Freedom to me is nothing more than illusion.
But it still doesn’t answer the question of walks. How we mostly pull them to where we want to go, or with food how we feed them want we want them to have. They have surprisingly little choice in things.
How is that slavery? Blackjack does a lot of useful things around our house (or used to, he’s very, very old right now). But he is not forced to do any of those things. I’m legally obliged to walk him on a leash, if I don’t pull him to where I want to go then I become his slave under your definition. And he can eat anything he wants. He can’t manage to use the can opener so he’s stuck with what I give him to eat. Which isn’t all that much different from my wife, and if you called her a slave to her face you’d regret it.
ETA: And come up with some new arguments. You’re recycling old ones, and they’ve all been shown to be specious.
Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s not what I was talking about.
What the hell are you on about? WHO said any of these things? Who made any of the claims that you are supposedly refuting? I don’t even know if I’m the one who’s supposed to answer any of this dribble…
I don’t know how you walk YOUR dogs, but I assure you, I go where the dogs take ME. I’m just there so they don’t get themselves run over.
But don’t they have to stay in the house? What about the autonomy of the animal
Animals don’t have autonomy.
Who are you and why are you playing this game?
You have not technically defeated anything, you dance around the points. Ultimately the power balance in the relationship is skewed to you. You essentially have dominion over their life. When they leave, what they eat, where they sleep, many things to be honest. They live according to your will. It seems very much like slavery. As for work, it depends on what is meant by work, but they are usually around to give some kind of benefit for the owner, psychological or otherwise. In a sense that could be called “work”.
A relationship can be symbiotic and still be slavery. Even the member of the family bit is still countered by the fact that slaves were considered part of the family in some houses.
To be slavery seems to be based around consent and freedom.
Can you prove they don’t?
Also I’m just trying to get all the angles of this argument ironed out.
That’s not how this works. YOU’RE the one making the claim that they do – it’s up to you to offer proof of this. Not for people to prove you’re wrong.
Cats don’t like going for walks.
As for food, animals aren’t good judges of what food is good for them to eat, or how much of it. If allowed, my cats would eat whatever they wanted, and as much as they wanted. Or try to steal food from the others. For example, my Maggie is a very tiny cat, thus she has a very small stomach, AND a rather sensitive one at that. I have to monitor what she eats and how much because she likes to eat really fast and if she eats too much at a time, she’ll throw it back up. She can also only eat certain flavors of cat food, because some of them give her diaarhea. (Cat TMI, sorry 'bout that! Then she has to has to be given medicine for that.)
Unfortunately, she’s a little pig, and she has no concept of what any of the above entail. If left to her own devices, she’d happily devour whatever I or anyone else in the family might be eating. Bread, cheetos, crackers (which she ends up choking on and throws up), ham, you name it. Her favorite food? French fries. Last week she stuck her head in a bag of frozen ones before I could grab them away. She’ll try to pull them out of my hand.
Now, according to your theory, any attempt of mine to stop her from doing this is curtailing her freedom and makes her a slave. Yet, if I don’t, she’ll get sick. What’s the solution? :dubious:
No, they have a doggie door and can piss and shit in the yard whenever they choose. I do have a fence all around the yard so they can’t run their stupid selves into the street whenever they choose however. That is because they know nothing of this “freedom” you speak of. They do not know what will kill them. They do not realize that cars will run them over. They do not know how to avoid/evade predators. They do not know how to hunt for food.
Oh, they can chase squirrels just fine. But they have never ever caught one. And I’m sure they wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did.
When they get their fill of walking, they are absolutely ECSTATIC to get back inside the yard/house and crawl in bed or on the couch.
MY dogs are my friends. And just like with human friends, you have to tell them what is good for them when they constantly prove that they don’t know.
Do you view children as enslaved to their parents?
Yes.
Why are you continuing to choose words which are specifically defined for humans and applying them to animals? These are not minor differences between human and animals in the words you use, you continue to use words where the false equivalency is readily shown. Are you unaware that you are doing that? Do you really not understand what those words mean?
[QUOTE=phantom lamb]
Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s not what I was talking about.
[/QUOTE]
But that was the question asked of you, and that was your response. If you answer ‘yes’ to something, you should know what question you are answering to.
However, what did ‘yes’ mean to YOU, in the context of what you were being asked and in the further context of THIS thread?
Well, seeing as how I was quoting you, that would be…well, you. I can’t help if what you wrote in the context of this thread and what you were answering isn’t what you meant as I’m not in your head. All I can respond to is what you actually write, and since you only wrote a few sentences I have to put it, again, in the context of this thread and the subject we are discussing. Feel free to elucidate whatever point you thought you were making and that you think I missed, instead of flying off the handle in mock outrage. Or not.
Right. So going back to the beginning, slavery, speaking literally and not figuratively, is the holding of persons as chattels.
Dogs, cats, ferrets, budgies, etc.? Not slaves.
My cats do a lot of work, without even asking! I keep telling them, no, it’s okay, I don’t need help making the bed, or cooking dinner, but they just insist on helping. Now I’m starting to think that I should pay them? Do animals get minimum wage?
You need to pay them a living wage, of course. I pay my dogs in snacks and skwatches, with bonuses paid in steak and bacon for cuteness, with cheese thrown in daily to. They seem content, though I suppose they could be hiding their misery and chains of oppression under masks and wagging tails. You will have to work out what your cats expectations are wrt a living wage, however…it’s going to depend on where you live, the standard of living of the other cats in the area, and what sort of bonus plans for small animal access for killing purposes they have, etc etc. It’s all quite complicated…
This has a different definition from the wiki entry and it can apply to anything.
Actually you can’t make a claim without proving it. You said they don’t and I’m asking you to prove it.
Animals in the wild are free to act however they wish. They cannot do that as pets.