contrast to the indulged lives of our pets. And yes--these issues are unexamined by most people.

Hopefully though, pets will provide a bridge between the consensus trance that people are presently trapped in and illumination about our treatment of non-pet animals.

I know many people who respect animals in the wild for their own sake, and perhaps more so because they sense a personality, a soul, independant from their own, in their pets. They extend this understanding to the natural world. I wouldn't say it is misplaced anthropomorphism, necessarily.

The problem here isn't primarily pet ownership, but an epidemic of narcissism that has many people overlook the independant soul of the other, be it pet, mate or child. Lord, how about the homeless? Most people overlook the fact that those that crash on sidewallks are independant spirits with souls, who had wishes and aspirations before life beat them to a pulp.

We have along way to go. All of us.
User avatar
threadbear
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 7577
Joined: Sat 22 Jan 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Sun 05 Nov 2006, 21:58:09

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')We have along way to go. All of us.
yeah, isn't that the truth.
User avatar
PenultimateManStanding
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11363
Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Neither Here Nor There
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Mon 06 Nov 2006, 17:34:41

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '[')b]maligning pet owners


I think, if you examine my words, I have not argued from the general to the specific. I have kept my arguments in generalities. My thesis applies to most pet ownership relations, I'm not naming specific relationships. Some people are "good" dog owners, like some people have a legitamite need to drive cars, and they drive them well.

But just because Norman Mailer can write a kick-ass novel, doesn't make everyone else's shit drivel any good. I was thinking about this general theory to specific case from the "victims" point of view today, trying to understand the ubiquitous mind.

It seems there are two pathways for implied guilt to manifest: Pride and prejudice. Jane Austen? No, BlisteredWhippet.

Pride keeps us from seeing ourselves and our choices as anything but a special case. Prejudice keeps us from forming accurate value judgements.

Any discussion, I have found, that attempts to mount an argument that posits Chinese manufactured goods is of inferior quality, elicits a strident defense by a wide contingent of people. Why the partiality, given the low order of probability that the person is a supporter of China politically? Its as if we started a conversation in 1988 about the quality of the Yugo automobile, and had arguments with people defending Yugoslavan fit and finish ("They're just where Italy was 20 years ago!"). Not many people sold or owned Yugos, were Yugoslavian, or were emotionally attached to Slavic culture, so this would not be commonly argued.

Quality of Chinese goods is different, its defenders are numerous. These defenders of quality had something in common: a personal investment in Chinese goods, as a seller or buyer (obviously there are a vast number of these people in the U.S.) The key is that they are arguing not from a quality standpoint, but an ego standpoint, which is close to impossible to reason with because all personal reasons are individuated, and the standards for measuring quality all relative. You could easily mount a coherent argument that Chinese manufacturing quality is and was under par for what in America was expected for specific examples. However, the judgement of mediocrity is anyone's perogative. Therefore, mounting a broadly based argument impossible even if it was true. Such is the case with pet ownership, an umbrella term which encompasses a wildly divergent array of individuated behaviors. The argument against pet ownership would have a much better chance of (which is to say an easier time) had it been presented in, say, the 1800s, when practically no one owned a pet. The only difference between now and then is that more people have been exposed to the idea of pet ownership, not that pet ownership is fundamentally different.

The motivations of the people that defend disparate positions are what interest me because arguments can always be undermined in their premises. Pride and Prejudice are stand-ins for premise becuase they are extant in the arguer. In other words, they are non-arguments that form an emotionally-charged, semi-logical basis for thought and argumentation.

Undermining a premise and attempting to get between someone's uniquely formed basic prejudice and conclusion is qualitatively different. You cannot talk someone out of their favorite flavor of ice cream, and if you try they are likely to resent you for it.

These are special premises, core beliefs, that form a part of the identity of a person- convictions, not conclusions. What is shocking, to me, is what passes for admissible in personal prejudice these days: just about everything under the sun. I think prejudice is the dominant mode of thought.

People don't have likes, and dislikes, they are invested in and married to opinions. Their ego or persona is the candy core within a calcified stratum of personality-distinguishing tastes and rationalizations.

What is the nature of this exoskeleton of core-conceptual belief? Does it enhance the bearer's existence in some beneficial way, to deny modes of experience, like preventing the ingestion of certain posions? Or does it harm the individual by needlessly limiting experience that is otherwise unthreatening in nature? I would argue that it harms the individual in many cases, on the basis that it prevents a flexibility of judgement and relative taste, regardless of specific net negative effects. It is the special passport agency at the airport. "Papers, please." ID badge. Security. The doors of perception are bolted and peepholes installed. What is the secret password?

The closed mind is like a closed state. All power is centralized, and thoughts are policed. This is the mental paradigm for the well-adjusted citizen. Logic and reason stripped down to fit a survival program: Protect the ego at all costs. Rising entropy and external complexity stimulate ego defense mechanisms, leading to less flexibility, which paradoxically leads to more strident, prudent thought processes in which the life experience is formed to suit, rather than existing in situ.

In order to protect the inner sanctum of the mind, the mind shapes its response tending toward greater and greater levels of efficiency in process. There is a cresting of mental energy as thought processes crystallize and metastasize into the shape of our inner lives, bounded by propriety, prejudice, assumption, investment, valuation, all leveraged on the rock of core ego. Efficiency principle withers the playful, fanciful, meandering, daydreaming, conceptualizing engines as all resources are calibrated toward the goal. This is an aging brian, as far as I can tell.

People don't have to think consistently, in terms of logical or analytical thought. This is the main problem people have in encountering ideas and incorporating new ideas. The truth-value of anything new is irrelevant to past conclusions taken as true even if the premises were false or assumed. And, after these conclusions are taken "to heart", no premises are sufficient to overturn the unquestionable veracity of the original assumption. Worse, the original assumption becomes absorbed by the body, from thought energy into an internalized experience that is literally goo: clumps of tissue, within an electrical matrix. Could we expect that anyone be self-knowledgable enough to rewire the family car, let alone their own brain? How about without tools or manual? Such an endeavor would resemble the rehabilitation of drug addiction with its attendant break-downs and psychological turpor. "Break downs" and psychological torment come from the undermined mental apparatus. The reptilian brain stem provides the command-override switch to protect the self from harm aiding the dynamic. Only under the infuence of powerful drugs will the mind become unhinged from its prehistoric moorings. Each part of the mind works to unify the whole, but its functionality is dependent on its construction. That construction, for many people, was carried out in a process that does not allow disassembly without total destruction. Zero flexibility. I would guess the perfect mind is a mind created after the style of Japanese hand-tooled wooden furniture, with joint designs that do not require glue or nails. A disassemblable mind.

What it comes down to, for me, is the realization that it is not the world that is broken, it is our minds. People's brains do not work for them. They work for their brains. Pet ownership is an interesting case study because so much of the mental aspect of this phenomena comes out on an individuated level: the projection, the sympathy, the defensiveness, the idealization, the frank emotionality.

And that is why it is my "pet" issue, although I would say it is "their" pet issue. I came to this forum from its natural second cousin, religion.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Mon 06 Nov 2006, 18:55:10

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '
')
and another btw, some of your observances do make sense. I grew up around the show-dog scene, so I know what you are saying. I just think that people ought to be free to enjoy pets if they want to. Why intellectualize it. I did have a cat once. He used to jump up on my car hood every night when I got home from work at 11:30 pm. nice cat. Nothing wrong with a simple pleasant relationship with a domesticated animal. nothing at all. people have benifitted from such relationships. People hurting from life may find solace there. Certainly the animals benefit from owning their owners, otherwise the cats wouldn't be spraying the front doors to mark their territory.


People should:

A) Use hard drugs, preferably hallucinogens;
B) Learn to be happy doing and being absolutely nothing;
C) Hit on absolutely everyone they find attractive.

Following these simple rules will preclude anyone ever needing a pet for solace, because there is always someone to call in your little black book, you're blown out of your mind and newly refascinated with the world around you, and happy just feeling the flotsam and jetsam of the world of sensation that comprises your life. I agree with the perspective that "needs" are frequently just phantoms of the mind or body. Meditation can help stem those needs. Again, I think pets or animals are not the salve or balm for our ills, they are daemonic representatives of our own internal experience reflected back at us, even if the encounter is temporary or random.

We are not going to find real happiness if we are waiting for it to show up. What will happen, with an expectation like this, is that it will appear infused in something else. It will appear because the mind makes it so. What if you didn't have to wait around for happiness to find you? What if it was a mental precondition? Take a couple hits of ecstacy and call me in the morning.

Pain, I'll tell you from personal experience, can be enjoyable. People run too readily from it. Pain is a forge within thich true inner strength can be achieved. Intolerance to pain, mental or physical is a fundamental immaturity of mind. Perhaps we should bump the circumcision ritual up to puberty where it will do more good. (kidding)

That said, the attitude of liberality toward the consumption of powerful pain-killing drugs is also enjoyable and should be persued. No amount of LSD ever ingested ever killed the local population of snakes, for instance or polluted a stream with fecal coliform (unless the user took a crap in the river.... )

Maybe one day, the pharmaceuticals will invent a drug that mimics the endorphin cocktail that pet ownership provides, thus producing a "Cure". This should be the silver bullet that proves it is "all in one's head". But, as we all know, you can get endorphins anywhere.

As far as why intellectualize it, I think is a matter of preference. I prefer to for reasons already stated. I also do not think, as I said, the consequences are non-trivial. Everything we do in life, every choice, has consequences. The emergent awareness or general trend of converging streams of all kinds of knowledge is that choices and beliefs have consequences. Once this is taken to heart, one now has responsibility. The issue of energy use is similar, for one example, where consequences are invisible and responsibility still an emergent concept. Yet real damage has been done. The world is changing. People must change. Assumptions must change. A first-world person's actions were defined by a carelessness grounded in ignorance of effect. More and more information streams erode this edifice and expose our responsibility. A first world typical human consumer's life is a continual series of seemingly banal, harmless actions, yet this is quantitaively and qualitatively shown to have cumulative negative effect.

The contrast between knowledge and responsibility is the primary struggle of our time. The defeat of the former perspective is necessary unless we want a world destroyed by the crush of several billion people fantasizing that their actions don't have meaningful consequences. There is a relative heirarchy of consequence, and pet ownership is not at the top, but it has signifigant effect, and not all is materially measurable. The psychological component of social problems is interesting because that drives actual behavior.

None of us live autonomously, in a sustainable way these days. Stasis seems to be an impossible goal, the hardest question. The mathematical certainty that we cannot continually expand certain genomic biological lines at the expense of all others without running into overshoot calamity is a pressing concern. How do we stop the juggernaut of consumptive biological growth?

I would argue the solution requires more expansive thinking. Pet ownership is an instance of propogation of certain genomic lines, at the expense of other genomic lines, a feature which defines our civilization. The made-to-order, preferential paradigm of nature must be flattened and expanded. Populations that have been mismanaged should be culled- a solution that shouldn't make anyone upset, in that we are trading UP to a greater, wider appreciation. We gain something by giving up the singular absorptiveness of the pet.

If there were only 500,000 people in North America, as there once was, decisions and choices were easy; one did not have to think about consequences, because they were not noticable. This is the level of population we could have been comfortably "set with; advances in science and technology, with plentiful resources, should have propelled human destiny far beyond the idyllic romanticisations of Athens or Rome. We could have lived in Eden. We could have been happy.

Today, simple biological drive threatens us all and the foundation for our existence on the planet. Today, because of the sheer crush of numbers, our banal decisions DO have consequences. And as a member of a generation who came about as a direct result of uncontrolled, irrational procreation, I feel as if I am addressing the core issues of my existenece. I am "overshoot". So there is some basis for my preoccupation with the problem.

I think our fatal flaw is that we have no guiding principle in our civilization. We are not philosophically grounded. The rather limited concepts of capitalism with the transcendent, no-earthly-consequence, all-forgiven religiosity have produced the conditions we now labor in. To try and extrapolate the guiding principle from the current set of conditions results in the conclusion that the only principle is self-interest, growth, and procreation.

There must be opposing ideals, and opposing idealists to turn this tide. At some point the engine of mathematical, biological certainty takes off and overshoot consequences become conditions of existence. We become diminished as arbiters of choice, swept up in the floe. Our position is now one where we have an ever greater responsibility to stop the out-of-control train, with even less mental and physical basis on the individual level for doing so.

Every new car that rolls off a dealer's lot is a 3,000 pound problem for the future. Consumptive choice carries responsibility. These problems are clear, the implication is: either we work out life so that everyone benefits, and no one gets shafted, or we leave the system unworkable and let it collapse. In order to get in front of this, we have to take stands on things that seem shocking and out of character for social norms.

I don't suggest a top-down fascist or socialist solution, although with time I predict those modes will be dominant and judged necessary for mere survival, to my great personal dismay. I recommend a reinvigoration of social taboo. How does that new Hummer feel... with spit and garbage smeared on the windows, when people sneer in disgust at you as you walk by? I favor the emotional tactics of isolation, excommunication, and shame to personify the violation we all feel through the multiplying negative effects in our ecological and social fabric. People must act as if the dying stream is cancer in their own body, and act as antagonistic as Bacteriophages in immuno-athways toward destructive choice-agents in society. If the individual will not persecute the transgressions against us all, what do we really expect in terms of real change?

Conscpicuous consumers should not be just questioned, they should be judged and shunned. The alternative is a future where we remit personal responsibility for these things into the hands of an extrajudicial system, probably characterized by paramilitary organization.

Not too long ago, society and culture functioned without the absurd complexity of modern legal and judicial functions. A simpler more naive time, maybe. I am suggesting a return of the citizen as agent of political and social change by direct action. Those early societies were predicated on the existence of the wild frontier, however, and there is no such refuge anymore. We must confront people face to face, and argue effectively with them. An Earth-centric vision must become emergent. I think it will be very positive for the general human condition. There is a point in time where simple ignorance will not be socially acceptable. People will be held accountable. Dogs and cats, wandering freely across landscapes, will rightly be trapped and destroyed. Unfortunate but necessary brutality, legitimized and routinized. Far from evil, this will be necessary and good. No frigthful existential, moral dilemma here, just wonderfully beneficient thoughts as the act is re-presented as the returning of balance to the web of life, providing safe harbor and refuge for other organisms.

The softer people will balk at it, thinking it somehow evil, fascistic, Nazi-like, yet a sentiment totally recognizable to the farmer whose daily reality with animalia is grounded in messy life and death decisions. The point is that we need to make new standards so we can make these life and death decisions without bellyaching and crying like a bunch of sentimental babies, falling asleep every night dreaming that the future is going to fix itself.

Overshoot can be overcome by upping the death rate higher than the birth rate, a brutal fact of nature that must be dealt with.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Mon 06 Nov 2006, 20:16:56

what did you mean when you said, "your trite pride in your own self-fulfillment"? I've never said such so you are offering a judgement. What is your judgement? Weak egos wouldn't ask such questions, but calcified minds don't grow. I just would like to know what you mean. It might be useful to me.
User avatar
PenultimateManStanding
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11363
Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Neither Here Nor There
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby BlisteredWhippet » Tue 07 Nov 2006, 18:16:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'w')hat did you mean when you said, "your trite pride in your own self-fulfillment"? I've never said such so you are offering a judgement. What is your judgement? Weak egos wouldn't ask such questions, but calcified minds don't grow. I just would like to know what you mean. It might be useful to me.


That is from the original quote by me:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')MS, is your trite pride in your own self-fulfillment something pet ownership taught you, or did you feel empty before you got a pet?


But you do not own a pet, so it is irrelevant. The question is sarcastically pointing out that for many, the 'pride' of pet ownership is simply self-fulfillment, ie. you "own" the animal, this alone is sufficient to make one proud, in other words, the pride one feels is something that comes from the act of simply owning a pet.

I am suggesting that people who tend to seek simple self-fulfillment from 3rd party "things" is similar to the attitude many have toward pet ownership. It is not for the pet's benefit, but the humans, and the benefit is wholly egoistic in nature. People pick and choose what the dynamic is between them and their pet, when it suits them, not for the pet's best interest.

A question is, does pet ownership as such teach people the value of pride through self-fulfillment, or are these people seeking such before they enter into a relationship of that type. Do children, given small animals and taught or told that this will teach them responsibility, etc. learn this type of valuation? That pets are a means to an end, eg. self-fulfillment? And does this lesson translate into adult life, where personal growth is based on a concept of self-fulfillment as sufficient reason for any behavior?

When we give children animals and tell them that this will teach them how to be adults, what are we really teaching them? We are teaching them that animals are here for our own self-fulfillment. That there are a class of animals which are more important than other animals. Frequently you get a phenomenon where the child, predictably, cannot care adequately for the animal and it suffers. What then is the consequence for the child?

If one came at the problem from the perspective that not even adults have the proper frame of mind concerning pet ownership, what else can they teach their children? If a child looks at two parents who cannot value each other sufficiently to stay together, and break bonds of "unconditional love", yet fight over a poodle, what does that teach a child?

The lesson is simple: that the relationship between an animal and a human is better than a relationship between two humans. Nevertheless, an animal cannot deliver the same level or quality of relationship that a human can. By teaching children the false value of simple self-fulfillment, we are teaching them that this is justifiable in terms of their relationships with other people and the world at large.

"Pick it up, as it pleaseth you, put it down also" is not the basis for lasting relationships; it is the basis for selfish exploitation. Conventional concepts of pet ownership tend to reinforce existing conceptualizations of the practice.

What would teaching children the value of animals and biodiversity look like? First, it requires theat they have first-hand contact with "wild" nature. They should not be taught that nature could be "owned". They should be taught communal values of stewardship, not selfish values of ownership. The problem is, contact with nature is increasingly difficult or impossible. Only adult stewards can raise young stewards, so we are at a defecit there. Many adults have little or no concept of stewardship. All this learning should be intensely local. Again, obvious logistic problems for many families.

Secondly, children should be taught that human values are different from animal values. "We" and "they" should be distinct. We should not interrelate human and animal emotion. Anthropomorphism is problematic. As threadbear hypothesized, anthropomorhpizing aids human understanding of nature. I partly disagree. We should not sanitize the connection between humans and nature by over-emphasizing characterizations that are false or traits we "prefer", or species "we prefer". Anthropomorphism is detrimental without the contextualization of orginating reality. If you show children nothing but cartoon bears and no real bears, he will have a cartoon concept of nature. In other words, give a child something real he can draw his own anthropomorphic connections from, when his mind is mature enough to make use of the concept.

All this basically requires cultural deprogramming where applicable. Wherever alienated, grotesque instances of the pathology of human/animal relationships exist, the child should be prepared by instruction to judge the relationship in the best interests of the animal or the environment. Again, problematic given the disfigurement of human value scales by contemporary cultural indoctrination.
User avatar
BlisteredWhippet
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 848
Joined: Tue 08 Feb 2005, 04:00:00
Top

Re: I want a dog.

Unread postby AgentR » Tue 07 Nov 2006, 18:41:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'b')ut the dogs show their worth in return for a partnership. Classic symbiosis. btw, I like cats better.


I can shoot the duck or goose with arrow or shotgun, where the dog can only bark in frustration. The dog can swim the cold water and find the bird in the grass where I could only hang my head in hunger.

The cat, different, and yet... the cat can clear out the mice, snakes, spiders, and scorpions that might hurt my infant, where I could only sit and worry; I can build a comfortable dry place to sleep and protect food where the cat could only sit in the rain and watch the ants eat the extra mouse it caught.

I don't have a dog, just don't have enough time to do one justice, but we have a few somewhat tame neighborhood cats; not surprisingly, we have few mice and copperheads despite being up against a few hundred acres of woods and pasture.

It is clear that the cats and dogs also like us, the dogs from their open affection, and the cats bring presents.
Yes, we are. As we are.
And so shall we remain; Until the end.
User avatar
AgentR
Heavy Crude
Heavy Crude
 
Posts: 1946
Joined: Fri 06 Oct 2006, 03:00:00
Location: East Texas
Top
PreviousNext
Post a reply

Return to Medical Issues Forum

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest



cron