The case against pets

https://aeon.co/essays/why-keeping-a-pet-is-fundamentally-unethical





Domesticated animals are completely dependent on humans, who control every aspect of their lives. Unlike human children, who will one day become autonomous, non-humans never will. That is the entire point of domestication – we want domesticated animals to depend on us. They remain perpetually in a netherworld of vulnerability, dependent on us for everything that is of relevance to them. We have bred them to be compliant and servile, and to have characteristics that are pleasing to us, even though many of those characteristics are harmful to the animals involved. We might make them happy in one sense, but the relationship can never be ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. They do not belong in our world, irrespective of how well we treat them. This is more or less true of all domesticated non-humans. They are perpetually dependent on us. We control their lives forever. They truly are ‘animal slaves’. Some of us might be benevolent masters, but we really can’t be anything more than that.


{Yes. We need an extinction level event. We have gone far beyond insanity.}

They are our symbiote. If it were not for dogs we would never have gotten out of caves and possibly died out as a species. If it were not for cats we would have starved to death eons ago. We owe our existence to household "pets" in reality, partners.

Forbidding the ownership of dogs as pets, will result in the extinction of dogs.

Evolutionarily, they are unable to care for themselves. They're a subset of wolves - lacking key survival skills, such as hunting and appetite control and bonding to a mate for life.

If the Masters of the Universe want to make cows, bovines, extinct...ban dairy farming. The dairy cow cannot survive without human care.

For many species, subjugation to Man is survival. For many more, it leads to a much-better life, both for individuals and as a population.