Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Lighten up, Francis.
Besides, I mean it. I’ll take a dog’s simple life over the wretchedness of the human condition any day of the week.
And if that meant anything to a dog, you’d have a point. But only humans are retarded enough to care about intangibles.
Sounds like an Overton window moving stunt.
Following this logic beavers and photosynthetic micro-organisms are also a “part apart.”
Yes, that would work well. :rolleyes:
Maybe that’s why they’re angry.
I’m denying it. Enslaving means to make a slave of. My pets are not involuntary servants. They aren’t servants of any kind at all.
I’ve just got to say, since you’re virtually the only one arguing this position perhaps you should reconsider the baseline view of society.
Who does the shopping? Who prepares the food? Who (literally) cleans the shit up?
ME. It would be more accurate to say I’ve enslaved myself to my cat, for some strange psychological reasons no one fully understands.
I would reply to this but I need to go clean my cat’s litter box.
Silly man, assuming you’d actually HAVE balls to lick.
I deny it.
Thus your premise is stupid and wrong.
That was easy.
How, exactly, is this a rebuttal to my claim, via comparison, that you are using the word “slavery” too broadly?
Me: “If animals are enslaved, then children are also.”
You: “Let your children out of the house.”
Huh? That is neither a “yes” nor “no.”
Trinopus
Alas, I’ve known too many abusive pet owners. Make it a zoo animal, and I might go for it!
This absurd claim reminds me of the hyper-libertarians who say that taxation is “slavery.” (Or, quite often, “theft.”) The problem is that re-defining words for rhetorical impact loses its effect by dilution. It trivializes real slavery. It raises a false equivalence. “Hey, if slaves in the old Confederacy were as well treated as my dogs and cats, then they had nothing to complain about!” This is why the comparison, in this thread, has been called offensive: it demeans real slaves to the status of pets.
Trinopus (my computer and car are also enslaved)
There are, in rhetoric, two competing fallacies: the fallacy of drawing the line (which I readily admit I am engaging in) and the fallacy of not drawing the line, which I believe is being engaged in by anyone who says that human technology is “part of nature.”
Like “slavery,” if you degrade “nature” so far as to include computers, gasoline engines, plutonium warheads, and the like, then you have rendered it meaningless. Someone might say, “I’m leaving the big city and going to the woods for a few days, to see nature.” Would a rational person rebut, “You’re in the midst of nature right now, right in the heart of downtown Houston!” It removes any contextual use from the word.
Trinopus
I will go this far… It is conceivable to me that keeping a whale or dolphin or chimp could be slavery – if it could be demonstrated that the animal has the reasoning power to even conceive of the idea and to object to being kept by humans.
I think these animals need to start crash training programs in human talk. If they say,“Let my people go”, that will be good enough for me.
I just went a round with someone in another thread who claimed that domestic chickens and cattle are products of natural selection, because we humans selecting them are part of nature. And there was more than one – I stopped arguing because there is no point to it when your views diverge that much.
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
I think these animals need to start crash training programs in human talk. If they say,“Let my people go”, that will be good enough for me.
[/QUOTE]
I’d settle for an EEG showing similarities in brainwave patterns between a well-cared for pet and a prisoner held against his will.
Psst. It’s this thread. This is a continuation of that round.
Also that’s not what I was saying re:chickens. I was saying that the fact that they’re domestic in the first place was a product of natural selection & symbiosis. I did acknowledge that in recent times we’ve had a more active role in the process.
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
This absurd claim reminds me of the hyper-libertarians who say that taxation is “slavery.” (Or, quite often, “theft.”) The problem is that re-defining words for rhetorical impact loses its effect by dilution. It trivializes real slavery. It raises a false equivalence. “Hey, if slaves in the old Confederacy were as well treated as my dogs and cats, then they had nothing to complain about!” This is why the comparison, in this thread, has been called offensive: it demeans real slaves to the status of pets.
[/QUOTE]
This. It’s pretty much the Holocaust of rhetorical devices.
(kidding, I agree with you completely. There’s probably the substantific marrow of an ethical debate to be had here, but we won’t get anywhere near it as long as **Naxos **(and PETA) doesn’t drop the rampant dysphemism and appeals to emotion)
You mean they… and I would… AW HELL NAW.
You said several things, including this.
Yes. And we are. Just as we were in the dawn of time when dogs were wolves and then became dogs, or when chickens were whatever they were before they became avis domestica. That sentence wasn’t implied to mean “genetic manipulation is a 100% natural process”, but rather “domestication is not an unnatural concept”.
I do realize I wasn’t being very clear on this, and my words were ambiguously terse - I’m afraid I have a tendency to assume whatever the thought process behind my words is, it’s crystal clear to whoever I’m speaking to ; and whatever I understand everybody must understand because I’m not all that smart.
So I skip steps and become clear as tar. I try to work on that but…