Pets as children

[GORDON]

Yes, an attachment to your genetics is exactly what it means to be a parent.

Fuck all you adopted kids, btw.

[Vince]

You're just biased because of your hormones.

I don't have kids, but otherwise it's exactly like that.

[Malcolm]

Yes, an attachment to your genetics is exactly what it means to be a parent.

Fuck all you adopted kids, btw.

The Egyptians thought that, too. As I recall, their family trees tended to lean heavily in one direction.

[GORDON]

You're just biased because of your hormones.

I don't have kids, but otherwise it's exactly like that.

No you see when you raise kids your body produces sympathetic hormones and that makes you irrational. That's why childless people have better parenting perspective than parents, you see, and their parenting advice should be revered.

[Leisher]

With all due respect, you're kind of proving my point. I point out that almost everyone raised, fed and cared for animals that almost always eventually became dinner 150 years ago and you seemingly compare it to cannibalism joyfully proclaim that we live in a civilized time. Which we do, but that doesn't change the fact that someone somewhere is still caring for and feeding the animals that end up on our dinner plates. We just are now urbanized and insulated from the work of actually doing that.

I'm not sure how cruelty to animals entered the conversation about farmers raising their own food.

You completely lost me with the farming stuff. I never mentioned farming...?

I do agree with Malcolm's retort though:

Most people don't buy their pets to eat. There's a big-ass difference between taking care of something you plan to slaughter later on and something you plan to take care of until the end of its natural life because you want to.

HUGE difference.

But I've never heard of a couple getting a divorce after their dog died, or somebody committing suicide after their cat became street pizza.

It has happened. I have no evidence, but this has taken place. No way we've gone through millions or billions of people and these exact situations haven't played out.

I get people feeling like pets are family. You should watch the documentary called Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. An old trapper there was talking about his dogs that helped him with his tracking of fur animals. He explained that he rarely let them into his house, only when the temperatures dropped to about 20 below zero and their lives were endangered. And even then they had to stay by the door. He explained that if they spent too much time in the house they became worthless as working dogs. Then he told the story about how two of his best dogs were killed by a bear that had wandered into their village. This old grizzled guy was tearing up telling the story. Two things became obvious. He really loved his dogs. And they were dogs.

This is just a difference in culture. In some cultures women are possessions and property. Are we then wrong for allowing them to have opinions just because other people don't?

Because you've been brainwashed by hormones. Your judgement is clouded beyond recovery by biological impulses which completely bypass and undermine the conscious mind. If someone wearing a brain slug tells you that wearing a brain slug is the most important thing one can do, you wouldn't take their word for it would you?

While it is ridiculous that someone without kids is scolding a parent in a thread about children, he's not wrong about our biology changing when we have kids. So while he has a point even though he didn't express an opinion on the actual topic, you could easily see his comments here as rude.

What made me curious is how he claimed your opinion to be biased because you have a kid and it made me wonder if I'm actually a better candidate than you to express an opinion here. (Follow my logic, I'm being scientific, not rude. Promise.) I have multiple kids (Catt too), not just one. So does that make me more able to be impartial on this opinion because I "don't have all my eggs in one basket" and have been a childless adult? I just totally lost my train of thought because my wife texted me. Women. Anyway, where I was going with this was about splitting emotions between kids...does that give me more experience or ability to weigh in than you who only has the one kid?

Personally, I think anyone can have a valid opinion about parenting. However, discussing the emotions of being a parent probably should only be done by parents. I mean, I don't want a virgin telling me how awesome sex is...

[GORDON]

I have no problem admitting you have a better perspective about raising multiple children than I do, and also you have more experience raising daughters than I do. I would have to be a psycho to not acknowledge that. I would have to be ... a real piece of work... to suggest that I knew more about either of those things than you did.

[Leisher]

Well, I was linking it back to the pets somehow, but like I said, I forgot where I was going with it. Got distracted and have no idea where I was in the thought.

But yeah, I wouldn't be an expert at raising a solo boy either despite that being my childhood. Dammit, I had a nice way to link this back to the original topic and it won't come back to me.

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

[GORDON]

If there are biological changes to your brain when you have a kid, it doesn't mean you don't remember your pre-parent life, habits, or opinions.

I remember pulling the "kids as pets" thing when I thought we couldn't have kids.

When I had a kid I realized how trite that was, because it isn't the same. At all.

[TPRJones]

Thing is, when I finally had a kid, I realized how silly it was to say "I have kids with fur." It isn't even in the same sport, much less the same ballpark.

I hope you won't mind if I don't take you as an impartial judge of the objective truth value of this.

Is an opinion. You expressed an opinion. A really ridiculously wrong one.

So all because I don't think your opinion can be trusted, that automatically means I must be in opposition? What sort of crazy talk is that?

[GORDON]

Sorry my mind is still altered by those two beers last week from my drug production line.