this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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The second part of the question was were you right, and I think you're probably wrong most of the time on your stance, but there are definitely areas where you are correct.
My argument would be that even though many of these pets have ingrained psychosocial issues that make them more amenable to being owned as pets, the counterpoint is, is there is no fundamental and absolute right way to live.
If there's a tiny little section where people and animals can be happy, then there's nothing wrong with that happiness.
Blaming someone for not taking the entirety of the universe into account for something that gave them happiness is generally considered a dick move.
I’m not really blaming anyone. It’s a complicated idea. I don’t expect every person to philosophize about the problem. Ultimately I’m just one person who gets uncomfortable when I consider what a pets life really is. It’s not a high priority to me and I don’t get preachy about it. There are more pressing issues in the world to me.
To your point of an “absolutely right way to live”, I agree, but my belief is that living things should ideally have the freedom to choose how they want to live rather than someone assert their personal opinion of the correct way to live. Pets however have absolutely no freedom to choose how to live. They don’t choose their owners nor the conditions they live in nor can they truly do anything about how they are treated.
The fact that they are (sometimes) happy makes it an easier pill to swallow except for the fact that their happiness comes largely from a variety of factors that limit their perspective. That’s not even considering the unknowable number of mistreated pets there are or innocent creatures that lived entire lives of misery and abuse due to uncaring owners.
Yours is a fascinating perspective that I haven't considered before.
My "shooting from the hip" response is to consider the life of an animal in a 2x2 grid. The first column is pets, the second column is non-pets (i.e. Animals living in the wild). The first row is animals with sufficient access to food, shelter, and overall wellbeing. The second row is animals without those needs being met (i.e. Suffering under the hands of either humans or nature).
In my opinion, based on my personal life experience, and only if you consider the animals that are not typically used for food (that's an entirely different, but also important discussion), the number of animals in the top left quadrant are second only to the number of animals in the bottom right. Because of this, I believe that the concept of pet ownership is an overall net positive.
That still absolutely does rob the pet of the free will to decide their own destiny, and that is still absolutely a moral quandary.
I mean you can make the same argument for many humans, we as children don't choose where we are born and who are our parents. And each country and society will decide for them the "correct" way to live. If anything, you could say we are currently treating tiny humans as pets.