>it is unconscionable that we support the literal mass murder and ill-treatment of billions of animals each year when there are alternatives that require no suffering and no death.
There are ways to put down animals which require no suffering.
And no, there are no alternatives to death. Plants are living things too. Why is it okay to murder a plant but not an animal?
>Generally there is no harm in theorizing, but I consider psychology and psychotherapy to be too important to allow ourselves to consider untested information.
Psychology and psychotherapy are almost wholly theoretical, subjective, soft sciences, rather than objectively testable hard sciences like physics and biology.
>psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible subjective judgments rather than objective biological tests".[1][2]
>Also there's no such thing as a negative emotion. Everything we feel is a necessary (or at least programmed) reaction to our experience.
Have you ever met someone with emotional issues, i.e. anger management issues? There are indeed many people with habitual "programmed" emotional responses which are detrimental to their well being and are extremely difficult to manage.
You might like to read the works of the evolutionary pyschologist and athropologist Dr. Paul Eckman. He posits that emotions are valuable life saving forces that help us act quickly in critical situations without having to think. However, our emotional habits have also evolved over many thousands of years, and so many of the emotional responses which may have saved our life as a paleolithic hunter gatherers may no longer be relevant and can have the opposite effect in a civilized society.
There are ways to put down animals which require no suffering.
And no, there are no alternatives to death. Plants are living things too. Why is it okay to murder a plant but not an animal?