I had an interesting conversation with a friend this weekend. We talked about the domestic dog as a metaphor for humans.
There are many different varieties of dog...but they are all still the same species. Some dogs are more domestic...they can no longer survive without their owners, for example they get carried around in someone's purse, and are pretty much useless except for maybe they are cute. Other dogs are less domestic...they may life on the street surviving on garbage and fend for themselves. Then there are wild dogs...wolves, coyotes, dingoes...these can survive without any human influence.
There are humans like this too. We are within a gradient of degree of domestication. Can we survive without our ipods? cell phones? running water and electricity? food from the store?
My question is where did the root of this domestication of humans begin? Do any of you have any idea. When I take into consideration all humans, what we share in common, what is different about us, and our gradation of levels of domestication, it is hard to say where it all begins.
We have become so domesticated we are completely detached from our original state and the rest of the world. This cause the illusion that we are somehow not animals.
One more funny observation is how sometimes dogs look exactly like their owners...it's hysterical. We saw a lady a bleached hair lady with long painted nails that was walking a poodle and looked exactly like a poodle...a short muscle man walking a boxer, that looked exactly like a boxer. It's everywhere once you start to notice it.
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3 comments:
I'm not really sure why you ask where this begins. By showing that dogs also have various degrees of needing to rely on certain things, it seems to suggest to me that tendency is simply in nature. The tendency being: becoming used to one way and then not knowing any other way.
How could it be otherwise?
So every new thing that's introduced into our lives is something that we might potentially become reliant on. iPods, the Internet, cell phones... a lot of younger people have never known any other way. So that, I guess, began when iPods, the Internet, and cell phones were introduced.
Given that, I can imagine that after fire was integrated into daily human life, people just didn't really know how to live without it. Or, at least, they would have to learn how to live without it, which would be difficult.
So when you give a dog a bone (literally), and give the dog a nice place to live with food in a bowl... what else is the dog going to know how to do? If you to throw the dog out, the dog might just wonder, "Where my bowl of food at?" until the dog dies of starvation.
I don't really see a beginning or an end to it. Everything that lives has a lifestyle of some sort, so... where did lifestyles begin? Lifestyles began when life began, and our lifestyle--which describes our dependence on things--has been changing all the time ever since.
Why a need to pinpoint some moment of beginning?
Interesting discussion. Being about a generation and a half older, I see this technology escalating in use. Also, our dependencies on these technologies are multiplying. Almost all technology is less than 20 years old. Oh well, not to worry. An asteroid is coming in a few years that will pass very close to the earth, and disrupt technology. Or the magnetic poles will shift. Or... I like your postings because they remind me that I need to be less domesticated, and more self-sufficient.
The thing that really surprises me here that no one has mentioned yet is the force behind the domestication. I mean the implicating mechanism (and I think this might be what you're getting at by saying 'beginning' ;
In dogs, it is obviously humans and their desire to have dogs subservient and docile. This has been a co-evolutionary process of sorts, between the two species. I say this because dating back to days of cavemen, dogs have been recruited as protectors, hunting companions and snuggle-bunnies (it gets cold in caves when you don't have shoes or a cavewoman) and just for plain companionship.
However, in the humans' situation: who is doing the 'recruiting?' Who is deciding we must become docile, subservient creatures who cannot survive in their natural element and are statistically fatter and lazier than we were 30 years ago?? Is it Apple??? damn Gates!! I want an iPhone so badly it hurts, is this all your evil ploy for word domination??
Eat apples, stop buying them- ha, I found a new mantra!!
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