According to Temple Grandin, an extraordinary animal expert who also happens to have autism, dogs are born knowing how to hunt but not knowing what to hunt. They automatically orient to noise and chase fast-moving objects. These are predatory instincts they are born with, as is the kill bite - the quiet bite dogs deliver to the jugular of their prey in order to kill.
Dogs, however, do not know what to chase or kill or eat. All dogs, domestic and wild, need to be shown by another dog or a person what is appropriate in his or her environment. Can I kill a rabbit? A bird? A baby? There is no instinct in dogs to know the answer to this question.
And dogs are hyper-specific thinkers, as well, which means they have to be shown that they can’t kill this baby (the one that lives at home) or that baby (the one next door) or the other baby (the one that has just learned to run and spends most of her time racing around the local park chasing birds and squealing with delight).
In an earlier post, I talked about an experiment which helped form the basis for Martin Seligman’s ideas of learned helplessness. The usefulness of that experiment hinged on the fact that in some ways humans are like dogs. The events of the last week have left me wondering if humans are like dogs in other ways.
I read an article in the West Australian newspaper about people’s efforts to document the growing incidence of crimes against children. I’m not talking just about bullying or physical and sexual abuse. While these are terrible, appalling, disgusting acts, this article focused on the attempts to record, using the victims’ testimony, the horrifying cases of children being targeted for kidnap, torture and rape in order to intimidate and silence their parents. Increasingly, targeting children is a deliberate military tactic and not, as was previously thought, the unfortunate result of young men (in particular) being deranged by war and committing atrocities not ordered or sanctioned by their leaders.
At the same time, Jill Meagher was lying in a shallow grave near Gisborne.
I’m confused. I’m confused about whether or not people are like dogs. I’m confused about whether or not everyone on the planet is born with an innate instinct that tells him or her that these acts are horrific, appalling, inconceivably evil and inhuman. Perhaps these things need to be learned and the responsibility for these acts lies in the breakdown of some process that is meant to show people how to be people and not monsters.
When a person tortures a child or rapes a young woman, is there some part of him that screams? Is there some part of him that thinks “This is not the way things are meant to be”? “It’s not the way I am meant to be.” Is there, I wonder, a moment of horrible confusion and despair just before the person is about to commit a monstrous act when they wonder if there was ever another way. Do they feel as if they are abandoning the possibility of living in the world they wanted - and perhaps they were meant - to live in?
I have a sense of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing. I was born with ways of sensing my world. I also have a sense of where I am in space (kinesthetic awareness), a sense of temperature that tells me whether I’m hot or cold, and my sense of balance tells me whether or not I am about to fall over.
But what about my sense of humor, or timing, or shame, or scale, or justice?
Something tells me that our deepest instincts wire us to want to connect, to find comfort, love, safety and support. I believe our deepest instincts tell us that we are meant to be communal, compassionate, loving animals. But I’m confused about how the world could produce human dogs with no sense of right and wrong... So either I’m wrong and humans are born without the desire to be loved and loving (which gives everything about right and wrong a basis)... or else they have a sense of right and wrong which, I guess, means that the people who commit horrendous acts must go through a period of horrible confusion and trauma which overrides these senses and leaves them able to behave in ways I think of as inhuman.
So I’m confused about one simple thing: do they?
Do they suffer this kind of confusion, or does it seem logical to go after what you want in the most direct way possible, even if that means raping a woman or torturing a child? (We seem happy to do that to nature, but the problem there seems to be largely due to the fact we can’t see the consequences of our actions - but raping a woman or torturing a child is something you do with your own hands. Unless you are in such an awful situation that it makes sense to say “I was just following orders” then you can’t escape the fact of what you have decided to do.)
But am I naive? Stupid? I don’t want to be naive or stupid but perhaps I am. So while it’s easy to be righteous and angry - shouting Why? and No more! with everyone else in response to acts so easily defined as atrocious - I wonder if I’m just foolish to think that humans are meant to be anything else. Is it too much to imagine we are made - that we have the instincts hardwired within us - to be compassionate, loving animals.
On The 7:30 Report the other night I watched a segment on bullying in the workplace. The usual thing: interviews with a man who had been bullied at work, references to statistics of the number of complaints lodged verses the number of bullies prosecuted... The thing that affected me - that still affects me - was the number of people saying, “We need better laws.” “We need more workplace inspectors.” “We need tougher penalties.”
And no one actually stated that what we need is fewer bullies. It was as if the idea that we could just have fewer bullies was silly. The implicit argument seemed to be that people are going to be assholes - they’re going to treat each other badly - they’re going to be cruel and selfish and damage each other physically, mentally and emotionally simply because that’s what people do - and the only way to stop it is to police it.
In short: people will attack other people (especially weaker people) unless they are trained out of it.
Is this who we are?
I hope not. I believe not. But since my senses are telling me something different from what the news is telling me, I’m still confused about it.
TN
No comments:
Post a Comment