WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

Yeah ... no.
Reminds me of that weird story of a polar bear meeting up once a year with a sleigh dog to play. Or the fact that animals have social behaviour as well, as well as ways to express their emotions and state of being (dogs for example are used to living in packs ..)

But I know you have your own way of going about that, LockeZ, so do your thing.
Just remember: "And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you"

So I rewatched the meaning of life .. and it's as brilliant as it was the last time around. Just that I can now recognize more truth in it, hehe.

like, I moved out after my first year of university from my mom's place. my mom has two cats, a small chaos puff and a nervous long-haired tortoiseshell

I visited her in Chicago recently after years of absence, and the nervous tortoiseshell (who vanishes from sight when someone she doesn't know is even potentially nearby) immediately appeared out of nowhere meowing urgently, practically leapt into my arms, and refused to be put down for most of the evening

but nah animals don't have feelings

author=Kylaila
Mawk, did you just gain Makerscore?

OMG. 3 looks much worse than 0

Also I'm pretty sure cats laugh at pictures of us on the internet

I have zero hard evidence one way or the other that those actions are the result of anything other than animal instincts, which sometimes result in the same actions as an emotion would. But it's pretty clear that MANY animals don't have feelings, because they literally do not have brains. And even the ones with brains are mostly much less complex than the brains of human infants/toddlers, which we've studied to a great extent and discovered exactly at what points they become physically capable of thought patterns like "recognizing that they have a self" and "realizing things don't stop existing when they're not looking directly at them" and "understanding the concept of time." Some animals' brains might be developed enough to really understand love and sadness and joy, but I feel like as long as we don't really know, the only sensible place to draw the arbitrary line in the sand for whose emotions matter is humans vs. non-humans. (Or you can just decide that no one's emotions matter. That works too.)

I understand mawk having super empathy towards cats though, that makes perfect sense to me.

It's possible I just hate everyone and everything and place no value on friendship and am an extremely bitter and lonely person and make up different situational excuses to justify it every time

Fair enough, although there is plenty of suggestions vs little against it. (we in our capability of "human emotions", are hugely instinct- and autopilot driven additionally to our experiences of emotions)
If it has the same effect as "human" emotions would have, why assume they do not exist and should be ignored in our acting towards them? Seems odd to me.

And bringing in animals without brains is a valid point by itself, but in the context of pets? We are not exactly prone to keeping them as pets? I never thought of getting myself flies to enjoy watching.
I just wonder where exactly that comes in for pets, but I assume you just mean to broaden the context of animals and treating life.
Nonetheless. It is your place to draw the line, indeed. And if that is how you make sense of it for yourself, then I respect that.

I would find it sad to outright ignore any such behaviour I can actively observe, personally. So I won't ~

Edit: You guys, you are having quite the masochistic/sadistic sense of enjoyment.
Makes me really sad to watch.



And I feel LockeZ is being honest, too.

mawk
this is a tangent but the seal hunt is

Tangents are fine.

• a vital part of the livelihood of a large group of native people

• something that its practitioners actively altered to be more humane when faced with criticism, something that corporations with far less life-or-death stake are far more reluctant to do

And I have no problem with any of this. It doesn't change the fact that the majority of seal hunters are of European descent and have nothing to do with native hunting, or that the vast majority of seal pelts and meat are commercially sold.

You can make the same arguments about the whale hunts in the Faroe Islands. It doesn't change the fact that what was once a hunt is now a mass slaughter (and you can't say it's vital because the excessive waste of materials acquired from the carcasses is well documented. The Faroe Islands only use about 5 percent of what they take from a hunt. Any rational business would have abandoned that model long before it became that irrelevant).

• generally only a concern for people because seals are cute and it's easier to focus on animal cruelty as some far-off crime perpetrated by wicked savages

Because a large percentage of the people only know how cute they are, they're not allowed to have an opinion? Public opinion is the only weapon peaceful activists have.

Funnily enough, science recently found evidence to suggest that plants release the same chemicals that indicate emotions as humans do. If a plant can 'feel', a cat damn well can, or a bird. Hell, we had a cat once who was depressed and had to take medication. She was a complete bitch but I loved her to bits. The only other cat she would bother with was an old Tom we had who she'd grown up with as a kitten. All others, she'd beat up (and him on occassion when he mixed with the other cats - he was very friendly).

Animals have enough understanding to create social circles of like and dislike, they can have 'favourite' toys indicating the ability to form opinions (seriously, we had a dog who loved this one ratty old teddy to bits. We had to get rid of it and got him a new one just like it - same make and all - even put his scent all over the damn thing. He just wouldn't take to it at all.) and have preferences. I'd say that indicates some ability to show emotion on some level.



Interesting stuff we're learning through science.

Edit: And yeah, when it comes to indigenous folks it's understandable, though you do have to think that with the way the world is now, there's not as much of a need to hunt the endangered species into extinction just because traditionally it's been 'a thing'. Food and water can be bought and traded a lot easier than it used to be so hanging on to the hunting of animals to survive, when there are other ways to do so with the increased accessibility to other ways, is, imo, quite silly.

But then, I'm not one for traditions that should be done away with since they no longer have a reason to exist. I mean, I can understand when it's something you need to survive, but seals were hunted because food was scarce (no longer as much of an issue) and for trade product (who buys seal furs nowdays?) so there's not a need for it to keep happening on such a scale as it does.

Yeah, that one sent me a tizzy for a moment when I first read it. I was like... but I feel weird enough as it is eating meat, I don't want to feel sad about eating a salad ffs! But when you really think about it, animals don't care about whether their prey is able to feel or not - to survive you have to imbibe life of some sort, and for humans it comes from the once-living. I think I'm learning to be okay with that.

It does make me wonder if the reason humans die is because we eat the dead. Just an odd thought I've had swimming in my mind for years. I mean, perhaps the price of eating dead things is to die... I'm getting all philosophical now.

Edit: RE Mawk edit based on my edit (editception~) - See, I'm okay with that because it's something that can't be helped... at the moment. Hopefully when Harper gets the boot things will be better on that front, but eating to survive is necessary - and if that means you have to hunt to do so, I can understand that. I'm talking unnecessary hunting just for the sake of Tradition and such stupidity, when there are other ways to get food.