Diary Entry #10: Pets and Oankali… Ownership, Tech, & Ontology I
Tags: Environment, Ecology, Autonomy, Agency, Antiblackness

Diary Entry #10: Pets and Oankali… Ownership, Tech, & Ontology I

It is 5AM.

I was listening to the audiobook of Hyperion, thinking about how people hurt animals by feeding them the wrong kinds of food. You got seagulls flocking en masse to places like City Island NY for fries, desserts, etc that limit their lifespan. We don’t "own" them, but they’ll always attempt to eat it if its available.

And preventing them from entering with like a dome would just seem so selfish and subjugative. Why would we do that when we could share? Why share? Because we are already sharing. But how do you prevent seagulls from growing dependent on that food as opposed to what is healthier for them (fish, insects, etc.)?

Do we limit what we eat based on what other animals may find? And then, do we abstain from sharing with them? If a stray cat grows dependent on my porch and leftovers I purposely or accidentally leave accessible in a place that freezes over in the winter, is it okay?

Things to consider re: pet ownership.

It seems to be as if the idea of ownership and the ecological interdependence of life on Earth is not to be conflated. To conflate the two is to erase the material necessities and otherwise pleasurable desires that we have no choice but to share with all living things.

To ignore ecological interdependence is to ignore how pollution, the human vs nonhuman taxonomic hierarchy / ontological capitalism, and in some worst case scenarios, risk losing out on wellbeing.

It is also fosters purposeful ignorance towards communication between us & "everything else". No one I know other than one of my old professors knows what a plant VOC is, yet so much of the science community use them, and things like mycorrhizae to understand plant communication

I think that’s a foolish thing to do, especially if you are the abusive type to believe you are incapable of changing your violent behavior towards forms of life outside of your own. The cognitive revolution predicts people won’t be glad to have you around.

If pet ownership is unconsensual captivity (is that all it is, or is the mindset/perspective also important? I’ll address the non-ontological materialism first), we need to define what that means to make it clear that domesticating an animal and forcibly making it dependent on oneself can be done accidentally, or purposefully. But then we also need to define consensual domestication.

Domestication is a method of “taming” — something I’m intimate with personally as a brat but obviously and hopefully for different purposes. And it’s also just a joke — a consensual joke that plays heavily on lived realities.

Does "consensual domestication" exist, for example, in the case of domestic cats? I don’t think so, because animals and plants and A.I. and everything determined to be nonhuman is said to not be able to comprehend consent, or at least we haven’t been able to communicate the idea with nonhumans yet. So “consensual domestication” sounds like an oxymoron where either human supremacy is a constituent (arrogant). But it does address the fact that we live in an ecological reality.

To me it sounds more like the problem is the domesticated vs not-domesticated dichotomy, and who benefits from either, as well as who holds power over The Other in ways that betrays the wellbeing of The Other.

Often times people with little to no background in ecological studies point to studies on “domesticated” wolves and foxes weaker, less aggressive, and more “neotenous” — even if perceptions of “neoteny” differ between cultures. Not only is this yet another application of colonialist universalism, but it is also ableist, misogynist, and antiblack — for I’m sure neither adult East Asian people, nor bald West African women, both diverse in phenotype, do not all see each other as little children leading entire countries, corporations, and revolutions. Weird 🤔. Wonder where that comes from…

After attending an extra credit lecture by people involved in this the most common cited experiment while I was in college, we were invited to voice our critiques — most of which people involved in the research agreed with. We talked about cuteness, and what that means to us. What some people found cute surprised us, underwhelmed us, validated us, and sometimes scared us. One person, I remember, said that when animals get tamed, they look more like people— like human children. They described it in perfect poetic detail, and we were all sold. Then we talked about falcons. That fell apart… I want to have this conversation with as many people as possible in my life, and often bring it up. But so often, the people who reference this study sometimes fail to address the biases of the people conducting the experiment:

How does one define “willingness “ to be near “humans”? Is it possible their actions are unwilling, but felt to be necessary, out of some sort of anxiety? Maybe it’s simply manipulative.

Are those involved in the experiment simply selecting to remove traits they fear? Maybe if size didn’t matter to those involved, “domesticated” wouldn’t mean miniature.

Dobermans don’t always have droopy ears. And there are wild lop rabbits with droopy ears. Both are capable of being genetically selected for.

If biting means an animal is not domesticated, all of my companions, from parakeets to Chinese water dragon to diluted calico kitty, must have been feral and/or wild.

Perhaps this is only a study on detecting traits that the experimenters fear, or what they perceive to be powerful, agency-creating features in foxes. Our ideas of what a tamed fox looks like varies, though I’m not entirely sure that is always true — since our definition of “tamed” is heavily influenced by cultural superstructures, and social capitalism within scientific communities, themselves. Tamed, to me, means a lifeform and I share a companionate relation. Our relationship is tame. If you must grovel at my feet like a sycophant, I won’t enjoy it, even if you would. That would not be tame. If I did, it would be subjugative.

If “something or someone” happens to piss me off, our relation could still be a tame one. If we clap back and forth, if you are a dragon and I am white-lady Daenerys, and you wanna hurl a fireball at me, our relation can still be tame. Because I understand that you are a pissed off dragon, and you react how a dragon would, we share a mutual understanding within our current possibilities of communication, and yet continue to depend on each other as companions.

NOT TAMED?

TAMED!?

Tamed Jon Snow!?!?!?

What does “tamed” mean to you?

If “taming” means making weaker than, less threatening, and unequal to in agency, then it is indeed domestication. But, as we know, pets are known for turning on those who “own” them, whereas I guess we ought to consider companions as equals.

Sidenote: this reminds me of the idea of “conditioning”, where people still refer to classical conditioning and ignore the cognitive revolution, where the autonomy and agency of “someone or something” being conditioned is finally recognized as legitimate.

If we were all subject to each others’ agency, there would be no ecological relation between anything in existence. Our reality would be one of puppets with no master in sight — emphasis on perception . It poses that there we exist on a two dimensional, unidirectional plane of agency with no end in sight, and that there is no escape — forever subject to the will of a Master we can not see, or speak of — because even that could lead to subversion of Master’s power over us. I would be your Master, and you would never know it, because lnowing it would not benefit me. It would give you an edge over me. You would never know my nature. Sounds familiar, but I’m not sure gods exist.

Instead, I believe that we share power with each other, of which today is unequally and unconsensually distributed between us.

If we share power over each other and our wellbeing is not at risk, and can not be at risk, then I can't, at this moment, see a problem. Then again, I hate analysing ecology through the lens of "power". If we share resources to the benefit of both of us, I don't see a problem.

I also want to point out that "autonomy" is possible, and sometimes even necessary, to share an ecologically conservationist life. "Agency" as well. Agency is even more important because it's what makes a necessary resource or state of being accessible or not.

For example, if I am an actual ornithologist and am capable of helping a common sparrow's wings heal quickly, who am I to ignore a hurt sparrow? I am holding a resource — access to improved health — from this sparrow. I can give it agency to heal. I dont know if it wants to.

I'm sure it could figure out how to die if it doesn't wsnt to heal... After I heal it lol.

Withholding this agency from another living entity is where I believe unconsensual interactions become more consensual, then again, there is the factor of interspecies manipulation used to create or withhold power over or from another, which is insidious.

This reminds me of all the interactions Lilith had with the Oankali in Octavia E. Butler's Dawn. Was it okay that they saved survivors, studied them for so long, and repopulated the Earth with those who could survive, while keeping others on their ship?

Is it okay that they took away agencies from those who would prevent a utopic new, human life on Earth after it destroyed itself pre-Oankali?

I think it’s okay. The people who want to die are still ABLE to kill themselves, which is okay. And even better yet, those who want to kill others who do not want to die are extremely limited in unshared power over another.

There's absolutely nothing subjugative with limiting the agency of another who would otherwise live in an unconsensual wellbeing relation Over You.

So, perhaps it would be best if we educated ourselves on what hurts, what sustains, and what is pleasurable to the nearby lifeforms we must share this ecosystem with, as much as we do with ourselves.

As for domes of preservation from seagulls in City Island who I've personally seen steal unhealthy food from a child, only to be consumed: we ought to consider that unhealthy, yet pleasurable, foods ought to be accessible to the benefit, not detriment, of both child and seagull

Health here is defined as both physical and mental health. I do not believe an austere world is necessary on this planet. We do not live on Ursula LeGuinn’s Anarres. Even then, who is to say we won’t have the tech, and the consent of other lifeforms there, to change that?

I do believe we are capable of practicing austerity when absolutely necessary, when lack of technologies make it impossible to live otherwise.

There are many ways to make fries healthy, and to maintain its pleasurable consumption without making fries a detriment to our health. Are we willing to experiment? We ought to be, to foster our ecological wellbeing.

What worries me however, is the process... Which often times requires captivity, being disadvantaged, and isolated. Is it okay I keep injured sparrow in a cage, away from the cat that visits me for food daily? I believe the Oankali did the best they could given available tech

The question is— how much harm does captivity do to the one you're healing? If it does irreversible damage, or damage that is not worth it to that receiving "help", I don't think that's help at all, but further subjugation.

This is what I think the Oankali, and we also often fail to consider or make up for. Lilith Iyapo suffers PTSD from her experiences "healing", as well as lifeforms we domesticate, and lifeforms that have "domesticated" themselves.

Again, technology is key here. If our technology creates more of a detriment wellbeing, I dont think it's worth using it until it is improved, unless SUSTAINABLE survival is at stake.

And if said survival is not sustainable, whether that means pleasurable enough or desired, then it ought to be able to be discarded at the autonomy of that lifeform, by its own agency.

We need to work on giving that agency to life. Although more people in Amerika, for example own cats, it is to be assumed people treat dogs worse than cats because people expect dogs to bend to their every will. Many people train them with abuse, stuffing their noses in piss and shit, beating them, starving, and caging them into submission, before they are “trained”. And cats, not so much, though I wouldn’t be surprised that some undergo the same rigorous standards. The point is that, if we are already operating under the notion that “something” is naturally accepting and “dependent”, we are more often not only ignoring, but also encouraging a cycle of traumatizating into subjugation by making it acceptable, or creating a double standard. But also, saying something is “naturally” or “genetically” docile is not only untrue, but reflects the typical gestalt of universalized speciation that has existed since antiquity (see History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter). Dogs ought to have the agency to “go feral". Cats ought have the agency to hide in my bedroom for hours. They don’t have to leave, especially if I can figure out a way to make the litter box smell less and also self clean. Perhaps we ought to find companionship in our fellow lifeforms by offering pleasure instead of dictating to them through pain and suffering.