this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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I don't think this is the take. You're essentially saying that we should undo eugenics by doing more eugenics.
My take is that humanity, through its past actions, now has a responsibility to care for the species that it curated to live alongside itself. Cats dogs cows chickens pigs all that shit. We can and should move towards a society that doesn't eat or abuse these animals, but they are fully evolved for living within and alongside humans in their day to day lives and we shouldn't just let them go extinct any more than we should just let any other species go extinct, and the best way to provide for them an environment for them to flourish in is to continue letting them live alongside us in our day to day lives.
I'm not sure what's confusing about it. A species represents a line of genetics, and you clearly see yourself as a moral authority on what genetics do and don't get to continue to reproduce themselves. For the record, I don't necessarily disagree with this on principle - negative genetic traits that cause pain in animals can and should be bred out of them - I just believe that the type of eugenics you are invoking is a morally unjustifiable type.
There is no "material" reason. It should be done because it is the right thing to do. If you want a moral justification, I would say that life is valuable in all of its forms, and that domesticated animals represent just as valid of a form of life as wild ones. Their existence makes the world a better place and extinguishing them would be morally reprehensible no matter how nice you are about it or how slowly you do it, so establishing a new paradigm where they continue to exist in a way that balances environmental costs and ethical concerns is better than the alternative of sterilizing them and letting them all die out.
I believe that you have succumbed to a kind of "animal ownership realism", where you can only imagine animals living alongside humans through the lens of exploitation that they are currently subject to. What I would advocate is an advancement of humanity's relationship with its domesticated animals to a kind of non-exploitative symbiosis. Dogs cannot live in the wild, and that's okay. Cats are specialized to live in human domiciles, and that's okay. There is no reason to assume that we cannot still share companionship with dogs or live alongside cats or any of the hundreds of other human-pet relationships in a future that has abolished all forms of exploitation, human or otherwise.
Much like 2016, some things never end