🚀 go-pugleaf

Hackman <"hacker(nospam)"@jump.nospam.net> wrote

> ok...change "need" for "desire"

I think a very big and important distinction.
One has very few basic "needs"... and some of these are difficult enough to
meet, so why confuse and add to them with a
possibly endless list of "desires" (some of which are artificially and at
times unethically introduced and cultivated).

> feel better ?

No worse, no better.
 
> Does changeing it to desire now make it right to put people behind bars
> for long periods of time 

I think it's regrettable that any kind of "creature" is behind bars...
especially if it's just to satisfy one's personal whims and desires.

And there are many kinds of bars, but the much more common and far more
insidious than the kind of which I think you speak, it seems to me, would
be the kind where one's "friends" impose the risk of a lifelong sentence
and control others by introducing an agent which may cause another creature
to be less able to be master of his/her own destiny and ability to
choose... where one is slave to and controlled by the agent and the whims
of its distributor.
 
>for a near universal "desire"

Still not clear to me that even "near" universal (even limited to "desire"
to alter "conscience") has been demonstrated as occurring in one's natural
state... even with your catnip example.

And I suspect you meant to say/demonstrate that same "need/desire" was to
alter "consciousness" ---there's a big difference between those two as
well, even though some humans might want to alter "conscience" ...e.g. as
in deny guilt by putting the blame on others when they themselves
do/support that which they find to be a fault if someone else does it in
another form/arena.

> well....I guess to you it does.....

well not with any measure of clarity or certainty...  it depends on the
actions resulting from the "desire" (as opposed to "need"), the nature of
the desire and the cost and consequences of those actions...

(and since you seemed to believe that it was valid to compare cats to
people....)

My family to selfishly satisfy it's own desires.... purchased, neutered,
immunized and imprisoned a cat "behind doors" for 18 years... all without
asking it what it preferred.... and that was a very long period of time not
to let it pursue "life, liberty and happiness."  

And to make matters worse we introduced it to a foreign non-universal
substance (the plant is native to Eurasia), which it would not have
otherwise found or missed had it been allowed to exist in its natural
environment hereabouts.   Perhaps we also could have been even better cat
"friends" by trying to turn/testing another cultivated attraction for
conversion into another "need" (and been even greater manipulators of the
cat's inclination not to be manipulated and to increase its dependency on
us and our whims had we found and been the sole distributor of a supply of
crack (which is also derived from another non-native plant species).
 
OTOH, this creature set free and abandoned.... after having been
"cultivated" and manipulated into dependency.... could have given us
rabies, been long dead, killed a few other cats and taken its seasonal
quota of newly hatched spring birds (and while I happen to like birds, I
also don't like incurring the wrath of bird devotees trying to save
endangered song birds---) or starved...  
and I might have wondered if we might have
introduced a substance to which this *particular* cat might have became
addicted and to which it never did and could no longer have had access in
"nature."

So, take your pick on the ethics of "behind bars," what it means and who
are the various parties which contribute to various kinds of imprisonment
and where you guess I stand... 

(clue: I'm not inclined to just or only or mostly blame the end-of the-line
allegedly "oppressive" animal wardens who have guidelines for the unhappy
task of picking up stray cats --- I don't think that most do it just "for
the fun of it" and I don't blame the cat, which doesn't have the capacity
to give informed consent and can't make ethical choices.  Mostly I do blame
the "friends" who are well-informed, maybe some stupid, self-indulging and
self-excusing at the beginning of the captivity-by-choice who help start
the process).

And since this thread was about alcohol and "freedom"....and I think your
comments were to pursuade that one should be free to pursue one's
"desires"... 

then, if you really believe in  the causes of "freedom" and perhaps the
rights or value of "stray cats" and other creatures, you might want to turn
your some of your attention away from theoretical and try some practical
caring of some "stray alcoholics" who might not enjoy the
"freedom" of begging or stealing, nasty mood changes, homelessness, being
hit by vehicles when not driving into them, emaciation, inability to be
responsible parents or students, unable attend to employment or the payment
of medical bills ... perhaps you can find a cheap vet to deflate or replace
swollen livers the size of inflated truck inner tubes (unless you think
it's the "desire," "right" and/or cute for 50 year old men to look 9 1/2
months pregnant)...

For me at least that would give more credibility to what you offer as your
understanding of freedom and concern that people or animals be happy and
that neither they nor others suffer the consequences of their 
(or those offered to them by others) "desired" pursuits. 

(which is about all I have to say on the topic of "cats" vs."people")
 
> mowen wrote:
> > 
> > Hackman <"hacker(nospam)"@jump.nospam.net> wrote in article
> > > mowen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hackman <"hacker(nospam)"@jump.nospam.net> wrote after:
> > > > > The need of man to alter his conscience is universal...heck, I
> > > > > should
> > > > > have said animal and not man, for this is something that isn't
> > > > > limitted to just man...watch a cat sometimes with catnip.....
> > > >
> > > > I'm not aware of any such universal need... perhaps I missed
> > > > something.

> > > perhaps you have...or maybe you should do a bit of animal
> > > research...me, I see it all the time....

> > See proves Need????
> > So then perhaps you know the universally recommended daily allowance of
> > catnip for cats and/or the varied required daily doses of alcohol
> > NEEDED to
> > sustain human physical and/or emotional life from cradle to grave?
> > I don't.

> > > > "I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which
> > > > has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal
> > > > reason...." Friedrich Nietzsche (1887).

> > > > I don't know about your universal cat, but my cat "needed" water,
> > > > and liked catnip; and I will admit to liking (a cultivated
> > > > attraction, I might add) chocolate, but not "needing" it...

> > > by-the-way, chocolate is BAD for cats....

> > and I hear alcohol isn't all just the GOOD advertisers make it out to
> > be for people.

> > > > So maybe the cat perspective is going to lead to thinking that
> > > > "Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
> > > > and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
> > > > and, in general, bats have it made."
> > > > John Berryman, "The Dream Songs" (1969).