VLVL2 Preliminary: The Epigraph

[Tim Strzechowski]

From: "Jasper Fidget"


> Around 135,000 years ago, humans culled dogs from wolf packs and teamed up
> with them for a mutual competitive advantage.  It was a symbiotic
> relationship: the dogs, specializing in teeth and noses, would keep watch
> while the humans, specializing in brains and opposable thumbs, would
acquire
> food, and build tools and shelter.  Now dogs are more for making the kids
> smile and maybe relieving stress and for picking up chicks, but could it
be
> that dogs have had an unrecognized influence on human evolution?  The bond
> is certainly very strong.  Hell, maybe dogs *invented* loyalty and trust
for
> us.  And the human/god angle must have also had its influence on how
humans
> envision themselves in the world -- don't many religions imagine a god who
> treats them much in the same way they treat their pets...?
>


from Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog.  New York: Penguin, 1953.

[...] Only two animals have entered the human household otherwise than as
prisoners and become domesticated by other means than those of enforced
servitude: the dog and the cat.  Two things they have in common, namely,
that both belong to the order of carnivores and both serve man in their
capacity of hunters.  In all other characteristics, above all in the manner
of their association with man, they are as different as the night from the
day.  There is no domestic animal which has so radically altered its whole
way of living, indeed its whole sphere of interests, that has become
domestic in so true a sense as the dog [...] The whole charm of the dog lies
in the depth of the friendship and the strength of the spiritual ties with
which he has bound himself to man [...]" (ix - x).


"A certain degree of retained youthfulness is necessary in order to make a
dog attached and faithful to his master, but a little more of the same
propensity will make him treat all mankind with the same submissive respect.
Thus there are relatively few dogs that will really defend their masters
against an aggressor, not because they are left cold by the attack but
because any human being is so much an object of respect as to make it
well-nigh impossible for them to assault him [...]" (25).


"It makes me sad and pensive to hear the fallacy, 'Animals are so much
better than people'. This is not really the case.  Admittedly, the fidelity
of a dog is a thing whose counterpart is not so easily found amongst the
social loyalties of man, but then the dog has no knowledge of the labyrinths
of often opposing moral obligations, he only knows in minute measure the
conflict between inclination and obligation, in other words, he is ignorant
of all that leads us poor human beings into sin.  Seen from the viewpoint of
human responsibilities, even the most faithful dog is to a large extent
amoral [...]" (67).