The Inquisitive Chicken tried to get on top of the haystack to lay an egg, and Maria re-homed her to her roost. She went quietly, but complained continuously.

 

I covered politics for nearly 15 years in Philadelphia, Washington and New York. I enjoyed it, and loved talking about it. I don’t enjoy politics anymore, nor do I ever talk about it, as it seems to have become a cesspool of rigidity, hostility and endless argument.  All of our civics is narrowly being framed as “left” and “right” as if there were no other ways to look at the world, everyone eager to stuff people into one envelope or the other. The animal world is much the same way – the open forums relating to dogs, cats and other animals are generally not places people go to communicate, but instead are places to state absolute opinions and to attack people who disagree or have different ideas. This was not Jefferson’s idea of a democratic culture that protected speech and made opinion safe, for the first time in the world, or that gave people of different ideas an opportunity to mix their ideas in a civil way and come out with some consensus and solutions. He would not like our hapless Congress, but then, who does?

I had some interesting disagreements on my Facebook page yesterday, with people offering different opinions about things.  I was saying that I had different ideas about dogs than many people, and because I loved them it did not mean they were like me – or us. One man said it was an absolute fact that dogs and horses suffered human-style separation anxiety (this is why hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats and horses are now on medication for “Separation Anxiety,” the pharmaceutical companies believe strongly in it), and another relayed the much-invoked quote suggesting that if dogs don’t go to heaven, she didn’t want to go either.  I asked whether anyone has considered whether dogs want to go to heaven (I would think not. I suspect they would rather have sex and eat gross stuff somewhere). To which someone else asked me if I knew whether babies wanted to go to heaven or not. (I said, happily, I had no idea.) How could one know such things?

I’ve always thought it arrogant to presume animals are like us and are waiting to join us in the hereafter, just  because we want the company. Or that they suffer human-style neuroses just because we do. I think in many respects, they are more highly evolved than us.  And very different.  And generally not very neurotic, unless we make them so. What makes us think our ideas of heaven are good places for them?

It got me thinking, though, and I realized that I did not really think any longer much in terms of right or wrong, or left or right. Somehow we seem to have gotten the idea that we are right in our opinions, and that other people are wrong and should be argued into submission. We don’t want other people to have their own ideas, we have to persuade them of ours, or increasingly, attack them for having theirs. Thus all ideas become arguments, the very ether  awash in confrontation and disagreement. Many people actually apologize for having different ideas and opinions. It makes everybody uncomfortable.

I don’t believe any of my opinions or ideas are absolute facts. Just ideas, living things that will mutate and change, hopefully.  As I told the poster, the only absolute fact in my life is hair loss. We all believe what we want to believe, and we all justify and rationalize our ideas in various, often narcissistic ways. Good listeners are rare and  precious, yet listening, rather than arguing, is a key to a spiritual life, and an intellectual one, I think. I am working all the time to listen, a long struggle for me. The ideas I most need to hear are not mine, not the “absolute facts” I carry in my head, but the ideas, opinions, “facts” and perspectives of others. I do not know if dogs want to go to heaven, or if I want to go to heaven, or if heaven wants me. Or if there is a heaven. Personally, I have no need to drag my poor dogs to heaven with me, should I be lucky enough to go. I hope Rose gets to a sheep farm, Izzy gets an agent in Hollywood, Frieda ends up in a game preserve with many rabbits and  Lenore makes it to a good deli.

I don’t want to live in a right and wrong, left and right head. It’s sin for me to think my ideas are absolutely correct, or that other people should have them or agree with. People are always telling me they like the blog, “even though we disagree with you sometimes.” That they feel the need to say that is sad, at least to me. What is the point of only reading things we agree with? We are all correct, by our own lights, in our own way.