Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I know this may not be the case for a great many human beings, but I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me "I get along more with animals than I do other people".
One of my siblings likes to come over to see my cat more than they like to see me, for example (granted I don't even like me, so I sort of understand).
Is it conflict? Is it fear? What is it? Cats and dogs don't stab you in the back, or gossip about you? I know it seems like a silly topic, but to me it's kind of fascinating that fellow humans dislike their own humankind more than they do animals.
I don’t like cats and dogs more than my fellow humans. Never have, and never will.
I do think animals can be cute, magnificent, sweet, and all those other things. I like playing with them, enjoy watching the silly videos, etc. But I’d never feel accountability to an animal like I would for a fellow human.
I think the fact that some people do, is one of the reasons our society is so screwed up today.
Well I can kind of relate to her. Not that they are like children, although I often tell people having 6 dogs is like working in a day care, but that they can be expensive.
I am having to put diapers on my geriatric Staffordshire. I also had a pitt for 10 years with ectopic urethra requiring diapers, blankies and regular trips to the vet. I go through 50lbs of dog food a week, flea/tick meds, supplements, other minor issues.
My boss, bless his heart, sends his two to doggie day care during the day. Apparently it is a growing business.
Well, when I said "she was loopy anyways"...like there was a lot of other stuff going on there that I hope you (anyone) doesn't identify with, but I'm not gonna get into all that.
My sons are now 18 and 20. No more daycare. No more diapers. And I keep meticulous records on money spent on direct expenses attributed to them. So like, not the rent because I'd be paying that anyways, but their share of groceries, and their medical expenses, and their actual needs that hopefully they soon take over and I no longer have to pay. That figure has been going down in recent years, but this last year it still averaged just over $900 a month that I paid out-of-pocket supporting them.
Back when they needed daycare, that was often more than the rent. At one point I found a lady who gave us a really good bargain of $300/week to watch them during the summer when they were out of school. That was in 2009/2010 and we were breaking state law to do it, because in that state, a person watching kids was supposed to be licensed and certified, it was illegal to even have a relative watch your kids for a couple hours after school, if it was consistent. There was a time that I was blowing through nearly $400/week for groceries for our family.
Pets can certainly be costly, and I do pay a premium to feed my cat healthy all wet food, but it isn't even in the ballpark...I can't even imagine how many pets I'd have to have, to compete with what my kids have cost me over the years. More than I'd want in my house, I'm quite sure.
But like, the whole "animals vs people" thing...I don't see how it's really that simple for most animal lovers really. Like if I started dating someone and he said, "Oh but I hate cats, so you have to get rid of your cat or we can't be together" I would be like, "OK bye."
But if I had ever been told by a doctor that a severe allergy to the cat was compromising the health of one of my CHILDREN, and no solution is going to be as effective as just re-homing the cat...well, I guess I have to find a new home for my cat, much as I'd be really sad about it.
I don’t like cats and dogs more than my fellow humans. Never have, and never will.
I do think animals can be cute, magnificent, sweet, and all those other things. I like playing with them, enjoy watching the silly videos, etc. But I’d never feel accountability to an animal like I would for a fellow human.
I think the fact that some people do, is one of the reasons our society is so screwed up today.
The people who say they like animals more than people....the issue is not that they love animals too much, it's that they have not had good experiences with people and thus feel no affection towards them...but it has not one thing to do with having or liking animals. If they did not like animals at all, it wouldn't cause them to suddenly feel accountable for their fellow humans. You are conflating the two but they really have nothing to do with each other.
And the affection they show me is sublimely pleasurable, but let’s not be stupid, it’s not LOVE. Animals are not capable of a complex emotion like love. That is only available to rational animals, aka humans. I realize many people want to call it love, because they want to be loved, but it ain’t love and will never be love.
So what is love?
At its basis, neurotransmitters and neuropeptides.
Recent studies indicate oxytocin and dopmine levels rise in dogs when interacting with their humans.
What evidence do you have supporting your theory that animals can not love.
So what is love?
At its basis, neurotransmitters and neuropeptides.
Recent studies indicate oxytocin and dopmine levels rise in dogs when interacting with their humans.
What evidence do you have supporting your theory that animals can not love.
Human love is a fundamental positive response to shared conscious and internalized subconscious values. It is an analytical and complex intellectual process. Animals are not capable of the analysis, thinking, or trade that love entails.
Love is not neurotransmitters. That is reductionism and post hoc fallacy. You can look that up.
Animals are certainly capable of rudimentary pleasure and pain reactions, and are capable of being made into dependent affectionate beings by human dominance and control. However, that is not love. And calling it love in anthropomorphic. We enjoy calling it that because of our own egos. And certainly misanthropes DEPEND on characterizing animal affection as love, because they are often unlovable by human beings due to mental, psychological, and personality issues. So what’s left? Everyone wants to feel loved, and if it can’t be legitimate, then animals will do. In fact, for some people this will even extend from pets to animals in the wild, or even plants.
So it’s easier to accept one’s own flaws, not address them, and bask in the dependent affection of a dumb animal? Calling it “unconditional love”. Doesn’t sound like a good or healthy approach to human life. In fact, it sounds like a form of escapism.
I think a better approach is to treat pets as an embellishment rather than a refuge.
I answered the question not what I think is right or wrong or what one should do. I answered the why/because questions.
Human love is a fundamental positive response to shared conscious and internalized subconscious values. It is an analytical and complex intellectual process. Animals are not capable of the analysis, thinking, or trade that love entails.
Love is not neurotransmitters. That is reductionism and post hoc fallacy. You can look that up.
Animals are certainly capable of rudimentary pleasure and pain reactions, and are capable of being made into dependent affectionate beings by human dominance and control. However, that is not love. And calling it love in anthropomorphic. We enjoy calling it that because of our own egos. And certainly misanthropes DEPEND on characterizing animal affection as love, because they are often unlovable by human beings due to mental, psychological, and personality issues. So what’s left? Everyone wants to feel loved, and if it can’t be legitimate, then animals will do. In fact, for some people this will even extend from pets to animals in the wild, or even plants.
That seems to be your opinion.
Hormones and neurotrasmitters have been tied to emotions including "love".
Actually the part of our brain responsible for analyses (the frontal cortex) is shut off or reduced so to speak in response to attraction and "love".
The people who say they like animals more than people....the issue is not that they love animals too much, it's that they have not had good experiences with people and thus feel no affection towards them...but it has not one thing to do with having or liking animals. If they did not like animals at all, it wouldn't cause them to suddenly feel accountable for their fellow humans. You are conflating the two but they really have nothing to do with each other.
I meant exactly what I stated. Your opinion may vary.
Human love is a fundamental positive response to shared conscious and internalized subconscious values. It is an analytical and complex intellectual process. Animals are not capable of the analysis, thinking, or trade that love entails.
Love is not neurotransmitters. That is reductionism and post hoc fallacy. You can look that up.
Animals are certainly capable of rudimentary pleasure and pain reactions, and are capable of being made into dependent affectionate beings by human dominance and control. However, that is not love. And calling it love in anthropomorphic. We enjoy calling it that because of our own egos. And certainly misanthropes DEPEND on characterizing animal affection as love, because they are often unlovable by human beings due to mental, psychological, and personality issues. So what’s left? Everyone wants to feel loved, and if it can’t be legitimate, then animals will do. In fact, for some people this will even extend from pets to animals in the wild, or even plants.
Some might suggest that an analytical and transactional approach to love, is egotistic, misanthropic, cold, or unhealthy.
But the definition of love seems to be pretty subjective. Having a lot to do with one's life experiences and expectations and values as a person. I've debated it at great length.
I think perhaps one of the best, most apt examples, to question your definition with (in the spirit of friendly debate, mind, of an interesting subject)...is that between a mother and an infant.
I did not want children. In fact I really do not like children. But when I became pregnant, I was flooded with hormones and biochemical changes. I became intensely emotionally attached to the cluster of cells in my abdomen, fiercely protective, and during the course of my pregnancy and just following the birth, I would describe my emotional state as if anyone who has experienced sexual/romantic infatuation, multiplied by a factor of 100 or more. Had it not been for this process, I likely would have gotten an abortion, which would have been the analytical, intellectual thing to do.
Was my love for my infant, before or after his birth, invalidated because it was not this analytical process that you describe? Is this the basis for how some men assert that women are emotional and more animal than person, because you don't understand this kind of love? Do you think that fathers don't feel it? I think that there are fathers who would argue otherwise.
As the baby began to grow after birth, he bonded to me on the most basic levels. First out of basic need for nourishment and care and touch. Later imprinting face and voice patterns, laying down rudiments of basic human social function foundations. Within weeks, my infant preferred me over others, and within a few years you could see it in who the child would go to for comfort. It is a basic, primitive thing at first. But I call it love. And so did my child when he learned to speak. And I do not quantify this as "not real love" because it was not an intellectual and analytical process of determination of shared values and transactional give-and-take.
It evolved as they grew older. Now my sons are 18 and 20. They both love me, but with a far lower intensity, and some of it is simply "of course I do, you're my Mom." One at least I have a pretty close relationship with. But both are no longer clingy and needy, both kind of restless to fly the nest and be their own young men. As they have matured, and become more capable of this "analytical process" you describe, the expressions of love and affection have diminished a lot, though.
Your argument suggests that they are now much more capable of "real" love.
You know, really... You seem to be saying that love and affection have nothing to do with one another?
That doesn't make much sense to me. Small children are very affectionate. But males especially as they mature, become less and less so to other people. To a point where the only "love" that seems "real" to a lot of them, is the only space where they feel OK showing affection and vulnerability--a bonded romantic relationship. But for some people, their ability to "love" in those relationships is only about an empty void of their own needs they seek to fill. They struggle to care about the needs of the other person, or they form unhealthy attachments. Frankly I have seen so many seriously flawed romantic relationships that I just cannot hold them (this logical and intellectual process with some expectation of some sort of a trade?) up as the gold standard of what genuine love is.
So yeah, I would say that sometimes more simple forms of love, like that between a parent and a child or a pet and its guardian, are more honest and genuine and healthy than a lot of these human "love" relationships that you're holding up as being more true and real. I have never had a pet that I'd bonded with, let me down, break my heart, or make me feel abused or neglected. Pretty much every human being I've ever loved in any way has done so in at least some manner great or small.
I meant exactly what I stated. Your opinion may vary.
It’s not an opinion. Not liking people has not one thing to do with liking animals. Plenty of people hate both just as plenty of people love both. Taking animals out of the equation is not going to make people who already don’t feel accountable for humans or who feel disdain for fellow humans feel any differently. They are distinctly separate things..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
