But pets are still absolutely subjugated. They are literally owned by humans, are not free and have no agency over their own lives.
The point is that everyone here going "huh this is just what they said about slaves" are completely ignoring that we have pets, which we love a lot (at least i know i love my dog very much) but they are nevertheless subjugated and treated as lesser. Our dog is not allowed on the couch. Sure, I don't make my dog fight other dogs, but I am still denying her her freedom and she is my legal property. She would not survive in the wild and she loves me a lot as well, but is that not what they said about slaves? Either way, she is not given the choice. What are the ethics of this relationship?
Pokemon is a nonsensical setting that can't decide whether its creatures are more like animals or whether they are sapient, but I think comparing Pokemon to pets is much more appropriate than comparing them to human servants like the house elves from Harry Potter.
Either way, you do not have to hand it to Palworld, it's obnoxious, Happy Tree Friends-esque edgelord shit.
Edit: To clarify: I'm not saying "Keeping pets is ethically good and therefore Pokemon is ethically good". I think you could argue both, the point is that we shouldn't pretend like we treat all living things as equal and that, if you assume subjugation to be mistreatment, it is still very evidently possible to sincerely love something you're subjugating and treating as lesser. Morality and emotions are complicated and don't make sense a lot of the time.
She would not survive in the wild and she loves me a lot as well, but is that not what they said about slaves?
The difference is that they were wrong about the slaves, because we didn’t have giant bricks of steel flying around that are just a little too tall to see them (and also slaves are also human beings and functionally identical in all capabilities to their masters$
No, because Pokémon are consistently set up to have MORE capabilities than human beings and I don’t even think they would die if they were hit by a meteor (knocked out instead)
Why should animals be forced to live within your limits though, even if you treat them 'well'? You're trapping them in homes or even cages, they have basically no agency.
Oh I'm not saying pets should all be euthanized immediately or anything, just that the pet and pet-breeding industry should be phased out with the goal of animals existing almost solely in the wild in the future.
Dogs have co-evolved to live and cooperate with humans for 40,000 years. Hanging out with us all the time is their natural environment, it is their "wilderness". Though i should also point out that you're committing the naturalistic fallacy, ie what is natural (malnutrition, mange, horrible parasite load, being killed by predators, dying due to untreated illness and injurt, being mauled by other dogs, freezing to death, bad water, scavenging carcasses, etc) is good. The concepts of "nature" and "wilderness" are also problematic; for one, dogs and cats are not wild animals. They arr domesticated. They have coevolved with humans to live in human environments under human care.
"Wild" is a problematic concept at best. Wilderness" as popularly conceived of in the west is mostly a racist construction that serves to erase the presence and history of indigenous people. There is not and never has been a "wild" separate from the human domain. We"ve been everywhere on earth for tens of thousands of years. Much of the face of the earth has been influenced and often heavily influenced by human habitation.
Dogs don't share some abstracted notion of freedom and independence with settler brained american libertarians. They're dogs. They want to hang out with humans who treat them well. That's their whole thing. They're fully, completely domesticated, which i suspect many "having pets is immoral" people don't fully comprehend. Frankly I think it's a misapprehension of city people who haven't really spent much time in truly wild places where the wildlife has not acclimated to human presence the way it has in most of America and Europe.
Regardless, this abstract, idealistic notion that dogs "lack agency" is not materialist. It's also not a very strong argument from an idealistic perspective. Most of the time, being domesticated rather than wild animals, feral dogs suffer even shorter, more violent, more miserable lives than wild animals that are at least adapted to their environments. This is because they are dependent on cooperation with humans for their wellbeing. Domestication has made them more playful, less aggressive, much less shy and suspicious and cautious, much more social, given them the nearly unique abilitiy to recognize human gestures and body language, and so forth. Contrast this with wolves, which are genetically speaking a very similar species, and the massive differences in behavior, physical structure, and psychology are stark and impossible to explain away.
Dogs cannot survive and thrive without us (and I'd argue humans are equally lost and miserable without dogs). They have no place in the world except alongside humans. Whatever assertion you're making, what you're defacto asking for is the destruction of the entire species because their mere existence doesn't conform to your idealist notions of agency and independence.
Billions of people across the world use animals for labor, before the Industrial Revolution most people did. In much of the underdeveloped world you often have to use animal labor to survive. And often people who exploit animal labor feel genuine affection for the animals, plenty of people who use dogs for more utilitarian means still love them, plenty of farmers care for the donkey that hauls their produce to market.
Yeah, which it is a fair criticism of using animals for labor, but again most people don't do that
But pets are still absolutely subjugated. They are literally owned by humans, are not free and have no agency over their own lives.
The point is that everyone here going "huh this is just what they said about slaves" are completely ignoring that we have pets, which we love a lot (at least i know i love my dog very much) but they are nevertheless subjugated and treated as lesser. Our dog is not allowed on the couch. Sure, I don't make my dog fight other dogs, but I am still denying her her freedom and she is my legal property. She would not survive in the wild and she loves me a lot as well, but is that not what they said about slaves? Either way, she is not given the choice. What are the ethics of this relationship?
Pokemon is a nonsensical setting that can't decide whether its creatures are more like animals or whether they are sapient, but I think comparing Pokemon to pets is much more appropriate than comparing them to human servants like the house elves from Harry Potter.
Either way, you do not have to hand it to Palworld, it's obnoxious, Happy Tree Friends-esque edgelord shit.
Edit: To clarify: I'm not saying "Keeping pets is ethically good and therefore Pokemon is ethically good". I think you could argue both, the point is that we shouldn't pretend like we treat all living things as equal and that, if you assume subjugation to be mistreatment, it is still very evidently possible to sincerely love something you're subjugating and treating as lesser. Morality and emotions are complicated and don't make sense a lot of the time.
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The difference is that they were wrong about the slaves, because we didn’t have giant bricks of steel flying around that are just a little too tall to see them (and also slaves are also human beings and functionally identical in all capabilities to their masters$
Exactly. Humans are the same as other humans. Animals aren't.
Do you get what I mean?
No, because Pokémon are consistently set up to have MORE capabilities than human beings and I don’t even think they would die if they were hit by a meteor (knocked out instead)
Why should animals be forced to live within your limits though, even if you treat them 'well'? You're trapping them in homes or even cages, they have basically no agency.
Because if they get outside they’ll get killed by a car and/or fuck up the environment
Pets SHOULDN’T exist, but that isn’t fixable by having individuals throw “their” animals outside, it doesn’t fix anything and causes more suffering
So I’m not “against pets” any more than someone is “against food” because they got it from a capitalist grocery store
Oh I'm not saying pets should all be euthanized immediately or anything, just that the pet and pet-breeding industry should be phased out with the goal of animals existing almost solely in the wild in the future.
Dogs have co-evolved to live and cooperate with humans for 40,000 years. Hanging out with us all the time is their natural environment, it is their "wilderness". Though i should also point out that you're committing the naturalistic fallacy, ie what is natural (malnutrition, mange, horrible parasite load, being killed by predators, dying due to untreated illness and injurt, being mauled by other dogs, freezing to death, bad water, scavenging carcasses, etc) is good. The concepts of "nature" and "wilderness" are also problematic; for one, dogs and cats are not wild animals. They arr domesticated. They have coevolved with humans to live in human environments under human care.
"Wild" is a problematic concept at best. Wilderness" as popularly conceived of in the west is mostly a racist construction that serves to erase the presence and history of indigenous people. There is not and never has been a "wild" separate from the human domain. We"ve been everywhere on earth for tens of thousands of years. Much of the face of the earth has been influenced and often heavily influenced by human habitation.
Dogs don't share some abstracted notion of freedom and independence with settler brained american libertarians. They're dogs. They want to hang out with humans who treat them well. That's their whole thing. They're fully, completely domesticated, which i suspect many "having pets is immoral" people don't fully comprehend. Frankly I think it's a misapprehension of city people who haven't really spent much time in truly wild places where the wildlife has not acclimated to human presence the way it has in most of America and Europe.
Regardless, this abstract, idealistic notion that dogs "lack agency" is not materialist. It's also not a very strong argument from an idealistic perspective. Most of the time, being domesticated rather than wild animals, feral dogs suffer even shorter, more violent, more miserable lives than wild animals that are at least adapted to their environments. This is because they are dependent on cooperation with humans for their wellbeing. Domestication has made them more playful, less aggressive, much less shy and suspicious and cautious, much more social, given them the nearly unique abilitiy to recognize human gestures and body language, and so forth. Contrast this with wolves, which are genetically speaking a very similar species, and the massive differences in behavior, physical structure, and psychology are stark and impossible to explain away.
Dogs cannot survive and thrive without us (and I'd argue humans are equally lost and miserable without dogs). They have no place in the world except alongside humans. Whatever assertion you're making, what you're defacto asking for is the destruction of the entire species because their mere existence doesn't conform to your idealist notions of agency and independence.
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Is it bait if its baiting but I also unironically believe it?
if your ideology is making bait you should shut the fuck up
On one hand, I agree, on the other hand, I think forcing people to live without a cat is some kind of war crime
If you love cats, let them go
You're advocating for the eradication of birds and small mammals currently.
outdoor cats live miserable lives. if you love something you don't damn it to a short life of brutality and disease
no, the cats will be mine
I mean this doesn’t make it not a war crime, regardless of if it’s the right thing to do
Billions of people across the world use animals for labor, before the Industrial Revolution most people did. In much of the underdeveloped world you often have to use animal labor to survive. And often people who exploit animal labor feel genuine affection for the animals, plenty of people who use dogs for more utilitarian means still love them, plenty of farmers care for the donkey that hauls their produce to market.
Dumbass me, sorry. Yeah, I don’t have much to add