Marxist Animalism
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H,
I have a Jack Russel,
The pet industry can seem mad, and yet I agree with robbo: pets are a great joy to humanity, and improve mental well being… I hope it is symbiotic.
My Jack R thinks he is Napoleon, likely a hang up from his past experiencing. He is rescued too… We are a critical bunch, yet with kind hearted cores.J’accuse:
rationalisation.
self-deception
anthropomorphism
Pet industry exceeds the child toy industry. Business marketing focuses upon ensuring that humans assign human traits to their pets.
Attributing human intent to non-human animals is related to totem fetishism in religion.
When the social need for pets disappear, just like religion, the desire to substitute relationships with pets for genuine human interactions will disappear, too.
We are encouraged to spend much of the house-hold budget on keeping a pet in the pleasure of self-indulgence – making another creature worship you unconditionally for the reward of a full food-dish, rather instead using those resources on neutering and vaccinating feral cats and dogs.
Where i am, the preponderence of vets concentrate on where the income is highest, and it is not the care of liestock but the pets. And much of the health problems of pets are the mirror-image of the life-style illness of humans such as obesity.
Priorities?
Have any asked yourself what size is animal charities compared with human charities? RSPCA, RSPB, PDSA.
Protect animals but not people?
I have written of how the wild-life charities have persecuted such communities as the Bushmen in Africa.
Pet slavery
Rather than end the institution of bondage, imagine if the aspiration of the abolitionist movement was merely to catch and penalise the cruel slave-master and to reward the kind slave-master. Socialists rightly perceive the hypocrisy of the philanthropic.
Do i have pets? Yes. Do i have double-standards? Yes. Have i walked passed a beggar to buy food for my dogs and cats and not for him or her? Yes.
I recall the reaction i got during the miners strike in the 80s when they were collecting groceries for miners at the supermarkets and i donated a couple of cans of dog-food. If looks could kill…
“No animals were harmed during the incident.”
When a shelter worker is held up at gunpoint- I have to ask about human welfare too…
The report above comments are soothing for the animal rights activists- but we do need balances of some kind. The worker would have experienced significant psychological harm.
Achebe one said: save me from the humanitarian! I wonder if any slogan that can help others see the reality: well, ‘change the mode’… we can put rights activist patches all over the current mode, but it will be ongoingAlan,
“I recall the reaction i got during the miners strike in the 80s when they were collecting groceries for miners at the supermarkets and i donated a couple of cans of dog-food. If looks could kill…”When I was 16, some younger kids knocked on the door collecting sweets for the Halloween fire night- I put dog biscuits in their outstretched bags- well they may have had pet dogs. They nearly beat me up!
Grubs for grub.
Yellow mealworm became the first to be found safe for human consumption by the EU food safety agency. The insect’s main components are protein, fat and fibre, offering a potentially sustainable and low carbon-emission source of food for the future. When dried, the maggot-like insect is said to taste a lot like peanuts.
Alternative food will add to the future of consumption…
But:
During the Irish famine the potato crop failed and people starved. The potato was introduced to the diet as a staple food, so we would not eat grains. The landlords thought: let them eat potato, so they could make a profit from exporting grains away from Ireland. And even during the famine grains had been exported.
If this becomes a possible food- let it be food for all.
But there is another problem: The bio mass of insects is declining globally. What next?
Insect (our little worms of all kinds too) biomass is essential for the ecosystem.My Jack R will have cookie ice cream while I eat the last of the locusts and mealworms.
Actions and reactions: oh the choice.Post Note:
I once ate some mealworms in a packet of nuts that had been left in the pantry.
After a few beers I thought- nuts would be nice.
After devouring half the packet I realised the nuts moved about- then noticed the wiggly things. In horror or in sheer surrender, I thought: okay time for bed.
The next day I was still alive- and no hang over.
Nowadays, I am far from a food snob (hope I never was). Like the idea of cultured meat better- we need biomass left alone for our eco.My Jack R will have cookie ice cream while I eat the last of the locusts and mealworms.
The irony of that sacrifice 🙂
Where i live and within my family, insects are indeed a popular snack-food.
The production of them are very low-cost and very sustainable.
Often at night you will also see lights in the fields as local go catching wild flying beasties.
But when it comes to food acceptance, imagine what some communities think about shell-fish snot or fish-eggs or frog-legs.
Alan,
I will eat all the shell snot there is- but with chilli flakes.
The irony is- we are in it as a ecological juris prudence- nature in all its entirety as one.. but we still need to eat.
I had spiders fried once, at my brother’s wedding. Soon after I learned that in SE Asia spiders had declined due to their popularity as a delicacy…
These decisions are really hard.
I am interested in the ones produced in your area and can we do it here…- 🙂 sounds yum, Jack R will contest me.The pet industry is, I suppose, like any other in capitalism – producing ever different and supposedly more appealing products to keep buyers hooked. I daresay there’s a lot of industry-induced guilt associated with keeping pets too, just like with bringing up children.
Meanwhile, not that I dislike animals, but I prefer inanimate pets in the form of model trains. They only need feeding with modest amounts of electricity, they don’t wee on the grass and they only move when you want them to (well, usually anyway). Though that industry is equally mad.
Eating insects and other small creatures may well become more normal but obviously isn’t any good for the seemingly growing number of vegetarians.
Rational decisions on the keeping and eating of animals can only be made when the pressures of capitalism are no longer there.
I love animals and I grew up having a lot of pets in the house and the backyard, and I love agronomy, and I am a self-educated Agronomist( I produce my own vegetarian foods,( French intensive raised beds ) I don’t buy them from the supermarkets and I produce my own seed, my own soil mix, and I do canning ). We have two Maine coon cats in the house and they are part of the family, and we treated them like our own children. I raise pigeons and I let them fly and they come back to the house every day, they eat in my hands and I like to seat outside with my plants and flowers, and my textbooks, I enjoy the sound of the pigeons, the botanic gardening, and the birds, this natural combination is like a therapy. We have detached ourselves from nature
I have a collection of different types of finches, and I have quail to eat their eggs. When I was a child I had all kind of animals as pets in the backyard of my house and my grandfather had a big house and a big backyard, he used to buy all kind of pets for me, and the backyard looks like a farm or zoo and we had fish ponds, dogs, cats, goats, ducks, turkeys,( used as an incubator )birds, chickens,( and wild chickens, guineafowl ) pigeons, rabbits, parrots, we had flowers and vegetables which attracted bees and butterflies. Thanks to my parents and my grandparents I enjoyed my childhood, they are my leaders. Most peoples used to love animals, they were part of their life, they did not kill them, they enjoyed them, they gave names to their animals.
A house was not an investment or a property to sell and make money, it was like a family inheritance, there was no fight for the property, it was the memory of our parents, my grandfather left me one of his houses, and I have never used it, it is part of the family, and animals were part of the inheritance of the family, Capitalism has distorted our minds completely, the concept of a commodity has distorted our minds, we think that we are free, but we are not free
You’re really growing on me MS… 🙂
H X
I grew up in front of the ocean and rivers ( my father had a house in front of a Ria, it is when the sea penetrated inside of a long river and the water is salty ) and I liked the smell of fresh air coming from the ocean like a natural air conditioner, we used to take care of them, and fishermen loved the ocean, we never destroyed nature, and we only took what we needed, shrimps, fish, lobster, and turtles were free to be taken
We never needed courses and lectures about geological conservation, we knew the importance of nature and animals in our life.
I don’t think animal produce ecological disaster, it is the opposite, we need them, they have been with us for thousands of years, a friend of mine who was a Cherokee said: The buffalo lived with us and we lived with the buffalo, the Indians know and knew the importance of animals, and they continue fighting for nature and animals, especially for rivers, and the salmon.
The fishing, lumbers, and hunting industries have destroyed everything, they have exterminated wild pigeons and will chicken, and land crabs, ( now they are called prehistorical animals ) the tourism industry has destroyed the bottom of the oceans and seas to create a port for big ocean liners.
I personally know the value of nature and animals because I lived and enjoyed nature, and I love natural science that is the reason why I am donating my body when I die to a school of medicine.
Indians knew more than us about nature and the animals, we should learn from them, but white men have always denigrated them and have always rejected their thinking, their culture, and their way of life, as well peasants know more about the land than millions of peoples living in the cities and metropolis, and they love the earth
The Israeli and South Korean army welcomes vegetarians and vegans.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/01/14/theres-nothing-vegan-about-war
Chief Petty Officer Chris Oliver in the Royal Navy says that veganism fits well with the military ethos and in no ways compromises it.
Buddhist John, a specialist in the US army, explains “I’m living in a world of violence by being in the military but trying to live the most peaceful lifestyle that I can,” John says. “Choosing not to be violent in my everyday life when I don’t have to be is something I wholeheartedly say falls in line with my religious beliefs and military values.”
Buddhist John: vote World Socialism.
“falls in line with my religious beliefs and military value”: now this will keep my semiotic brain active for some time.
I am reminded of ” war is peace”. But I am encouraged in my next interactions with military supporters that it need not be. Choosing no to violence: choose to change the mode and flatten the power apex.
No animals/humans hurt during the flattening of the apex structureDoes it apply to a false theory which says that peoples who ate meat were violent and peoples who ate vegetable were peaceful? I think Engels made a false statement in his book on the Family and the state when he said that peoples who ate meat had a bigger brain, there is not any biological evidence to proves that statement
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