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Old 02-09-2017, 07:34 AM
Treeplanter Treeplanter is offline
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Dogism:An Essay on Humans and Dogs.

Dogism.
Dear Judge and other possible readers, this essay is not mere idle chatter, this is what I actually believe. Maybe I lack skill in expressing myself, but what I say here is as I see it and as I believe it is and in my way, attempt to put the theory into practice!
Dogism is the study of dogs and applying this knowledge to our human condition.
It is an obvious statement to say that we are members of the human kingdom and live our lives from this perspective. Planet earth was once an inert rock, by means we cannot understand, life comes to this mineral kingdom world and living and dying plants establish the plant kingdom. This in time gives way to the animal kingdom with their ability to move. The mysterious process continues on gradually, animals start to develop a larger and thinking brain and from primates, modern man evolves. Us human now possess somewhat a mind which can think and manipulate the world to our advantage. My conjecture is that our view of the world is incomplete. I think it is one of our over riding perceptions of our life as a human is that we feel that we have learnt things in our life, that is we are personally evolving and that life is a great mystery. We think and make plans for our future, where we have come from and where we are going, to yes the inevitable grave. Often life and its challenges seem too much and we construct religion and a philosophy to attempt to make sense of it all. My theory is to study dogs, a member of the animal kingdom and their relationship to us humans, of the human kingdom. It is this relationship I'm interested in because the dog lives with us humans and has an understanding of us and our kingdom and by an argument of analogy, to project a similar relationship from our kingdom to a postulated kingdom above us. Just as there is a labyrinth below us, I believe that there is a labyrinth of kingdoms and their members above us. Dogism is a projection of the theory of evolution as to hint to what might be above us.Just as the dog doesn't have the mental capacity to properly grasp the human condition, I believe there is something lacking in our human constitution that fails to adequately grasp the greater reality above us. I think there is a parallel between what the dog can and cannot understand about us and what we can and cannot understand about our lives that appear to be greater than us, that is the kingdom above us. In the mystery of life, God for want of a better word, [ or maybe just a comic metaphor from the ether, I obviously don't know ] but the word is needed for my example, to describe what is above us, has given us a peculiar hint. From our position in the 4th kingdom, if we look up, we see god, but if we look below, we see our devoted companion of the 3rd kingdom, the dog. G o d up, d o g down!? To quote from the Oxford Dictionary online, the source of the word dog, "remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology".

A fortunate dog in our civilized world is greatly loved by his or her good masters and mistresses and the dog in return seems to love them more that they love other dogs. A peculiar state of affairs yet it can also be said that many humans likewise love their pet dog more than they love other humans. This maybe a bit tragic but it is true. This love is trans species and even trans kingdom and has to be exceptional. It can only have come about because the dog has the ability to recognize in us humans something that is greater than itself. Somehow the dog acknowledges this difference and so appears to worship its master, those that treat it well and the dog loves us in return and often to an excessive degree. A dog is a metaphor for devotion and a good and faithful friend. A cow for example is extremely arrogant and thinks of itself as being superior to all other beings, including us humans and so treats us with contempt and disdain and is extremely reluctant to attempt to learn anything at all as it arrogantly thinks that it is superior to all, including us humans and probably pays a severe price for such stupidity. [See my essay from a previous competition titled, "The Cow a Tragically Cursed Animal"] The obvious question is, how open are we to the challenging ideas and concepts? Can we discern a greater truth and a greater reality from the naive realism that we seem to be surrounded by? In Arabic, it is the same word for innovation as it is for heresy which begs the question, as to how open is their culture to new ideas? I'd like to think that we are a bit more open minded.
Once humans thought that the world was made up of their tribe and the surrounding tribes with the sun, stars and moon passing overhead not too far away. As science has made discoveries, we have been forced to expand the size of the world around us to an astonishing degree. We discover the solar system, next our galaxy, then some companion galaxies, and now countless millions of galaxies all the way back to the singularity event and now we discover that not only is the universe expanding, but it is expanding at an ever faster rate! Our naive realistic mind tells that this cannot be so because it seems to be beyond our limited reality to understand but science presents us with the evidence and we are forced to make our brain bigger to accept these challenges. Science has even speculated that there is something wrong and incomplete with our perception of reality and that extra dimensions may exist and we are somehow closed to them. Matter is not as it appears. Sub atomic particles such as electrons are not like billiard balls that somehow experience gravity and give off a negative charge. They are mysteriously incomphrensible by our common understanding of matter.
The dog from my point of view has made a study of humans and well knows much of our behaviour particularly where the dog has an interest. It knows that food is found in the fridge and that the car is for driving in to have fun. I believe that a dog could be taught to drive a car. The controls would be attached to its nose, leaning forwards is to go faster, and to pull back is to go slower and to stop. Left and right turns are obvious. Unfortunately though, the dog could never be taught how to fix the car. It would be just too difficult, and well beyond their limit of understanding. Lets give the example of a dog being offered a ride in a car. For a dog, a ride in the car must be something like a transcendental experience, an excitement way beyond what he was ever conditioned by nature to experience. The dog is excited and keen to go but what if there is a flat tyre and the human has to tell the dog, we are not going. The human looks at the tyre and is depressed, the dog sort of understands that we are missing out on the fun as well. We look at the flat tyre and so perhaps does the dog. We then go about changing the tyre and the cleverest of dogs might draw some conclusion about the flat shaped tyre and the more rounded replacement tyre. It is a long shot and at best, the cleverest dog probably understands 1% of the mechanics involved but after a short break, we are back in the car and off. What does the dog think of this? If the dog thought about it and if the dog could talk, it would probably miss the point and think that we were just being weird and dithering but the dog would give it probably almost no reflection and enjoys the ride when it comes about. As humans we can experience something similar. With our healthy mind, we can sometimes look at our bodies and be struck by its beauty and complexity and our often woeful inability to repair it when it goes wrong. We might be thoughtful and distressed about a health issue but eventually, if a cure is forthcoming, we would also move on and put it behind us.
If a dog could write a treatise on what it is like to be a human, a dog could write an interesting story but I believe that it would be basically in very great error. It wouldn't mention such a huge list of concepts that are fundamental to the human life, such as money and going to work every day, responsibility, angst, and it would not understand why we don't sit down and eat all the contents of the fridge straight away and why we don't have parties all day every day and why we don't drive as fast as possible all the time. The point I wish to make is that a dog, a member of the third kingdom and humans most devoted follower,one who lives with us and knows us well and who loves the benefits, would just produce a load of junk when writing about us, the members of the forth kingdom. The analogy that I draw is that us humans often write treatises on the next kingdom above us, the fifth. Just as the dog can only understand our human kingdom in a most superficial way and even less the human mind and its complexity, likewise we fundamentally cannot understand the next kingdom beyond us other than most superficially. I suspect that mostly what is written is likewise just a heap of junk and also basically misses the point. I use the dog/human relationship to give us just a hint as to what the next kingdom may be like. Is it hubris to write a book called, "The Mind of God"? For a start, I doubt that a philosophical dogist is monotheistic preferring the established relationships of complexity from one kingdom to the next.
A dog living under the influence of the human kingdom leads a greatly enriched life compared to the "dog eat dog" world of a dog/wolf/dingo in the wild. What transformed our lives from being uncivilized cave men to us civilized, comfortable and yes sometimes even indolent and decadent humans? Well it is good ideas. It is the countless myriad of good ideas that one upon the other have transformed our lives from humans living like animals to humans living like civilised humans we feel so comfortable with and think it is our birthright to do so. Surely there are many examples of the ineffect, miraculous achievements of science and mathematics in everyday life such as computers, the internet, jet engines and medicine. All good ideas were an inspiration, somehow, from above to us in the form of spirit. To me, there is a world/kingdom above us, the world of ideas. To imagine what is possible is the first step to the bringing it about. The next kingdom is the mental kingdom. A nebulous concept for sure but could it be that the best way to describe life and the universe is that it exists more as a mental concept than the physical reality we probably have been imagining. A dog has just a toe hold of an understanding into our world but naturally likes the benefits just as we probably also have just a tenuous toe hold into the next world and what its inspirations could do for us. Does a dog think of us as just weird dogs or does the dog make the jump and see us as greater than itself, as members of a kingdom above. Do we see god as being fickle just like us or is there fundamentally a greater concept there?
Inspiration from this mental world has by inventions created our comfortable world where our human nature can thrive. Applying this concept one step further, surely we can think upon and have insights into our own personal lives. A life just lived can be full of drudgery but if we apply some mental analysis to it, to imagine what might be possible and then to think about how to bring it about, can that life be transformed from drudgery to comfort, grace, and ease.These are the things I like. I don't know but it seems good to me and I have experienced what is loosely called, the nebulous "good luck". I host the occasional visitor who comes to experience the rustic Australiana here where they do some work in return for keep. I tell them of the rules for work here which is that I prefer good ideas to work, whether they are personal or pragmatic. We naturally like to be active and productive but are we up to working on a vision of what our life could be and then thinking how to bring it about? Life is not so much about work but good ideas. One inspirational thought can bypass a life of drudgery!
What are some of the consequences of the kingdoms hierarchical view of the world? Well, as there is a labyrinth below us, I'm sure there is a greater labyrinth above us and mostly incomprehensibe to us. Why is our human kingdom made up of just one species? Well, if the yardstick is the mind, there is a world [kingdom] of difference between the animal like humans and those who seem superior in intelligence than to us normal humans. Evolution is a characteristic of our planet and would be impossible to think that evolution has come to an end. Could it be possible that some humans are so masterful of the human condition that they are close to transcendence, to be members of the next kingdom above? In popular culture, we have the concepts of masters, as in Dr Who of the tv series. He is described as being a time lord. There is the idea of gurus who we could at least imagine are profoundly wise. We could image a Tibetian monk who has spent a life in meditation and study to have entered the realms of death and has returned. We commonly use the word genius[the wrong word technically but how it is popularly used], of scientists and mathematicians who work on concepts beyond our grasp. There are famous composers such as Mozart, Handel and Beethoven whose music is considered uplifting. Mozart could "hear" his music from start to finish before transcribing it out, Handel said "the doors of heaven opened before me" and he just wrote, and Beethoven described himself as being "your spiritual teacher". He is saying that music is a portal into this abstract world beyond. Beethoven's 9th symphony is considered as a metaphor for universal love and peace. I'd like to add Mozart's Grand Partita, K361 as being a seeing of a problem and finding the answer, Bach's cadenza in the 5th Brandenburg Concerto as being so lost and now found, Haydn's Cello Concerto in C major, how so much can be done with so little, and Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d minor, the grandeur of the scheme of things written so shockingly when he was only 20 years old.
Then there are the great religious teachers of Buddha, Jesus, and others of course. I think all these teachers take what we can understand into a zone of what we cannot grasp. What about the average human who thinks somewhat about their life and its purpose. To quote a popular philosopher, "an unreflected life is a life not lived". Those that are somewhat half way on the path, of evolution to transcendence.
Spirit transcends matter. Ideas come into our head regardless of what we are doing, whether working or contemplating, wakefulness or sleep. If we have a problem, yes we should think about it, but in due time, we should also not think about it. An answer as an idea can come in either way. Matter is subjective and cannot precipitate an inspiration, a good idea. All it can do is to be open and ready for it when and if it comes along of its own mysterious volition. It is interesting to hear about how certain inventions came about, and these are a few that I have heard about, one was in a dream, another was as he was doing his daily walk and passing a shop in a park, and another came to him while half asleep in a hypnagogic state.
How else can the knowledge of dogism be applied?
Well, as members of the forth kingdom, we have what is described as having dominion over what is below. For the denizens of the third, that means we can take their lives if we have a so called good reason, such as they are needed for eating or if they are a nuisance. We cannot really needlessly cause them harm by being cruel but we have a sliding scale and so there are some who are at a higher level and treated with great consideration such as our precious pets all the way down to vermin where it is pretty well slaughter as we can and even further down to insects pests where consideration upon compassionate grounds is in effect non existent and it is whole scale unbridled chemical mass slaughter. We have an organisation called the RSPCA (The Royal Society for the Protection of Animals) to protect them and who attempt to apply some sort of justice and compassion where they see fit. Two kingdoms below us, we can do whatever we like. There is no organisation called the RSPCP (plants instead of animals). Plants in all their forms can be tortured and killed without even the slightest consideration as to their feelings. We think they have no feelings, as we understand feelings, although they probably do, but in a different way.
I'm sure the same general rules apply to us. The next kingdom above us can do what they like to us humans provided they obey certain rules to show us a little dignity. These rules we vaguely know of as The Laws of Karma, but we don't understand them at all and very frequently think of them as unfair. I continue the analogy to two kingdoms above us, the way I put it is that they can do whatever they like to us, they don't even need to "fill out the forms". If we treat members of the third kingdom badly, particularly dogs, our devoted companion, how then can we complain about the cruelty that Fate sometimes deals out to us? If we treat them well, then we at least can claim that we also deserve to be treated likewise. It seems a good safe life policy to treat all beings with maximum kindness, and hopefully Fate, by analogy, will look kindly to us, as well. Naturally I include the mineral kingdom as well and this includes many things including of course, recycling.
A dog's devotion is a wonderful thing but do we really want it? I had a dog once who was probably overly devoted to me. Yes, I liked this devotion to an extent but more importantly I tried to teach her to be a "good" and clever dog, to try and be at least some of the way to be as clever as me, a human. I wanted her to be less devoted and more human like. I tried at least. Likewise, when humans meet a representative from upstairs, the next kingdom above, the most well known example is Jesus, what is the first thing that they do? They devote themselves to this person. What a dumb thing to do! To be devoted is at the level of the dog's response and I'm sure they don't want devotion but for us to make the effort to become as clever as them. To have faith in evolution and apply some mental effort to the challenge and precipitate some inspiration. To lead a life guided by higher principles.
I also have some other applications for dogism.
I can't help but notice that many humans make unsatisfactory parents. It would seem a much better idea if child making could be allocated to those that have somehow proved themselves competent at parenting. Why not allocate those that wish to make a baby, a puppy dog. They could practice parenting on it and after a certain time the puppy could be given some psychological, intelligence and physical tests and if the pup passes all three and is a well rounded, clever, and healthy pup, the couple would then be allowed to make a baby. If the pup fails, they would have to make some improvements in parenting skills before they can be allowed to make a human baby, a much more challenging assignment.
Another application of dogism, is as proof of character. If I ever got to meet someone new and I wished to prove that I'm of good character, I just bring my dog with me. Humans are notoriously deceptive and so when you meet someone, you just never know whether they are of good character or not. Humans can always pretend for a short time to be nice and it is difficult to tell this falsehood from the reality. If you have your dog with you, the stranger can see very quickly what the dog's character is because humans have the ability to read easily a dog's character just as they can read ours. A dog is not deceptive because what you see is what you get. If the dog looks nice, then it is most likely that it has come this way because it has been well treated by its master who as a consequence is also very likely to be nice. This is a general rule but it is no guarantee because humans can also be twisted and treat dogs nicely but not other humans but that would certainly be the exception. I would still use this knowledge as a guide to someone's character.
I'd like to think that if a dog has been a good and faithful dog, hopefully it will be promoted by transmigration in its next life into the human kingdom. I'm sure a dog would like nothing more than to be a human. I conjecture that a dog's first life as a human may not be particularly sophisticated and is probably made up of simple boyish fun of fast cars, pretty girls, beer and football. I once had a good dog Nell, I wonder if I will ever see her wandering the streets as a human and what should I be looking out for? What would a girl dog be like in her first human life? Are they automatically all boys or is there a female equivalent? A simple life of raw unbridled fun and why not? Yes, I think most humans were dogs once, maybe long ago, but then again, maybe not,maybe on this planet but them again somewhere else far far far away, and come from the dog's linage. I think it can be still be seen just below the thin veneer of human civilization. Oh yes, an earnest life of contemplation may have its benefits but lets also intersperse this with what comes easiest to us and bring on the doggy fun!!
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Old 04-09-2017, 12:13 AM
Tobi Tobi is offline
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Well doggone it! This is a dogged description of dogism! So dogged in fact that its effect is inclined to dog one's consciousness, as intriguing but incomprehensible things dog one's footsteps.
Mere doggerel it is not....yet I am confounded.

With yet more dogged determination I may be able to comprehend.

Many woofs to you! And a wag.
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Old 05-09-2017, 12:21 AM
Nowayout Nowayout is offline
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"As Above So Below"

"The concept was first laid out in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: "That which below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing."

Yours is a good essay...

A dogs loyalty to its human master is a marvel no doubt and what motivates that is driven by a dogs world view.

My loyalty to God is conjured up in my world view too. Nothing goes unseen.

I get what I put out...

What separates me from a Dog.

Imagination, that human spark, is divine in origin and quality, that dogs do not know, you have it.

What is this divine spark leading us into?

The word, the thought, "I am" said God.

Here, have a bone.
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