the noble beast, etc
Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?
- Arthur Miller
I'm starting to suspect some (though certainly not all) of the divide between animal lovers and not is about orientation towards choice, responsibility, and innocence. Something about willingness to love in the face of fully competent bad choices. Not Love, though, exactly - patience? finding worthy?
Personally, I don't totally get the pet love thing. I know it works for some people, but whatever it is, I don't have it. And I suspect part of that is that I don't find merit in a lack of culpability.* Innocence is a concept that holds very little attraction for me, in almost any dimension.
The fact that a cat has no capacity to not vomit on your carpet and your drunk human friend really should have known better doesn't make the cat better than the sometimes-drunk human to me. It's still vomit I choose to have in my life. For me the friend's capacity for rational choice (impaired though it obviously is sometimes) still makes that relationship more the thing I want to invest my time and energy in. For other people it seems like the cat gets a pass and the person doesn't, because holy crap, that person chose to puke on your rug, and fuck that noise. And fair enough.
I don't know. Is that part of what's going on there, pet people?
*Not judging that, even though I'm framing it around my orientation, but it seems like a thing that people go one way or another on. It's one of the things that's interesting with how people relate to children, and that has very much changed for me over time. I used to find them uninteresting because they're not fully competent or accountable. Now I find them fascinating because they're developing both competence and accountability.
- Arthur Miller
I'm starting to suspect some (though certainly not all) of the divide between animal lovers and not is about orientation towards choice, responsibility, and innocence. Something about willingness to love in the face of fully competent bad choices. Not Love, though, exactly - patience? finding worthy?
Personally, I don't totally get the pet love thing. I know it works for some people, but whatever it is, I don't have it. And I suspect part of that is that I don't find merit in a lack of culpability.* Innocence is a concept that holds very little attraction for me, in almost any dimension.
The fact that a cat has no capacity to not vomit on your carpet and your drunk human friend really should have known better doesn't make the cat better than the sometimes-drunk human to me. It's still vomit I choose to have in my life. For me the friend's capacity for rational choice (impaired though it obviously is sometimes) still makes that relationship more the thing I want to invest my time and energy in. For other people it seems like the cat gets a pass and the person doesn't, because holy crap, that person chose to puke on your rug, and fuck that noise. And fair enough.
I don't know. Is that part of what's going on there, pet people?
*Not judging that, even though I'm framing it around my orientation, but it seems like a thing that people go one way or another on. It's one of the things that's interesting with how people relate to children, and that has very much changed for me over time. I used to find them uninteresting because they're not fully competent or accountable. Now I find them fascinating because they're developing both competence and accountability.