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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 15 Dogs and Love, Part II How Animals Illuminate the Duality of Love and Freedom by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR April
23, 2007 "We
are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms
of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance
with us." ~ Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) One
way dogs and other animals illuminate the duality of love and freedom is
by being the same as us, yet
different. Ultimately,
sameness is the reason for
compassion and for most of love generally, while differences
are the reason that freedom is necessary. It
is perhaps easier to see that we are
all individuals, yet all the same when looking at "dogs versus
people" instead of at people alone. Oneness The
sense of oneness comes from the sameness we share with others. For a
start, the universe is composed of the same basic stuff (subatomic
particles, atoms, molecules, etc.) everywhere -- the billions of other
galaxies are made of the same things as our own,
so far as we know. On Earth, all life forms have bodies based on carbon
chemistry and DNA (including amazing
levels of overlap even
among very different species). Higher-level
similarities between "us" and "them" are very dramatic
in the animal kingdom, and especially between humans and other mammals.
For example, dogs and humans share many characteristics including:
A
human's experience of such things may be different from a dog's (or not;
how could we know?) – but no matter: when your dog or cat is very
thirsty and finally has a chance to drink, you probably cannot help but
empathize with the animal's obvious pleasure at satisfying its thirst;
watching the animal eagerly drink reminds you of the thousands of times
you have done the same. You remember, perhaps, the stark pleasure of
gulping down a liter of cool water after a 5K run on a warm day. These
seemingly shared experiences are
part of the bond between you; they remind that you
and the animal are one – that you are both the same in important ways despite your differences. Individuality We
do not expect ants or bees, or even amphibians or reptiles, to show
distinct individual personalities (although they surely must have
such differences, however small), but in mammals, each individual is
clearly unique. Among human beings, this effect is strong enough to balance
the sense of oneness, literally creating the duality of love and freedom
in our lives. The
differences between dogs and humans are obvious, and for that matter each
dog has its own unique personality. Our small dog Zoomer is fearless and
friendly when meeting new people, yet one of his litter-mates was shy and
hiding beneath a chair at the breeder's house while Zoomer was jumping in
our laps and licking our faces. Zoomer
at 12 weeks old couldn't be kept away from us, while his brother
wouldn't come near. People
are so different from one another that sweeping statements about large
groups are usually wrong. Take an obviously universal and fundamental
characteristic from the list above, for example – the need for food –
and note that humans differ even here,
at least in their expression of the need and in their evident experience
of it. At
the extreme, an anorexic person may experience the sight or thought of
food as unpleasant and unwanted even when the body is literally starving.
Food is required for life, yet an anorexic may refuse to eat even when
visibly near death. Individual
differences are highlighted frequently by contrast with statistics and
probabilities. For example, take the statement "men are taller than
women." Is that true? On a statistical level, yes: On average, men are about five inches taller than women. Yet there are many women taller than the average man, and many men shorter than the average woman. At any gathering, one is likely to see some women taller than at least some of the men who are present. Clearly, the statement "men are taller than women" is often wrong when applied to specific men and women. Individual differences in height render such statements useful only in the statistical sense. People
differ in their preferences and abilities, in their strengths and
weaknesses, in their physical characteristics, and in their attitudes and
desires. These differences are important in life; they are not mere
curiosities. Individual differences play a key role in the division of
labor, which is to say they allow for civilization itself. To understand
this, it helps to reflect upon the vast number of things that people do
in and out of the market, from open-source programming to pro-bono legal
work, from logging hardwoods to designing kitchen appliances, from brain
surgery to garbage collection. The list of things that need doing to
create and maintain civilization is immense, and if people were all
exactly the same, much of it would never get done. Were that the case, you
and I would be living in an eternal Stone Age instead of reading and
writing this column on our computers. Smallpox
[fair warning: link is to a photo of a smallpox victim] would still be a
commonplace horror; cooking and "central heating" (if they
existed at all) would involve a fire inside our cave (imagine the smoke!).
Nearly everything we rely on today – food at the market, electric power,
modern medicine and dentistry, office supplies, rapid communication over
any distance, and so many other things – would be impossible without the
highly complex, fine-grained division of labor. Our
differences are what make us who we are, and thus when our uniqueness is denied, we feel disrespected. This is one reason that freedom is
important: non-freedom (coercion) is an assault on our very nature. The practical
consequences of denying human individuality are catastrophic, partly
because of damage it causes to the division of labor (and thus to human
health and prosperity) and partly because denial of this element
(uniqueness) in human nature leads inevitably to cruelty. A person not
allowed to express him- or herself is, by definition, being forced to live
a lie. People naturally rebel at being forced to deny their own true
nature, leading to the "need" for ever-harsher repression to
enforce the denial of individuality. Eventually, one reaches a level where
cruelty and absurdity are both at dizzying heights, as when terminal
cancer patients are put in prison for using a safe, natural plant to
alleviate their suffering or to help keep their food down when
chemotherapy is making them nauseous. Love
and freedom: as I keep
saying, we'll have both, or we'll have neither. -
- - - - By
being so clearly different-yet-the-same, dogs can help us to see and
better understand this crucial, central duality of love and freedom. By
being so vividly loving and affectionate, dogs remind us that our
"sameness" with other beings provides a natural foundation for
love. By being so loving despite also being vicious carnivores, dogs offer hope that even a
species as violent as our own can choose love and peace over hatred and
violence. By the example of well-treated puppies growing into healthier
and less violent adult dogs (than their badly-treated cousins), dogs also
point the way to such an
improvement in the human condition. In all, dogs thus present us with a strongly optimistic view of life, and this is yet another reason to cherish them. Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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