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PS Re: Animal Love (Pet owners do NOT read - oops that excludes the entire Zone!)
SDAI-Tech1 — (archived)

The pet owners have now spoken. Left and right can agree - I've, for all intents and purposes, insulted their 'children' and am an evil monster.

Being anti-pet in America, where pets are rampant, is like being anti-smoking in the smoking section of a pub. People here are emotionally attached to their animals and so talking about a dog, horrifyingly, carries the same emotional weight as talking about a human. For pet owners - perhaps more weight. Few, if any, here are pet-free. The more our society decays the more it turns to pets for pseudo unconditional love and affirmation.

I'm sorry. Not about what I said to Bowser - every single word of that is true as far as I am concerned. He's a tortured soul and needs far more help than I have the time or desire to devote to him.

I am sorry, and horribly saddened, that the world at this time is so messed up that they treat animals like humans and treat humans like animals.

Here's your wake up call pet owners:

There is no significant difference between an ant, fly, cockroach, parrot, cow, cat or a dog in terms of sentience - none are self aware and all merely react based upon instinct and learned traits. No animals love their owners - animals are not capable of love. Animals follow survival instinct and will positively associate with those who feed them. They will return to the point of feeding or the feeder. The ants in my house return regularly to my kitchen, particularly if food is left out, but I am not needy enough to confuse this behavior with love.

http://www.bgagraphics.com/insects/ants/ant7.gif
http://www.bgagraphics.com/insects/ants/ant3.gif
http://www.bgagraphics.com/insects/ants/ant8.gif


"My ants love me!"

Naturally, an animal who stays with their feeder must 'love' them. Thousands of animals will instinctively bond with those who feed them. Stop feeding them and you will real quickly see how long their 'love' lasts. They will 'love' someone else who does feed them or go off and return to their feral habits never to come back again.

The lonely woman who never married, has no kids and has 30 cats running around her smelly home is the stereotype of why people buy animals - to fill an emotional vacuum and need for love. But even the person with a single dog or cat is doing the exact same thing. The woman with a 30 cats is no more sad a case than the single pet owner - she is only more obvious and elevated in her level of disconnect with humanity.

And I hate to be even more of a downer - than I already have been - but in the future animal cohabitation with humans, and not just livestock, is not just frowned upon, but illegal. It is classified as a mental illness and there is a time period when practicing psychiatrists in the future will make a small fortune weaning folks off their pseudo-love relationships with the animals they feed.

So go ahead and hate me for saying it. I don't mind the hate at all, because I know the crutches many use to get through life. Tough love is my motto. Go ahead and talk about how awful I am with your pets - and wait around for their response. Get back to me when they turn into Mr. Peabody or when their are not millions of children starving somewhere - whichever comes first.

And don't confuse my harshness with not having empathy, I have empathy, but like a parent with a drug addicted child - one doesn't avoid telling the child the truth just because it hurts his/her feelings. I spend my time posting this not to hurt people - but because I care about them. I care about them as a fellow human - something no pet can ever do for their owner. I could just as easily spare myself the time and let them figure it out on their own eventually. Something most will probably have to do. And I was not pet-deprived. We had a cat for two years when I was a kid. And when it ran away or died, I did not shed any tears. I never lied to myself that it loved our family - it was an animal - it wanted to be fed and hung around us for the same reason - we were food providers.

Folks here demonstrate how much they have emotionally vested in their animals. The passing of an animal becomes as important, if not moreso, than the passing of a human. Logically, they should understand the differences, but because they never "argue" or "disagree" with their animal - they hold their animals in the most positive light, often elevated above humans. Pesky humans have those nasty sentient traits that make them so disagreeable.

A good read is a short story "The Vana" by French Sci-fi author Alain Doremieux. It was prophetic of today's pet owners and the trap they fall into and was written back in 1959. He was probably also an 'inhuman' monster like myself who saw the dangers of a society that uses animals as substitute humans.

;-)

What's ironic is this post will be the most universally loathed one I've ever written in the Zone. Left, Right makes no difference. In America, all are united by their pets.

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