Robert Anton Wilson on Dogs
The majority of Terrans were six-legged. They had territorial squabbles and politics and wars and a caste system. They also had sufficient intelligence to survive on that barren boondocks planet for several billions of years.
We are not concerned here with the majority of Terrans. We are concerned with a tiny minority-the domesticated primates who built cities and wrote symphonies and invented things like tic-tac-toe and integral calculus. At the time of our story, these primates regarded themselves as the Terrans. The six-legged majority and other life-forms on that planet hardly entered into their thinking at all, most of the time.
The domesticated primates of Terra referred to the six-legged majority by an insulting name. They called them "bugs."
There was one species on Terra that lived in very close symbiosis with the domesticated primates. This was a variety of domesticated canines called dogs.
The dogs had learned to achieve a rough simulation of "guilt" and "remorse" and "worry" and other domesticated primate characteristics.
The domesticated primates had learned how to achieve simulations of "loyalty" and "dignity" and "cheerfulness" and other canine characteristics.
The primates claimed that they loved the dogs as much as the dogs loved them. Still, the primates kept the best food for themselves. The dogs noticed this, you can be sure, but they loved the primates so much that they forgave them.
One dog became famous. Actually he and she was a group of dogs, but they became renowned collectively as "Pavlov's Dog".
The thing about Pavlov's Dog is that he or she or they responded mechanically to mechanically administered stimuli. Pavlov's Dog caused some of the domesticated primates, especially the scientists, to think that all dog behavior was equally mechanical. This made them wonder about other mammals, including themselves.
Most primates ignored this philosophical challenge. They went about their business assuming that they were not mechanical.
-Shroedinger's Cat Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson
We are not concerned here with the majority of Terrans. We are concerned with a tiny minority-the domesticated primates who built cities and wrote symphonies and invented things like tic-tac-toe and integral calculus. At the time of our story, these primates regarded themselves as the Terrans. The six-legged majority and other life-forms on that planet hardly entered into their thinking at all, most of the time.
The domesticated primates of Terra referred to the six-legged majority by an insulting name. They called them "bugs."
There was one species on Terra that lived in very close symbiosis with the domesticated primates. This was a variety of domesticated canines called dogs.
The dogs had learned to achieve a rough simulation of "guilt" and "remorse" and "worry" and other domesticated primate characteristics.
The domesticated primates had learned how to achieve simulations of "loyalty" and "dignity" and "cheerfulness" and other canine characteristics.
The primates claimed that they loved the dogs as much as the dogs loved them. Still, the primates kept the best food for themselves. The dogs noticed this, you can be sure, but they loved the primates so much that they forgave them.
One dog became famous. Actually he and she was a group of dogs, but they became renowned collectively as "Pavlov's Dog".
The thing about Pavlov's Dog is that he or she or they responded mechanically to mechanically administered stimuli. Pavlov's Dog caused some of the domesticated primates, especially the scientists, to think that all dog behavior was equally mechanical. This made them wonder about other mammals, including themselves.
Most primates ignored this philosophical challenge. They went about their business assuming that they were not mechanical.
-Shroedinger's Cat Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson
Comments
As for the topic of this specific quote, it has always amazed me how the animals we (my wife and I) live with - from the fish I used to keep, to the dogs we live with now - have always made Jen and I question ourselves more than we question them.
I really have a hard time understand anyone who has spent any amount of time with a group of dogs (that live together as a "pack") and still think they (the dogs) subscribe to something as simplistic (or mechanical) as the alpha/omega pecking order paradigm. It really, to me, shows a lack of empathy.
nice post.
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