A favorite trope of the human is the "unlike animals we humans --" blah blah blah. Unlike animals humans laugh, have language, plan ahead, wear clothes, masturbate, fuck nonprocreationally, recognize themselves in the mirror, blah blah blah.
Unless you have a knowledge of the nonhuman that exceeds that of the possible you ought never to make such statements.
In an article in slate the author says, "There's no convincing evidence I'm aware of, from any reputable behaviorist or psychologist, that suggests dogs can replicate human thought processes: use language, think in narrative and sequential terms, understand human minds, or share humans' range of emotions."
My God, does he really think he's said anything? Might as well cross this paragraph right out. The point of the article seems to be that we come up with stories that seem to explain dog behavior but maybe the stories we come up with aren't quite the right stories. Yeah? Isn't it true all the time that people do things we don't understand for reasons that we can't figure out? Used to be the speaker could safely assume it was not because he (HE!) was deficient in figuring-it-outness but because Women don't "think in narrative and sequential terms, understand [properly adult male] minds, or share [the properly adult male's sophistication] of emotions." Swap in race or foreign culture or child. It's that easy!
And to those who get offended by speciesist language being compared to racist, sexist, ageist (etc etc) language because humans aren't animals: Fuck you. You are so.
No comments:
Post a Comment