alt Hacker NewsSlightly tangential, but I think that dogs have allowed for some bad things to happen to us. Like, they are available physically, so if you don’t want to go insane in this society of ours where you are allowed to have physical contact with at most one person (your one and only partner), you can get a dog or five, or simply pet your friend’s dog or even a neighbor’s. Many post-agricultural revolution civilizations predicated on small family cells and strict property and succession rules would have been impossible without a dog to pet.
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I don't really understand this comment. Are you saying dogs made way for nuclear families? Why would it be impossible? In India for example pet ownership is very low. Much lower than prevalence of nuclear families
> ... if you don’t want to go insane in this society of ours where you are allowed to have physical contact with at most one person ...
There are animals where the male and female only ever live together and are loyal (and not for the sake of the idea of loyalty, they're animals). It's not something speficic to some human societies.
> Many post-agricultural revolution civilizations predicated on small family cells and strict property and succession rules would have been impossible without a dog to pet.
That's silly. US Midwest farmers meet every detail up until "would have been impossible"; dogs are common but not ubiquitous, and farming communities are highly social.
(Cats, ironically, are ubiquitous on farms, because of their utility at hunting mice and rats.)
Ironically, you're describing the classic "cat lady" trope, only with the wrong pet type.
Are nuclear families a post-agricultural phenomenon? AFAIK, it's a much recent societal change driven by the industrial revolution (i.e. 300 years ago vs ~15,000 years of agriculture)