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Notes -
So that “white woman cries over random injustice in the world” archetype that is often joked about. Eg a girl cries over the rainforest being destroyed… why does it only seem to be white women? I actually can’t recall ever seeing a black woman online crying about some injustice or harm which doesn’t affect them personally. I wonder: while it may be laughed off as pure naïveté, could it actually be evidence of a greater natural disposition toward empathy?
Just to test my intuition, I looked into who is most likely to run animal shelters or participate in animal rights and it is white women. If you look at animal rights protestor photos online they are almost always white. This over representation is of course criticized online and called white supremacism. Yet what better test is there of empathy than if you are emotional about the plight of animals? One’s emotional response to the suffering of animals is a consequence of their ability to feel the shared feeling of intelligent beings. IMO the political aspirations which follow from these feelings are flawed, but that’s a somewhat distinct question from whether it effortlessly leads to empathy.
Sociopaths are notorious for being more fond of animals than they are of people. #NotAllWhiteWomen, of course.
But if I were to try to spin an opposing narrative, maybe as one graduates from ignoring the comatose drug addict on the street, all the way up to viewing one's political outgroup as vermin, somewhere along the line all the repressed empathy finds an outlet in animals. Animals can never truly deserve to be hated, not like people. They're sweet and innocent and aren't capable of knowing any better.[1] Whereas That Guy over there knows exactly what he did, and he deserves everything that's coming to him, and if you call me a "mind reader", you're next against the wall.
[1] Except pit bulls, of course, which should all be killed with extreme prejudice. Invasive species, too. Unless they're cute.
Animals are in a sense easy mode. Animals generally don’t want anything beyond food and water and a nonabusive environment. They don’t really have demands beyond that. They don’t judge you or your life, they don’t complain, they don’t make demands, they don’t do things to annoy you or anything like that. People are the opposite. They aren’t happy with the bare minimum. A kid will turn up his nose at the dinner you made. A kid will complain about his cloth not being to his liking. A spouse will complain about the size or upkeep of the home. People judge you all the time. And they know just how to make you made.
I understand the sentiment of “if someone abuses animals, they’re bad news. I just see the cause a bit differently. Loving a being with no needs beyond the basics, one that doesn’t judge you or do things that annoy you, that holds no strong opinions you oppose — that’s easy mode. If you can’t be kind to a creature that exists to be a living teddy bear (which most modern pets are) then you probably have even worse behavior towards the people who do disagree with you and do judge you and do make demands and are annoying.
But I tend to almost give negative credit to people who brag about being kind to animals. It’s not really that hard.
That hasn’t been my experience: they require attention at the exact times they can’t have it (and that needs to be regularly provided), they need to be trained just the same as any neural network does, they scream at you when they don’t get their way, they have regular maintenance bills, and the like. Oh, and they’ll be like that forever and you’re committing 1/8th of your life to it.
I really don’t see why people bother. If I’m going to go through all that hassle anyway why should I do it for anything less than a human being? Sure, it’s a little more hassle, but it’s far more rewarding in the long run because I can do more things with it (2 legs, opposable thumbs, language ability beyond a couple of words, smarter than the average crow), and because most of the hassle is the interruption to whatever it is I’m doing, I want it to at least be important.
It’s not like I don’t get along with pets; but I’ve honestly never found a 4-legged animal I liked simply because their presence demands too much attention relative to their benefits. Or maybe I just find constant barking uniquely unpleasant because everyone seems to tolerate it just fine.
We got a puppy at roughly the same time we got our first child. The child has been vastly more rewarding, and vastly less frustrating.
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