Saturday, February 21, 2009
BLurple
That little crack in the window makes all the difference. I have waited and wandered through the long and endless winter, with all windows sealed shut by the swollen wood frames on these ancient sills. I have imagined a breeze, but had to settle for candles in order to bring a new scent to my frustrated nose. Dusting and sweeping brought particles of traveling earth into my eyes and I forced air out my nose to escape the cloud, but no relief was ever in sight. Heat burned stale until the whole room felt like a sweaty mans armpit, too warm to feel at ease and too moist to ever pretend it was the sun. However today, my friends, my window opened for the first time, and nothing more than an inch, and I felt a very cold but fresh gust flow into my room and with it, new life, new days, and new beginnings.
I love parks, especially those made far away from roads, containing natural elements, and allowing lots of animals. Every day Gus and I frequent at least one park, if not more. Within a five minutes drive from my home there are about 12 parks, and within ten minutes there are more than thirty. Our favorite of the moment is Sellwood park as Gus is just discovering his water legs. We jaunt down to the rivers edge and walk briskly right where the sand meets the brown ebbing current. There are sailboats, kayakers and fishermen's boat drifting quietly to the left, and tall, mossy trees interlaced with quiet people and their companions to our right. Gus and I match eachother's pace perfectly. He sticks to me like glue as I graze my fingertips along his soft, furry spine. He never leaves my touch and reassures me each time a new figure comes in sight that he is there to protect me. Soft grumbles turn to pants as I tell him to rest, I've got it, and we move like time travelers past that space in the continuum. He loves to chase the animals., and at the drop of a pin, I release him with an ok and he pounces into the water after a duck, never actually cathcing it but always putting up a fierocious fight.
I hate that I can only know so much about his existence. I spend a majority of my time surrounded by dogs, from 2 to fifty at a time, and I will never understand how much or how little is going through their head. I once struck up a conversation with a little girl in the adoption shop about why she was getting a new doggie and she replied " Sassy died and now we need a new family member". I told her I was very sorry for her loss and, without thinking, suggested Sassy was very happy somewhere in Doggie Heaven. She quickly replied "Dog's don't go to heaven, they just die". "Really?" I said, begging an explanation. "Ya cuz they don;t know God because he doesn't make them with souls"....
That philosophical statement in itself was not very bold of the girl, but it's potency made me nearly vear into the median in the highway on the drive home. I want to know, is it really a soul that we think we have that dogs dont that makes us so different? What makes us so sure that we have this thing called a soul if most people cant even define it? Is it an emotional thing? A physical thing? A metaphysical thing, a philosophical thing or a mental thing?
I dont know what my answer is but my train of thought went like this....
-All i know of my existence for sure is that I react to my surrounding world with thoughts, that are either classified into emotions, possible actions, actions, and imaginings. Either I will feel something, think something, do something or make up a story about something.
-All these actions are symptoms of being alive. Right and wrong and irrelevent at this level because they are simply actions that have had value assigned to them. What can be examined though is what the idea of right and wrong says about human community and how inter-relational we are as a species.
-So at it's base, I am alive. This life is a force I have been told I share with other things. I am told that plants are alive, and other animals are alive. They too react to their surroundings. I have never been a plant nor an animal that I can remember so perhaps they too have some levels of reaction.
-Now here it gets tricky-we try to divide alive things into human and non-human by adding this thing called a soul into the picture, something that maybe makes our actions either wrong or right, or maybe it is the thing that allows us to make CHOICE. Most classic philosophers will put their pennies on that; we are different from animals, maybe not in presence or absence of soul but because we are rational animals, meaning we reason and then act, a process called making a choice. Most accept this answer and quiet. I can't
WHen someone calls my name, I hear it, think about my options, and most often respond in the appropriate manner. I have weighed all options and then chosen my reaction.
When I call Gus' name, I can observe literally NOT ONE difference in his choosing ability. He is not deaf so I know he hears, and sometimes he comes, other times he does not. I know he has learned the come command and I am certain if a treat were involved, he could respond 100% of the time, but sometimes he would rather keep chewing his bone, chase that squirell, or keep resting. Whether he laid out all his options in his mind and said " A is obviously superior to B" I do not know, but I do know animals choose. That is how they migrate through the safests paths, mate with the best partner, run from danger, and take the prime rib over the broccoli. I refuse to believe all animals run off instinct and we humans were blessed with a higher form of intellegence untracable in our animal siblings.
I have completely veared from any possible topic. I guess where I am going is that soul is irrelevant, and so is choice because we have no proof of either existing or not existing in both humans and non-humans. So where is ther difference? Is it in language, or in relationships? Is it in imaginative abilities or creativity? Maybe. But I want to know and I want to know so bad because I refuse to accept the blatant heirarchy we have set up out of a lack of knowledge. We know so little of the metaphysical, intellectual animal experience yet we easily and repeatedly set it up as sub=par, pre-evolutionary to man, and subservient. I would never argue that we should know this relationship in any other way, but rather that it is more carefully observed with all of our biases in mind. After all, it's so easy to think that you are unique, special, blessed, and individual among all else, it's just a rocks throw away from how we see ourself as a species. I have to think, just because I can only see through my lenses through my existence, doesn't mean that no one else is seeing the exact same thing. ¶ 4:04 PM
I love parks, especially those made far away from roads, containing natural elements, and allowing lots of animals. Every day Gus and I frequent at least one park, if not more. Within a five minutes drive from my home there are about 12 parks, and within ten minutes there are more than thirty. Our favorite of the moment is Sellwood park as Gus is just discovering his water legs. We jaunt down to the rivers edge and walk briskly right where the sand meets the brown ebbing current. There are sailboats, kayakers and fishermen's boat drifting quietly to the left, and tall, mossy trees interlaced with quiet people and their companions to our right. Gus and I match eachother's pace perfectly. He sticks to me like glue as I graze my fingertips along his soft, furry spine. He never leaves my touch and reassures me each time a new figure comes in sight that he is there to protect me. Soft grumbles turn to pants as I tell him to rest, I've got it, and we move like time travelers past that space in the continuum. He loves to chase the animals., and at the drop of a pin, I release him with an ok and he pounces into the water after a duck, never actually cathcing it but always putting up a fierocious fight.
I hate that I can only know so much about his existence. I spend a majority of my time surrounded by dogs, from 2 to fifty at a time, and I will never understand how much or how little is going through their head. I once struck up a conversation with a little girl in the adoption shop about why she was getting a new doggie and she replied " Sassy died and now we need a new family member". I told her I was very sorry for her loss and, without thinking, suggested Sassy was very happy somewhere in Doggie Heaven. She quickly replied "Dog's don't go to heaven, they just die". "Really?" I said, begging an explanation. "Ya cuz they don;t know God because he doesn't make them with souls"....
That philosophical statement in itself was not very bold of the girl, but it's potency made me nearly vear into the median in the highway on the drive home. I want to know, is it really a soul that we think we have that dogs dont that makes us so different? What makes us so sure that we have this thing called a soul if most people cant even define it? Is it an emotional thing? A physical thing? A metaphysical thing, a philosophical thing or a mental thing?
I dont know what my answer is but my train of thought went like this....
-All i know of my existence for sure is that I react to my surrounding world with thoughts, that are either classified into emotions, possible actions, actions, and imaginings. Either I will feel something, think something, do something or make up a story about something.
-All these actions are symptoms of being alive. Right and wrong and irrelevent at this level because they are simply actions that have had value assigned to them. What can be examined though is what the idea of right and wrong says about human community and how inter-relational we are as a species.
-So at it's base, I am alive. This life is a force I have been told I share with other things. I am told that plants are alive, and other animals are alive. They too react to their surroundings. I have never been a plant nor an animal that I can remember so perhaps they too have some levels of reaction.
-Now here it gets tricky-we try to divide alive things into human and non-human by adding this thing called a soul into the picture, something that maybe makes our actions either wrong or right, or maybe it is the thing that allows us to make CHOICE. Most classic philosophers will put their pennies on that; we are different from animals, maybe not in presence or absence of soul but because we are rational animals, meaning we reason and then act, a process called making a choice. Most accept this answer and quiet. I can't
WHen someone calls my name, I hear it, think about my options, and most often respond in the appropriate manner. I have weighed all options and then chosen my reaction.
When I call Gus' name, I can observe literally NOT ONE difference in his choosing ability. He is not deaf so I know he hears, and sometimes he comes, other times he does not. I know he has learned the come command and I am certain if a treat were involved, he could respond 100% of the time, but sometimes he would rather keep chewing his bone, chase that squirell, or keep resting. Whether he laid out all his options in his mind and said " A is obviously superior to B" I do not know, but I do know animals choose. That is how they migrate through the safests paths, mate with the best partner, run from danger, and take the prime rib over the broccoli. I refuse to believe all animals run off instinct and we humans were blessed with a higher form of intellegence untracable in our animal siblings.
I have completely veared from any possible topic. I guess where I am going is that soul is irrelevant, and so is choice because we have no proof of either existing or not existing in both humans and non-humans. So where is ther difference? Is it in language, or in relationships? Is it in imaginative abilities or creativity? Maybe. But I want to know and I want to know so bad because I refuse to accept the blatant heirarchy we have set up out of a lack of knowledge. We know so little of the metaphysical, intellectual animal experience yet we easily and repeatedly set it up as sub=par, pre-evolutionary to man, and subservient. I would never argue that we should know this relationship in any other way, but rather that it is more carefully observed with all of our biases in mind. After all, it's so easy to think that you are unique, special, blessed, and individual among all else, it's just a rocks throw away from how we see ourself as a species. I have to think, just because I can only see through my lenses through my existence, doesn't mean that no one else is seeing the exact same thing. ¶ 4:04 PM
