I didn't mean to infer that you should destroy yourself by living on $5 a day or not buy things for yourselves. I said that I think it's a little extreme to spend $2000 on surgery for your rats. I just have a different perspective...I actually raised about that much for a international NGO two years ago and saw the benefits it had on people's lives. If I had extra money, I would donate it to similar programs.
Oh, well, donation to "needy" is noble indeed. You can guarantee I'll take part when I've got the extra cash. But, I can see myself being a sponsor for people who are legally immigrating here to make a better life for themselves rather than a general donator.
I'm guessing you guys would disagree with my views on animal testing and research as well.
I work with dead animals all the time. Hell, I eat lunch while talking to grad students and professors who are chopping animals up. I think its something we have to do, unfortunately. Its sad and I dislike it, but just because I dislike something doesn't make it wrong--I think this is where people get all screwed up. They can't get past their emotions.
It's just that to me, people are much more important than animals.
That feeling, in a very real sense, is just a feeling that you've inhereted due to the obvious evolutionary advantages associated with humans valuing human life. Kids are functionally ******ed in a "wild" environment for many years. It we didn't value human life we would have never ended up on top of the food chain. We'd all be dead because many other, much less intelligent, animals are masters of the wild in only weeks to months and we develope very slowly and reproduce very infrequently.
I believe in treating animals fairly and not hurting them, but I don't think they should be elevated on a pedestal higher than people.
I don't think they should be elevated to a higher pedestal than people either, I just think people are very ignorant to the intelligence and the feelings of animals. Those kinds of people shouldn't have pets and those kinds of people shouldn't be telling me not to pay for my animal which will, despite dying and being in pain, crawl over to me with their last bits of energy just to be pet and spend time with me, not to spend money on a surgery for it.
Most animals are better companions than humans ever could be...many animals, especially dogs, are very selfless-- a trait humans don't usually fully come to appreciate until their almost dead. And just because they lack the morphological features necessary to speak doesn't mean that are stupid, don't care, and don't deserve treatment because I "should" send my money somewhere over seas to someone I'll never meet who may or may not be a good person. (Yes, bad people get that money too.)
I think we probably have had different experiences that have created different value systems. I don't expect to change your minds, I just wanted to explain myself because what I initially said was probably out of context and upset some people. 🙂 sorry!
Meh, let bygones be bygones I suppose. Its just that if one thing makes me mad its when people think of pets as, basically, a material posession.
I started off with a similar perspective on animals as you. But, after owning quite a few very intelligent animals (especially parrots), you get to understand them better and learn that its an absolute shame that just anybody can have a "pet". Imagine how bad your life would be if you had a large enough cerebral cortex to think, know, understand, and feel and you were denied all of the things that you naturally desire (which are uncontrollable, these are things that are evolutionarily programmed into their being that cannot be removed--e.g. raise any female mammal in isolation and artificially enseminate her and she'll still mother the same as a wild animal) because the people who "bought you" think you're a cute little decoration that's content to sit in a tiny little cage. (Some animals are content as such, and those should be available to all, but many, many animals are sold as pets that should IMHO only be sold to people with special liscenses).
Most people would kill themselves if they lived in the environment many pets do (although in the US I'd say the majority of dogs and cats are well taken care of). Unfortunatley for most other animals that are sold as pets, like rats and parrots, they can't put themselves out of their misery, but they will often resort to other things, e.g. the high occurence of parrots and self-mutilation (which never happens in the wild).
Now, I just figured I'd throw it in, I don't disagree with you that people "should" stop spending as much on ridicuous things, I think we're just arguing over what we define as "ridiculous" and I think we're pretty limited as to what we can do to help the needy of the world.
