Vicki Hearne on domestic dogs

A good police dog has not only a large vocabulary but also extraordinary social skills. He understands many forms of human culture and has his being within them. He can be taken to the scene of a liquor-store robbery and asked to search, with the handler trusting that he won’t molest the customers or other police officers or the clerk behind the counter. He knows what belongs and what doesn’t, sharing our community and our xenophobia as well. He can take down a criminal who is attacking his handler on Monday and on Tuesday play with the patients at the children’s hospital. These dogs, then, are glorious, but for anyone familiar with working dogs they are not surprising, any more than your pet dog is surprising in his or her ability to distinguish between your friends and strangers.

But someone might say that a dog’s courtesy with guests is surprising, or that it ought at least to be remarked on that such profound connections between two species can happen at all. (It should be surprising, perhaps, that we can talk, and, of course, some philosophers have been surprised.)

Consider, for example, what happens when you train a wolf, or what happens at least when I train a wolf. The wolf, or coyote, may sit, heel, stay, come when called and so forth. But a wolf doesn’t respect our language, and his behavior can be accounted for pretty well with a stimulus-response model, from our point of view if not from the wolf’s. The wolf may also become fond of me in some fashion or another, but I can’t use him as a guard dog. Not only will he not distinguish particularly between family, criminals and guests, he will not have the courage of a good dog, the courage that springs from the dog’s commitments to the forms and significance of our domestic virtues. The wolf’s xenophobia remains his own. With other wolves he may, of course, be respectful, noble, courageous and courteous. The wolf has wolfish social skills, but he has no human social skills, which is why we say that a wolf is a wild animal. And since human beings have for all practical purposes no wolfish social skills, the wolf regards the human being as a wild animal, and the wolf is correct. He doesn’t trust us, with perfectly good reason.

From Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name, by Vicki Hearne. (And I’m reminded somewhat of Wes Anderson’s take on The Fantastic Mr. Fox.)

November 26, 2010 · Culture, Nature, Philosophy · (No comments)

Nurture

Of course nature and nurture both participate in our making, but my years as a school teacher in Mississippi led me to a particular appreciation of the powerful and devastating role of the latter. And despite good intentions and overwhelming efforts, I and many of my peers often feared that, for many of our students, we were just too late.

With that in mind, do go listen to (at least the first act of) the “Going Big” episode of the great NPR program, This American Life. I am convinced that this is what the solution looks like.

October 5, 2008 · Culture, Education · (No comments)

Dissonant Synchronicity

Reading about restrictions in Beijing, and also about King Li of the Chou (or Zhou) dynasty, who reigned in the 9th century B.C.E.:

The king acted cruelly and extravagantly.  The people in the capital spoke of the king’s faults.  The Duke of Shao remonstrated, saying: “Your people can no longer bear your orders.”  The king was angered.  He found a shaman from Wey and had him watch for criticism.  Whomever he reported was killed.  The criticism subsided. [But] the feudal lords stopped coming to court.  In the thirty-fourth year [of his reign], the king became even more stern.  No one in the capital dared to say a word, but only glanced at each other on the roads.  King Li was pleased.  He told the Duke of Shao: “I was able to stop the criticism.  Now they dare not speak.”  The Duke of Shao said: “This is [merely] blocking up criticism.  To block peoples’ mouths is worse than blocking a river.  When an obstructed river bursts its banks, it will surely hurt a great number of people.  People are like this, too.  For this reason, those who regulate rivers dredge them and let them flow; those who regulate people broaden [channels] and let them talk.  Thus, when a Son of Heaven presides over the government, from dukes and ministers [down] to [high-]ranking patricians, he makes them offer poems, [he makes] the Blind Musician offer songs, the Scribe offer records, lesser tutors offer admonitions, the blind offer rhapsodies or recitations, the hundred officers offer remonstrations, the common people pass their messages [to the king], close subjects present their corrections, and relatives amend or look into [the king's mistakes].  After the Blind Musician and the Scribe have given their instructions and the elders have ratified them, then the king deliberates on them.  Because of this, things can be put into practice without opposition.  People having mouths is similar to the land having mountains and rivers, from which the daily needs are drawn; and [it is also] similar in that there are highlands, lowlands, swampy lands, and irrigated lands, from which clothes and food are produced.  When mouths are made to express words, [both] good and degenerative [ideas] will arise.  To put the good ones into practice and to guard against the degenerative ones are the ways to make daily necessities, food, and clothing abound.  As people have thoughts in their minds and express them through their mouths, if [the ideas] are constructive, you should finish them and put them into practice.  If you gag their mouths, how many of them would support [you]?”  The king would not listen.  Then no one in the capital dared to say a word.  Three years [later], they joined each other in rebellion, and attacked the king.  King Li fled to Chih.

Ssu-ma Ch’ien (Sima Qian), The Grand Scribe’s Records, Volume I: The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China (ed. Nienhauser), Shiji 4 (142).

August 11, 2008 · China, Culture, Politics, Quotations · (No comments)

Study: Listening to Rap Music Associated with Alcohol, Drugs, Violence

So long as there is no hypothesis concerning causation, only a statement of correlation, does this belong in the “duh” file?

BERKELEY, Calif., April 17 /PRNewswire/ — Young people who listen to rap and hip hop music are more likely to have problems with alcohol, drugs and violence than listeners of other types of music, a new study shows. The link to these problems raises serious questions about the alcohol industry’s use of rap and hip hop to market products, the study author said.

A survey of more than 1,000 community college students found that rap music was consistently associated with alcohol use, potential alcohol use disorder, illicit drug use and aggressive behavior. Alcohol and illicit drug use were also associated with listening to techno and reggae. The results were not affected by the respondents’ gender or ethnicity.

“People should be concerned about rap and hip hop being used to market alcoholic beverages, given the alcohol, drug and aggression problems among listeners,” said lead author Meng-Jinn Chen, Ph.D., a research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation’s (PIRE) Prevention Research Center. “That’s particularly true considering the popularity of rap and hip hop among young people.”

Rap and hip hop artists and music have been used in advertisements for malt liquor and other alcohol products, while the urban contemporary music radio format, which features rap and hip hop, is regularly used for alcohol advertising.

The study, published in the May issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, surveyed over 1,000 students aged 15 to 25. Students were asked about their music listening habits, alcohol use, illicit drug use and aggressive behaviors — such as getting into fights and attacking or threatening others. Researchers emphasize that the survey results cannot determine whether listening to certain music genres leads to alcohol or illicit drug use or aggressive behavior. But young people with tendencies to use alcohol or illicit drugs or to be aggressive may be drawn to particular music styles.

“While we don’t fully understand the relationship between music preferences and behavioral outcomes, our study shows that young people may be influenced by frequent exposure to music lyrics that make positive references to substance abuse and violence,” Meng-Jinn said.

Recent studies of popular music reveal that nearly half of rap/hip hop songs mentioned alcohol as compared to 10 percent or less of other popular genres. Nearly two-thirds of rap songs mentioned illicit drugs as compared with one-tenth of songs from other genres. Rap and rock music videos depict violence twice as often as other music genres.

The PIRE study, entitled “Music, Substance Use and Aggression,” also found that young people who listen to reggae and techno use more alcohol and illicit drugs than listeners of other music, with the exception of rap. Rap topped all other genres in association to alcohol and drug use and aggression.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which sponsors the PIRE Prevention Research Center, funded the study. PIRE is a national nonprofit public health research institute with centers in seven cities.

April 30, 2006 · Culture, Links, Science, Teachering · (No comments)

Impromptu Lessons

There are a group of somewhat crazy black veterans in Ellison’s Invisible Man, and the difference between the treatment of blacks in Europe and in the American South in the first half of the 20th Century, as well as the political and cultural influence of that difference, were important subjects in my honors English class at several times this year. And now we’re reading Death of a Salesman, for which the subject of post-war America has come up. I discovered in all of this that most of my honors students know the name Hitler, but don’t know who he was, what he did, or what war or movement he was associated with.

Another time I learned that a majority of that, the honors, class believed that there are more blacks than whites in America today.

Last week, helping a student with a question in the grammar text book, I found that this student (this one not in the honors class) had no particular associations with the name Christopher Columbus. It didn’t ring a bell.

Where do you even begin?

December 7, 2005 · Culture, Education, Teachering, The South · 1 comment

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