“Humans, famously the only animal without a nature,”
Those words keep coming up.
Their flip side is the obviousness of the nature of other animals, dogs, for example. Dogs benefit from structure, they like bones, they like sitting by fires, and sometimes they bite.
I don’t like that they bite, they don’t like that they bite, most of them anyways, and when they do, they’re often trying to communicate something that I do not think could be translated into English.
We’ve invited animals into our homes. We do our bests do good by them, and they do their bests to understand what in the hell is going on half the time.
If we’re lucky a sort of armistice emerges, the sort of armistice that leaves room for love.
I’m curious about where the line of personhood emerges. Clearly we don’t allow our dogs to dictate their own diets, or almost any of their own desires for that matter. I walk them in the morning, and when they cry, but they aren’t using their words. So what does that leave them?
Usually it leaves them subtle cues that, I, as their compatriot and friend can read and address, but what happens when they do something I don’t think they should, and they get insistant?
If we’re lucky a sort of armistice emerges, the sort of armistice that leaves room for love.
I’m curious about where the line of personhood emerges. Clearly we don’t allow our dogs to dictate their own diets, or almost any of their own desires for that matter. I walk them in the morning, and when they cry, but they aren’t using their words. So what does that leave them?
Usually it leaves them subtle cues that, I, as their compatriot and friend can read and address, but what happens when they do something I don’t think they should, and they get insistant?
I’m not sure what they’re allowed to get away with. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to get away with. But I do know I don’t have knives for teeth, or for fingers.