by BlisteredWhippet » Sun 01 Apr 2007, 15:05:47
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Quote:
In this picture, I do see the desperate usefulness of the pet animal as a desperate last connection to something vital, Earthy, natural. Something to settle for. Its something to hold onto on the journey across the river Styx. But it doesn't create a hard, strong human. It creates a dependent, desperate addict. There is no honor in it during these "Last Days" of environmental and biological collapse.
Good grief! River Styx... are you for real? I'd definitely use that bit next time you wanna try out your argument for killing things. Anyhow, thanks for the larfs, my complex human brain (ha) is getting a bit bored now Wink
I feel I should explain what the river styx metaphor is. I don't think it is inappropriate to illustrate life by analogy to the journey across the river. Life abounds with certainties of unpleasantness, pain, confusion, alienation, loneliness, isolation, trauma, challenge, trial, and so forth. At the end is death and in between is a journey. How do people cope? Drugs, sex, sports, material things, pets... Psychologists know that anyone is happier and more likely to overcome personal psychological problems if they "throw themselves" into something, like AA for instance. People give themselves over to things for comfort and shelter from existential uncertainties. There is nothing necessarily
wrong with this, but seems true to me that some things are better than others. Unfortunately, like drowning people clinging to liferafts, the particular liferaft one clings to becomes harder and harder to let go of or consider objectively the longer one is used to it.
I think an unhealthy attachment to cars or other material, "Dead" things function the same way as animals. Animals though, forge that "pack" bondage with their owners that sets the relationship apart from the world of inanimate objects and things. When I think about the impact of being obsessed with cars, and the environmental impact of that practice, it is clearly destructive in many ways. But it does not (for most) supplant the biological, emotional need for human contact.
When the Dr. spoke about being troubled by the example of people preferring pets to people, I think that is a fundamental denigration of the human experience. No matter how you slice it, it is a compromise. It could be debated whether or not pets are better than people, but only people that cling to the idea that this kind of interspecies bondage and have some sort of psycho-emotional investment would take it seriously. Am I biased to hold the primacy of human relationships over pets? I think maybe so, but then again, bias and value judgments are also something I consider useful and admit to making them. I believe it makes me more aware of the human condition, by being more human.
I think, for me, it breaks down in the details between the two. In the human-human relationship, there is a more even match of emotional and intellectual capacity. There is also no ownership paradigm. It just makes sense that such a relationship couldn't be comparable and those that do think it is strike me as very sad people.
What about the human-human bond between parent and child? What if the human incorrectly interprets the relationship between child to be like that of a pet? What kind of expectations would be similar? Am I being ridiculous? What of the frequent emotional distress of human parents whose children achieve emotional and mental parity? A child grows up, mentally and emotionally. A person who believes in an equivalency of pet and human relationships, that is, someone who seriously
compares the two, might possibly interject the human relationship with the pet/owner paradigm. I think that many people fairly believe that they "own" their children. They "train" them. Sometimes I see a plaintive look on the face of a kid riding in the back seat of their parent's car, much like that of a dog's expression. I wonder if there might not be a fairly large proportion of the population that learned or came to believe that raising children was a similar exercise to raising a pet. After all, the justifications for pet ownership frequently propose that the practice teaches similar-sounding values and techniques to what is considered. People "raise" puppies. It is clear they are surrogate children for many people. They talk to them in little boo-boo-baby voices. But like Mercurygirl said, what is the substance of the frequently heard comment by the pet-owner, that pet ownership is somehow preparatory for raising a human being, when we know that the comparison is only superficial?
I also said there probably are exceptions. Some human-animal or even pet relationships are "extraordinary". Seeing-eye dogs, horse whisperers, and so forth. But the exceptions make the rule. Most pet ownership relationships are not extraordinary. I think people are seeking the extraordinary when they decide to get a dog, but the vast majority do not, ever, establish some sort of extraordinary connection. The quality of psycho-emotional bondage with a pet is considered extraordinary by people who are simply anthropomorphizing in completely conventional ways. Recent studies on narcissistic tendencies, where 8 out of 10 people agreed with such statements as, "I am a very important person," resonate with my observations of people. They tend to believe they are special. How much easier would it be to believe that one's relationship with a pet is special, or extraordinary? I maintain that most pet owners do not and cannot achieve extraordinary pet relationships, in the same way that there are very few extraordinary painters. The belief that we can all attain the extraordinary creates enormous amounts of bad art, created by people with no talent whatsoever. The amateur artist believes in the extraordinary qualities of his creation and is egged on by a society and culture which uncritically reinforces a social doctrine of making people feel special and protecting their feelings at the expense of objectivity or reality.
I am saying that most people look fat in those pants. Extraordinarily fat in those pants, to be precise, in a cultural milieu that assures people that they most certainly look wonderfully not fat, anything but fat, in those pants.
Sometimes it staggers me how far people will go in funneling perception in a way that avoids what they don't want to hear. Famous experiments prove that people seem to selectively ignore voices that don't jibe with their prejudice. Findings like this one about people preferring pets to people, to me, is extraordinary. If pet ownership was a simple thing, a trifling matter, an indulgence by a select elite (which it once was), I wouldn't think much of it. But the extent to which it has permeated and usurped the normative, disrupted value scales, and seemingly impaired judgment, it has become a significant indicator, to me, of the
extraordinarily fucked-up state of humanity today.
My focus on moral philosophy boils down to the fact that I think that most people do not have strong moral precepts or principles. I think the connection between a deteriorating natural environment is implicitly linked to deteriorated moral and ethical principles believed by people. These principles foreshadow the value judgments people inevitably make which manifest in behavior and action, or expressions of human power. If the principles are debased by a social philosophy that holds self-interest as the greatest virtue of all, that really has evidential consequences. Likewise, if the virtue informing the principles is something like, "Nature does not exist for our self-gratification", then the congruent behavior and actions will reflect that. Of course, one needs to also hold a principle which values such principles. But none of this is really taught to children. The mass of people are, as Carl Sagan realized, superstitious, illogical, unprincipled people, who "believe in absurdities". Therefore absurdities abound. The true character of the principles and values are found in the extant traits of a population or actions of an individual. Owning pets, like owning a Hummer, or dumping used motor oil in the ground, are all moral choices. A little backtracking can find the true principles behind these choices.
A person might say they believe in "protecting the environment", but they release 20,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide a year in a work commute. Therefore, you have to conclude they hold a higher principle. What is it? It is the principle of their own exceptionalism, maybe.
I think the more information gets released and disseminated, the more people will be internally conflicted. If someone believes in "protecting the environment" and suddenly
knows what the
actual impact is, then they are in the grip of a moral dilemma. The mechanisms of ego defense kick in and the selective interpretations, extraordinary excuses, and other perceptual tricks kick in. I think more and more people are forced by facts and reality into their inner worlds, their malaise. It is a crisis of valuation. If people cannot
shift their thinking, if people do not know how to alter and play with the conceptual tools that form the basis of their reality-making apparatus, if they are not trained in logic, or understand the ramifications and primacy of valuation judgments, their minds and personalities harden. Unable to bend or flex or change with new information, they fissure and crack under the pressure.
People end up becoming very fearful and reactionary toward new concepts and information because their personalities are built upon a foundation that they are too egoistically invested in. If you add in all the environmental strains of the culture, the daily stresses, toxins from the environment they feel but cannot understand, the failure in practice of their everyday lives and practices, you end up with a very fucked-up mind. I think people start "flying on autopilot" after a while. What was once volition and self-determination becomes the continual expressions of defense mechanisms masquerading as the competent adult human, mature and in control of their destiny. No. The fact is that the fundamentals have been horribly distorted and the culture's stratified population is running on reformed vapors.
Who doesn't think this in an age where the realization of the widespread, subtle poisoning of the environment, with the record rates of emotional and mental disturbance? Only people for whom reality is an exercise of selective interpretation.
Garbage in, garbage out, saith the computer programmer. The principles must be restored. People must value virtues. They must be
able to ask the important questions. They have to be logically capable of understanding in an abstract-to-concrete way. And they have to be reconnected to an authentic experience of humanity and nature.
We have to smash the idea that pet and human relationships have any equivalence. We have to smash the idea that people whose value systems are horribly distorted and contradictory "might be right" in an equivocating, relative way. In short, we have to start slaughtering sacred cows while disarming ego-defense mechanisms. Otherwise, I see the ticking time bomb goes off and its 2050 and there is no food, no nature, and way too many people, and its back to the stone ages with roving gangs of pet-owning religious fanatics.
I'm sitting here in a coffeeshop observing the doting mothers of disaffected surly boys outfitted in brandname clothing feeding on a sugary treat loaded with hydrogenated oils, next to a fireplace fired with natural gas in front of a view of a freeway overpass and a car dealership with the sun glinting off a thousand rain-washed cars all zipping around, doing absolutely nothing of value. The kid's parents sit in front of him, kind of looking like kids themselves. The kid drinks from his huge paper travelcup. He looks the very picture of unrestrained indulgence. I wonder if he has a puppy or guppy at home, vegetating until his return home.
Now I'm observing the behavior of the un-fucked up, little 1-2 year old girl. She makes eye contact, curious, expressive. It occurs to me that no one has yet inflicted on her the poisoned principles of pet ownership or the malaise of moral insolvency. She practically fearless in relation to her hunched, suspiciously inward mother who judiciously sips her huge drink and looks at her watch. There is no interaction. Her other child, a boy, is equally curious about me with wide eyes and tentative smiles. I wonder why this is, I wonder if it is because so many children are raised without their fathers. The little girl suddenly says, "Dada" and points at me.
I watch a woman interact with a 5 year old boy. Her body language alternates from supplicative to flirtatious. She asks him a question, strokes his hair. He looks bored. He doesn't want to answer or doesn't know how. He is being asked to choose something. I have noticed that many parents seem to believe that it is important to ask their kids lots and lots of questions. I have also noticed that kids don't like it, it confuses them. I surmise this is because it is ridiculous- the adults are the people who should know the answers, and the kids the ones asking the questions. But it occurs to me that this dynamic exists because the adults do not know the answers. They believe in an equivocating reality. For them the principles and values they believe is necessary to succeed are the ability to prefer things. That they are very, very important people.
The mother dispenses a continual barrage of manipulation on the child. Yes, I will approve of you. No, I might not, unless you answer this challenge correctly. Very good, I hold you in esteem. Okay, thats long enough, I will ask another question to challenge you. No, that is not the right answer. No, not that one either. Let me tell you now. Okay, I still like you but will withhold affection momentarily. Now we will take a break. We will sit here talking about nothing in silence because I need a break and want to drink my coffee.
I understand where people would prefer a pet, but it is a kind of damage. It is a compromise. I think it is vital to restore human relationships to vitality and primacy. It takes a lot of personal time, time we don't have to waste on pets. The return on investment in ourselves and other people is far, far greater than the ROI of time invested in a pet.
