- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Summary
A fire at a Dallas shopping center killed over 500 animals, mostly small birds, from smoke inhalation.
The fire, which took two hours to extinguish, caused severe damage to the building but no human injuries.
I’m pretty sure they don’t suggest that applies to birds. You know, what with birds not being part of public health unless they’re a disease vector.
Violence is violence. That we don’t mind it sometimes is how we manage to live the way we do.
Bird culling to avoid diseases is an act of violence. It’s justified, and necessary to protect the lives of humans, but it is still a violent act. If someone were to cull birds for no reason at all, most people would think that was disconcerting. Likewise, if someone went to the park with a birdcage, and grabbed one of the pigeons and then placed it in a cage, and then just left the cage there, you’d be like, “what the fuck? Why did you put that bird in a cage for no reason?” And then they’d be like, “don’t worry, I’ll feed it, I just want it inside that cage there.” It would be unsettling. You’d probably try to let the bird out, or call someone about the weird guy putting pigeons in cages.
But do it in the rainforest, and then bring the bird home to your house in a region where it couldn’t possibly survive in the wild, then it’s no longer depriving that bird of freedom? That’s ok.
Yes. Killing things is an act of violence. I do not disagree. We are not talking about that. We’re also not talking about grabbing a pigeon and putting it in a cage or bringing something from the rainforest home.
The vast majority of birds kept as pets have been bred to domestication. They are not caught wild. Plenty of them didn’t even exist before we started breeding them.
That doesn’t justify it, but it also does not have anything to do with the scenarios you’re presenting.
All you are doing is muddying the waters and it will just make people think you’re unserious and about as effective at stopping animal cruelty with pets as PETA is stopping people eating meat.
People really need to read Marshall McLuhan.
You’re arguing past the point. Deprivation is violence. That’s just the definition, and there’s nothing to argue about there.
I’m not suggesting you to run through the aisles of your local PetCo and free all the little creatures. I’m pointing out that we, as a civilization, are able to compartmentalize and justify almost anything if we accept it as normal. Consider the entire concept of “bred for domestication” and think about the generations of animals that have lived and died in small boxes so that we could have the prettiest and most docile birds. Does that really mitigate the suffering of caged finches?
On the scale of human atrocities, that’s so close to zero that it does not merit inclusion. But it’s not quite zero, and it reveals our intimate relationship with suffering as a commodity. There’s nothing wrong with having pets, just like there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the modern world and all of its conveniences. We’re all just individual snowflakes in the avalanche of human history, and in our brief lives we try to do the best we can with the limited control we get.
See my last two sentences. Especially the last one.
I’ve repeatedly said it isn’t justified. This literally started with me saying that. Have you not read a single one of my comments?