I find myself in agreement with about 95% of what you state here, Garrett, but I feel you make too much of the ‘Doggie Björn’ phenomenon. That particular cultural affect is the product of a banal, trivialised mentality that is all too common these days, a mentality too often reflected in the make-up of younger members of our culture who are so greatly caught up in (and influenced by) the superficialities of our (ugh!) ‘pop-culture’, a condition that is driven by social media (and fanned by our exploitative commercial media marketing culture). Granted that people find the sort of comfort, love and commitment in their pets that are so often missing in our human peers, but there are some solid reasons why pets appeal to this acute sense of social vacuity and deprivation. Chief among them is the fact that animals are largely incapable of the sort of deceits, duplicitousness and deception that are so common to and manifest among human beings. ‘What you see is what you get’ in pets is almost never the case with people. Setting the inane ‘doggie fasionistas’ aside for the moment, people who value their pets over your ‘starving, wretched, huddled masses’ may actually have some very legitimate reasons for exhibiting what you feel is an inappropriate degree of benevolent humanity.
As for myself, I reflect much of H.L. Mencken’s famed cynicism with regard to the need to cater to the unfortunates among our fellow human beings. You must remember that whereas the rest of biological life on this planet hews strictly to absolute fixed and given biological dictates, only human beings (with our somewhat enhanced cranial capacity & consequent mental capabilities) blatantly violate those natural laws of existence. While I certainly feel a degree of empathy for less fortunate people, it is not lost on me that, whatever the effects of the stacked deck of cards that life capriciously uses to determine individuals’ fates & fortunes, all human beings are ‘gifted’ (or cursed, if you will) with a brain that confers the ability to reflect intelligently and make rational determinations of how best to improve their lot. Far too frequently, they fail to meet the challenge and elect not to rise up and overcome adversity by virtue of their own inherent strengths and resources. Thus they fall complaisantly back underfoot and repeat the common doctrinaire mantra we are all so familiar with these days: “I’m a victim!”
Animals (principally domestic pets), on the other hand, do not have our supposedly ‘superior’ intellectual gifts and must rely on our benevolence, kindness and humaneness for their basic welfare. It is a trust that cannot and must not be betrayed (although it frequently is). Therefore, I personally care far more for my own ‘pets’ (in my case Siberian Husky and Alaskan Malamute sled dogs) than I do for homeless people, starving African children and oppressed peoples of all creeds, colors, ethnicities and nationalities.
In fact, as an unabashedly acknowledged neo-misanthrope, I am firmly convinced that given humanity’s utter failure to collectively do the right thing with our ‘highest evolved sentient being’ gifts (as we continue to insanely destroy the very earthly life support system all living things depend upon), it is clearly time for Homo sapiens to fade away into extinction, so that Mother Nature may once again painstakingly attempt to evolve a new, improved (and hopefully vastly superior) biological entity to sit at the top of the earthly food chain, where Homo sapiens presently smugly sits (on his ‘Doggie Björn’ throne).
Thank you for some very interesting and cogently expressed insights, Garrett.
