No I’m not a fascist (at least I hope not…)
I’m trying to understand why we’ve normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.
I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human’s characteristics than Nature would.
At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I’ve noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don’t really (N=3).
Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that’s why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?
I’m lost a little
1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png
You seem to confuse the concept of Eugenics (selective breeding to improve “genetic quality”) with the general idea that genetics can influence things like personality, intelligence etc. The latter is pretty much undisputed. But as Humans are seen as individuals with rights, selectively breeding them like you would dogs is seen as unacceptable.
Oh good distinction, didn’t think of that. Is genetics then simply not the phenotype of applied eugenics (not exclusively, of course)?
So we’re okay with the idea of dog breeding, because we see dogs not as individuals in control of their lives. I guess, this confuses me too sometimes since I’ve never owned a pet, but I’ve definitely heard of pet owners refer to their pets as quasi-children. I’ve even heard in the same sentence about how they love their dogs, and then to go on about the positive characteristic of their dog’s breed. It’s a little bit strange, no? But they’re not bad people, and they mean it genuinely in a loving way.
Yes, the Human relationship to animals can often be pretty paradoxical. People may love their dog and maybe even look at it as almost an equal, but don’t mind animals with even higher intelligence (pigs) being kept in horrible conditions so they can eat them. Pug owners may think their pet is so cute, but are willing to ignore all the human-caused suffering that pugs have to go through to look like that. Ultimately animals are always treated as less than human, even if people may delude themselves otherwise.
Well, GOOD pet owners realize the typical pet treatment is still being a bit of a dick.
Bad ones do just what you say and worse. Even to humans. The best example of misguided cruelty is when loved ones keep someone alive with a terminal illness. Many of them want to go long before family members want to let go.
Hisashi Ouchi was kept alive for weeks while literally begging to be allowed to die. Humans are disgustingly cruel when it comes time to care about something with more than basic emotion.
I’m a pet owner who loves my cat dearly, but I think pet ownership is a moral inconsistency on most people’s parts. As a pet owner trying to be responsible, I:
had my cat’s reproductive organs removed
don’t let my cat leave the house (busy traffic area and she doesn’t think wearing a harness is worth being outside for)
leave my cat alone for several hours (max 8, normally more like 5) most days
feed my cat the same food every day, in quantities she finds lacking, while preventing her from getting additional food for herself.
occasionally stick her in a box and bring her awful places: mostly to a place where strangers hold her down and put things into her body while I watch.
I would not enjoy living like that, nor would very many people, yet those are very common behaviors from pet owners who will tell you they love their pet and consider them part of the family.
To be clear, I do all of the above because I think it’s the best way to be a cat owner and I do those things for my cat (even leaving her alone is so that I can earn money to support her), but these are things that would be considered abuse if done to children. I’ve considered whether I should set my cat free, so as not to essentially hold her prisoner, but I do think she would have a worse life in the wild. After all, we did breed them to love us (albeit to a lesser degree than in dogs), and my cat does love me. Plus, I saved her life a few years ago, so I can’t be too negative an influence for her.
I mean, we do all of that for children, too and nobody questions if a parent who won’t let their kid play in the street loves them.
Being kind to something else NEVER has to include doing only what they want. That’s how you end up a people-pleaser with shitty “friends” that abuse you.
I am not suggesting that people don’t love their pets. I love my cat to bits and pieces, but I don’t know if pet ownership as a concept is beneficial for the pets, if that makes more sense.
We do some of that for children, but I intentionally tried to choose examples I thought would apply less (locking my cat alone in my house for hours and sterilizing her being big ones I hope people don’t do to children), because we don’t treat animals exactly the way we do children. There are a lot of ways in which we’re really archaic about human rights, but we do generally look out for people’s psychological health in that regard. During covid, when people were cooped up in their houses, there were hundreds of articles about the effect of isolation on children’s (and adults’) mental health, but pet owners regularly leave pets alone (sometimes even in a crate, because otherwise they act out!) without worrying about their mental health.
A case could be made for prisoners and/or people with severe handicaps being treated the same way, but at the very least, we consider sterilizing them a crime. Again, I sterilized my cat, because I do think it’s the best for the greater good, but I don’t know if it’s best for her. I also don’t think it’s really possible to know, given the communication difficulties, so all we as pet owners can do is try our best and hope.
It really is a complex dynamic. I guess, would you like to live in a human zoo, if you had every need taken care of?
Some part of me revolts at the idea, whilst another might shrug at it and wait eagerly for my daily human treat.
I was financially comfortable during the pandemic and worked from home, so I ended up completely alone in my home for about 10 months. I think based on my experience with that, I’d probably choose the human zoo regardless of the fact that it would be psychologically detrimental.
I think a lot like you do in this regard, this is a complex topic.
At first I treated my cats like roommates almost. I gave my first kitties freedom and they paid with their lives. Now I don’t let my kitties out at all.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the “sin” was in domesticating and distributing the species in the first place. Now that the domesticated species exists and is some combination of unfit for the environment and invasive, it’s our responsibility to care for them and restrict them when necessary, including their numbers. The alternative for my cats would be a cage.
I’m an anarchist and don’t feel I have any entitlement to control any another regardless of species so this was a difficult conclusion and not necessarily consistent but I don’t like dead kitties.
That’s how I feel as well. We’ve bred multiple species that are capable of loving us and unsuitable for release (cats are killing machines, so unless you live near the Sahara, you’re condemning local wildlife by releasing a cat, and dogs will either not survive, form packs that dangerous for innocent people, or find a new owner as far as I’ve experienced wild dogs, but that might not always be the case).
I think the best way to go forward for me is to keep my current cat and try to be the best owner possible, I just don’t think it’s a choice without harm.
While people can and do love their pets very much, I’ve not found the bond with a pet to be anywhere near the same as a bond with my children. At the risk of sounding like a monster, I’d explain it this way:
My wife and I had a cat die last year after about 17 years with us. We also have kids the oldest of which is not quite a teenager. So, there was some significant overlap and I cried in the vet’s office holding my dead cat for the last time. But, if I had ever been put in a position where I had to choose between protecting one of my children or protecting that cat, there would have been no hesitation in choosing my child over the cat. There was a very strong bond with my cat, but it doesn’t even come close to the bond with my children.
Maybe this will be different for other people. And yes, we referred to the cat as “our fuzzy kid”. But, when you get right down to it, no he was never at quite the same level.
So folks this is the difference between good parent and me …. My teenager can save himself, grab the kitties.
But if he wasn’t capable of saving himself?
How is he confusing the two? We selectively breed dogs for traits and do not allow their offspring to procreate. I’m sure there are puppy mills that kill the “undesirables” too. I don’t think OP is conflating anything.
I never denied that. But in the description they conflated it with just talking about genetics affecting a persons/dogs characteristics. There is a difference between acknowledging that and the act of selective breeding to reach certain characteristics. It’s not eugenics to say “a person may have a genetic tendency towards ‘trait x’”, eugenics would be “let’s selectively breed people to encourage ‘trait x’”.
That said, I’m pretty sure all of us picked our mates because of traits we found desirable. Some of those traits are certainly genetic.
He’s not referring to the breeding, but to the traits.
Actually, no.
Personality isn’t very inheritable.
There’s nature and nurture.
And personality is almost all nurture.
In dogs, and humans.
That’s why I wrote “can influence” and not “is determined by”.
That only makes sense if someone is completely ignorant of how much human variation there is and how many different things affect something as general as “personality”
But I don’t think facts or logic will do much to change your mind about eugenics.
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To be clear, personality is incredibly heritable, even beyond personality disorders. People arrive here with all sorts of proclivities related to mood, intelligence, empathy, and more, which is then filtered and changed through their experiences. Everyone has a different starting place related to personality. Twin studies have shown this over and over