675. Mice: Pets Or Vermin?

675.   Mice:  Pets Or Vermin?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130510124501.htm

"Many people express objections against child labor, exploitation of the workforce or meat production involving cruelty against animals. At the same time, however, people ignore their own moral standards when acting as market participants, searching for the cheapest electronics, fashion or food. Thus, markets reduce moral concerns."

"In comparison to non-market decisions, moral standards are significantly lower if people participate in markets."

So far, I can agree.   An example for this is the recent tragedy in the factory in Bangladesh, where the exploited workers were killed as a result of the greed of the owners not caring for the safety of the building,
But while the consumers are contributing by their willful ignorance of the reasons for the goods being cheap, the main culprits are those with the economic power to decide the prices by making the contracts and by paying low wages.   


But I strongly disagree, that the attitude towards the life of a mouse is a measurement for morals.    

"In a number of different experiments, several hundred subjects were confronted with the moral decision between receiving a monetary amount and killing a mouse versus saving the life of a mouse and foregoing the monetary amount."

Killing or saving a mouse is not at all a moral decision.   It is a decision between the naivety to consider mice as pets or the realism to evaluate mice as vermin..  
The naivety is a mistake of those people, who know mice only as being kept in cages, where they cannot cause any detriment.    Mice are damaging vermin, whenever they get a chance to bite holes into garments for making nests and to make a mess by feeding on bags of flower in the larder.  

I have killed mice and rats by traps and by poison, whenever this was necessary.   Morals to me means to discriminate between sparing vermin and being considerate to humans by paying a higher price for fair trade products, when available.    I want the vermin dead, but a decent standard of living for every human on this globe.  

Saving mice as in the study is also for other reasons an illusion.    Carnivorous animals in the zoo are fed by small animals, like for example chickens, mice and rats.   There are companies specialized in breeding these for feeding purposes, when the surplus from other sources does not suffice.  

For any of the saved mice in the study, another mouse was bred as a replacement to be fed to a hungry zoo animal.   No lives of mice were saved.   

I would like to see a study, which tests the same question but on issues of genuine morals.   

21. Absurd Attitudes

Absurd Attitudes

When a lion rips a gazelle apart to feed upon it, that animal dies certainly a very painful death.     Would the lion starve to death, that would be painful for him too.   

Evolution has favored the survival of the fittest, avoiding suffering was not a part of it.  

With the cat in the garden and the birds killed by the cat, it is the same.   Nobody is responsible for the lion's killing instinct, but the whoever lets a cat run free is responsible for the suffering of the birds.   

In Germany it is against the law to kill a healthy cat or other pet animal in any way, even a veterinarian is not allowed to put him to sleep.    But nobody cares about the sufferings of the half dead birds, whom the cat brings into people's houses.   

Is there a fundamental difference between a rabbit, a cat and a rat?   They are all mammals and not too big.   They all suffer pain, when treated cruelly, they all do not know, what is happening to them, when they are painlessly and fast killed.   Rats are poisoned and trapped as vermin, rabbits are killed and eaten.   But if someone has the bad luck to have a cat deliver a litter of half a dozen on their premises, they have a lot of trouble.    If they kill the kittens themselves, they break the law, abandoning them is cruel and against the law, therefore the animal asylums are full with pets, that people cannot keep, or who have been found and abandoned.  It costs a lot of money.  Principally, there is nothing wrong with this, if there were no humans living in misery anywhere on the globe.

But today I read in the newspaper, that a German supermarket chain pays 11 (Euro)Cent per hour to the workers in sweatshops in Bangladesh sewing trousers to be sold for cheap.    With such an income, they can only dream of the luxury life of a dog or cat in a German animal asylum, provided with healthy food and medical care.   

Animals should not have suffering afflicted on them, but what about the poor people in Bangladesh?    If all stray and unwanted animals would be painlessly put to sleep, and animal asylums be closed, there would a lot of money be available for much more humane purposes, either for supplying some basic needs for the people in Bangladesh and other poor countries or paying them fair wages for their labor.   

People buy the cheap clothes from the sweatshops and contribute to the death by starvation of many people in Bangladesh, but cry in outrage about people killing pets.

It is absurd and it is an indirect form of racism, when German dogs are considered to deserve better care than the people from third world countries.

Humans need more protection than animals, because they suffer much more, they consciously experience their suffering.    Animals suffer hunger and sickness only in the moment of occurrence, humans additionally suffer the emotional pain of knowing, what comes, of fear in advance, of hopelessness, of emotional pain.   As long as the resources are scarce, humans should be cared for first, in priority over animals.    

7. Social Contacts

Social Contacts

When and as much as I want to be with other living beings, mainly my quest is to find a partner close to my age, who would also be my best friend. As far as I like to make friends, I prefer women near to my age. The younger people are, the less they interest me.

For me, emotional attachment grows together with intellectual and mental closeness, with being mind mates.

With a partner of my age, I can go to museums and exhibitions, watch movies and theater plays, read the same books, observe each other, others and the own introspection, and two mind mates can spend hours in rational communication, in rewarding exchange of thoughts and ideas about all this. A partner of my age, who brings along his maturity, his knowledge, his education, his life experience, can enhance the intellectual value of cultural activities by contributing his thoughts and comments.

Nothing of this is possible with children or pets. For me, pets are as unattractive and uninteresting as are children. Both would just bore me, and in the museums, they would probably even disturb. I cannot get attached to them, because they bore me, and all the work to care for children or pets just keeps me from doing, what really interests me. Between grown up partners, there can we a fair exchange of giving and receiving. Children and pets are a one sided drain, since they have nothing to give, that is of value to me.

I like animals in the nature, I buy free range eggs and feed the birds in winter. But if a man has a pet, it is a deal breaker, because the pet would disturb me.

This does not make me selfish. Once there is intellectual and emotional intimacy with a partner, then I do not hesitate to care for him, should he need it. But I cannot see any reason, why to invest money and care in a being, that cannot even talk, it just makes no sense. Sometimes I wonder, if people are so attracted to dogs, because there they can dominate and have power, which they cannot get with a partner.

I know, how people get attached to their pets, and I have no right to expect, that somebody would separate from his dog for me. But even if I would accept to have a dog around for a while, it is just not practically possible. I do not live in an area fit for dogs. People's well being and health should be considered as priority over animals. In densely populated area, not only the streets should be kept clean from dog feces, but the parks should be reserved and respected as places for the recreation of people and clean places for children to play, when people live in apartments without a garden.

I live in a small house in the garden behind a row of five story buildings along both sides of the street. Neighbours with dogs have to spend half an hour twice a day to walk them to the nearest park, that is abused as a dog's toilet by many other people. Short of letting the dog soil the strawberry plants in my tiny garden, there would be no alternative but to do the same abuse of the park.

I will never get involved with a man, that is more than maybe three years younger. First of all, having grown up in the same time creates some kind of similarity. Secondly, I am not Maude and little Harolds better stay away from me. With a man of my age, we are on the same level of mutually learning and growing wiser together.

I do not want to be the wise old guru to a younger man. If a man is ten years younger, that means that I have spent ten years more of learning and maturing, therefore I cannot consider him an equal.

I have no problems to make friends and acquaintances, but somehow I feel so different in a world of breeders and believers and irrationality. Sometimes I just do not know, if I even want to spent my time with people, with whom I have not enough in common. So I tend to be a maverick and a recluse, not so much, because I want to be alone but for lack of people like me.