Big
This is my cat Milo. He’s quite a bit older than this now and I had to take him to the vet last week because he had a wound from a catfight. Instead of his usually outdoorsy nature he’s been sulking in the garage behind my surfboard and some cans of paint.
Generally pets are considered to be a happy thing to have, and most kids are very eager to ask about cats and dogs. Of course they are fun to play with. Dogs have a profound degree of social empathy and cats at least like to share (steal?) body warmth.
Recently though I am starting to think that pets have another effect on the subconscious mind. Could it be that pets also provide us with the sense that we are “big”?
The existence of a pecking order is well established in primate societies, and even interactions between people in so-called egalitarian societies there is a constant subconcious stuggle for recognition, status and dominance. Dr. Richard Firebaugh has done studies that show that income contributes to happiness only if it is high relative to others in the same age and peer group. They claim that American are on a “hedonic treadmill” with people chasing the standard of living of those around them:
Our analysis indicates that Americans are on a hedonic treadmill for most of their working lives. We find, with and without controls for age, physical health, education and other correlates of happiness, that the higher the income of others in one’s age group, the lower one’s happiness.
This lends strength to the “big fish in a little pond” style of living. Pets are one way that people can construct safe social niches - in a way stacking the subconscious deck with those of even lower status.
Does this effect also underpin some of the desire to have children? How much of this dynamic exists between partners in a love relationship? And how much are love relationships set by patterns of dominance, submissiveness and rebellion?
While this is worth thinking about I don’t mean to suggest that this dominance relationship exists to serve an entirely cynical purpose. Having pets can also elicit nurturing responses which are part of our best nature. For example, mothers love for a helpless and needful infant is held as the standard against which all other forms of love are compared. It may be that some of the truest forms of love and compassion between people require some imbalance of power.