More on how dogs adapt to challenges in their lives.
(As readers picked up from my closing comment in yesterday’s part of this story, technology has rather interfered with events. ‘Touch wood’ things appear to be back to normal!)
Yesterday’s article (thanks to Paul Gilding for the link) was about the stray dogs in Moscow. Before musing on the more general nature of how dogs survive as strays, there is a video on YouTube about these Muscovite dogs. Just over 7 minutes long, it further underlines the amazing adaptability of the domesticated dog when thrust into self-survival.
As regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know, before Jean and I met, Jean had spent a large part of her life rescuing dogs in the San Carlos area of Mexico, much of that with Suzann (who was instrumental in Jean and me meeting!). Indeed, when Jean and I moved up to Payson in February, 2010 we had with us, much to the amusement of the American border staff at the Nogales crossing, 12 dogs and 6 cats, all rescues except my German Shepherd dog, Pharaoh.
So Jean has lots of stories about how the far-too-many stray dogs in San Carlos developed strategies for staying alive. Dhalia, see story below, shows her feral habits when we go out for a walk in the forest by constantly looking for food, despite the fact that she is a well-fed, happy and contented dog. Jean recounts finding Dhalia,
It was in 2005, about three months after Ben died (Jean’s husband). I was driving out to the small Mexican fishing port of La Manga where there were many stray dogs. The aim was to feed them on a regular basis and hope that they would become sufficiently comfortable with my presence so that they could be caught, so that they may be spayed or neutered and then offered for adoption.
On the way there, I drove past a couple of dogs running alongside the highway. Dogs frequently did this looking for ‘road-kill’ that they could feed on. I stopped the car wanting to put out some food and water.
One of the dogs was so feral that it immediately took off into the bush. I turned around and the other dog was standing about ten feet away. It was cadaverous and obviously suffering from mange but cautiously came up to the food, sniffed carefully and then started to eat. That dog allowed me to pick it up and then sat quietly with me on the front seat of the car while I continued to La Manga. It sense immediately that it was safe and from that day has remained with me. I named her Dhalia.
Dhalia in Jean's arms, November 2008
Fast forward to today. Dhalia is one of Pharaoh’s group of dogs and is a sweet and loving animal.
Finally, a couple of other stories to give you a feeling about these rescue dogs. One from August 2009 about a dog called Lucky Lucy. The other about Corrie, both stories from Suzann.
Stray dogs demonstrate remarkable skills at staying alive.
Before I start, a big word of thanks to Paul Gilding who passed this story to me. Apart from reading Paul’s powerful book, The Great Disruption, and exchanging a couple of emails, he doesn’t know me from Adam. But the fact that this undoubtedly busy man (his book has been a great success) not only responded to an earlier email from me and then dropped me a note to say that I might enjoy the following article, says a great deal about the integrity of the person.
The article, from the website The Dog Files, is about Moscow’s stray dogs. I’m taking the liberty of reproducing it in full.
Each morning, like clockwork, they board the subway, off to begin their daily routine amidst the hustle and bustle of the city.
But these aren’t just any daily commuters. These are stray dogs who live in the outskirts of Moscow Russia and commute on the underground trains to and from the city centre in search of food scraps.
Then after a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night.
Experts studying the dogs, who usually choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train, say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop – after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train.
Scientists believe this phenomenon began after the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, and Russia’s new capitalists moved industrial complexes from the city centre to the suburbs.
Dr Andrei Poiarkov, of the Moscow Ecology and Evolution Institute, said: “These complexes were used by homeless dogs as shelters, so the dogs had to move together with their houses. Because the best scavenging for food is in the city centre, the dogs had to learn how to travel on the subway – to get to the centre in the morning, then back home in the evening, just like people.”
Dr Poiarkov told how the dogs like to play during their daily commute. He said: “They jump on the train seconds before the doors shut, risking their tails getting jammed. They do it for fun. And sometimes they fall asleep and get off at the wrong stop.”
The dogs have also amazingly learned to use traffic lights to cross the road safely, said Dr Poiarkov. And they use cunning tactics to obtain tasty morsels of shawarma, a kebab-like snack popular in Moscow.
With children the dogs “play cute” by putting their heads on youngsters’ knees and staring pleadingly into their eyes to win sympathy – and scraps.
Dr Poiarkov added: “Dogs are surprisingly good psychologists.”
Now had this been a normal day then I would have had the time to complete this story about the tenacity of dogs. But a failed wireless modem earlier today (Thursday) meant the loss of too many hours fighting technology. It was all sorted just a little before 5pm. It is now 6.15 pm and dinner is ready and, frankly, my brain is too tired to continue.
So stay with this fascinating story about stray dogs as I continue it tomorrow (Saturday, 20th.).
Being in the present is the key message that we can learn from dogs. Why is this so important?
‘Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.’ ~Thich Nhat Hanh
[my blue emboldening]
Unlike Jon, I muse as an ‘amateur’ when I sense that the human psyche is attracted to fear. I use that word ‘attracted’ simply because some stimuli that touch our consciousness seem to have more force than others. Ergo, the response to the simple question of asking someone how they are, is likely to me more engaging if they come up with some form of crisis reply than by saying, “Everything’s fine, thanks!” Look at how the news media use the power of fear to capture our attention.
There is a strong biological explanation for this. From the Science daily website,
The amygdala (Latin, corpus amygdaloideum) is an almond-shape set of neurons located deep in the brain’s medial temporal lobe. Shown to play a key role in the processing of emotions, the amygdala forms part of the limbic system.
In humans and other animals, this subcortical brain structure is linked to both fear responses and pleasure. Its size is positively correlated with aggressive behaviour across species. In humans, it is the most sexually-dimorphic brain structure, and shrinks by more than 30% in males upon castration.
Conditions such as anxiety, autism, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias are suspected of being linked to abnormal functioning of the amygdala, owing to damage, developmental problems, or neurotransmitter imbalance.
For more information about the topic Amygdala, read the full article at Wikipedia.org
I am going to get to the point of this article but stay with me a little longer. Let’s look some more at the ‘fight or flight’ aspect of our brains. From the website, How Stuff Works,
It’s dark out, and you’re home alone. The house is quiet other than the sound of the show you’re watching on TV. You see it and hear it at the same time: The front door is suddenly thrown against the door frame. Your breathing speeds up. Your heart races. Your muscles tighten.
An instant later, you know it’s the wind. No one is trying to get into your home.
For a split second, you were so afraid that you reacted as if your life were in danger, your body initiating the fight-or-flight response that is critical to any animal’s survival. But really, there was no danger at all. What happened to cause such an intense reaction? What exactly is fear? In this article, we’ll examine the psychological and physical properties of fear, find out what causes a fear response and look at some ways you can defeat it.
What is Fear?
Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals that cause a racing heart, fast breathing and energized muscles, among other things, also known as the fight-or-flight response. The stimulus could be a spider, a knife at your throat, an auditorium full of people waiting for you to speak or the sudden thud of your front door against the door frame.
The brain is a profoundly complex organ. More than 100 billion nerve cells comprise an intricate network of communications that is the starting point of everything we sense, think and do. Some of these communications lead to conscious thought and action, while others produce autonomic responses. The fear response is almost entirely autonomic: We don’t consciously trigger it or even know what’s going on until it has run its course.
Because cells in the brain are constantly transferring information and triggering responses, there are dozens of areas of the brain at least peripherally involved in fear. But research has discovered that certain parts of the brain play central roles in the process:
Thalamus – decides where to send incoming sensory data (from eyes, ears, mouth, skin)
Sensory cortex – interprets sensory data
Hippocampus – stores and retrieves conscious memories; processes sets of stimuli to establish context
Amygdala – decodes emotions; determines possible threat; stores fear memories
Hypothalamus – activates “fight or flight” response
Now I originally called this article Present Perfect but WordPress quickly indicated that the title had already been used. Once again, the old memory cells are failing me! In fact the post of the name Present Perfect was published on the 8th June, just a couple of months ago. Glad that I was reminded because from that article in June,
Did you see Mr. Holland’s Opus? About Glenn Holland’s lifetime of teaching music to a high school band. In one scene he is giving a private lesson to Gertrude. She is playing clarinet, making noises that can only be described as other-worldly. He is clearly frustrated. As is she. Finally Mr. Holland says, “Let me ask you a question. When you look in the mirror what do you like best about yourself?”
“My hair,” says Gertrude.
“Why?”
“Well, my father always says that it reminds him of the sunset.”
After a pause, Mr. Holland says, “Okay. Close your eyes this time. And play the sunset.”
And from her clarinet? Music. Sweet music.
Sometime today, I invite you to set aside the manual, or the list, or the prescription.
Take a Sabbath moment. . . close your eyes and play the sunset.
Mary Oliver describes such a moment this way, “. . .a seizure of happiness. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished.”
Because, in such a moment, we are in, quite literally, a State of Grace. In other words, what we experience here is not as a means to anything else.
If I am to focused on evaluating, I cannot bask in the moment.
If I am measuring and weighing, I cannot marvel at little miracles.
If I am anticipating a payoff, I cannot give thanks for simple pleasures.
If I am feeling guilty about not hearing or living the music, I cannot luxuriate in the wonders of the day.
Beautiful thoughts all woven around the power of focusing on the moment (if you want to catch up on the full article it is here).
Jon’s article last Monday was all about the way forward in a positive, well-being sense. In that article Jon showed the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. It’s reproduced again below; spend a few moments absorbing the nature and sense of each level in that hierarchy.
Now ponder on that fear – ‘fight or flight’ – response. Most likely it’s going to be initiated in the ‘Safety’ level but flick straight down one level to the ‘Physiological’ layer. All very primitive stuff and utterly out of our control! Remember from the extract above, “The fear response is almost entirely autonomic.”
Even modest amounts of these fear responses is very wearying, very unsettling. Remember Jon touched on that when he wrote,
The point I’m trying to make is that the same panic I notice in many of the companies I work in, and in me, is based on fear of the unknown and on a lack of trust in all its forms. I’ve deliberately underlined that last phrase because it is so incredibly important. The truth is that we get more of what we focus on. So we can choose to focus on the constant news of more difficulties, hardship and redundancies, or we can focus on what is working.
So because our fear response is entirely autonomic and because there is so much out there, all around us, pulling those autonomic strings we have to actively, quite deliberately, do what dogs (and many other animals) do quite naturally. We deliberately have to focus on spending time being in the present!
There was a recent piece from Leo Babauta about being in the present. While he doesn’t touch on the underlying biology of why we humans are so ‘attracted’ to fear, he does offer some excellent advice about being in the present.
No matter how out-of-control your day is, no matter how stressful your job or life becomes, the act of being present can become an oasis. It can change your life, and it’s incredibly simple.
Look at Lorraine’s website (a recent visitor to Learning from Dogs). In particular this piece, from which I quote,
3. The Serenity Prayer – all about accepting the things I cannot change and changing the things I can.
4. People are always more important than things. Things can mostly be replaced but people cannot.
5. Do it now – if there is something to be done, then what is stopping me from doing it straight away?
6. If I appreciate and look after what I have now, there will be a positive flow back to me in the future. If I am neglectful and ungrateful with what I have now, I cannot expect to be rewarded with more in the future.
7. Be quiet and keep breathing – no one will know how crazy I feel inside
8. Don’t hold on to people or things too tightly. Be open to letting go and letting be.
9. It is really important to let others know that I love them. They need to know now and often. Love isn’t just a beautiful feeling – show it by how I act and speak with those I love.
10. I can’t make anyone love me and I can’t fix anyone by loving them. I may have a script for how life should be but I have no control over other people, places or things. Go with the flow and accept what is.
(The blue emboldening is mine – highlighting the power of now.)
Grandson Morten - peace in the present
“Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.”
Ernst Friedrich “Fritz” Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977)
Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
It seems amazing to realise both that this far-sighted man was born a century ago this day and that his incredibly influential book, Small is Beautiful, was published 38 years ago.
The book has been hugely influential. Indeed, my gut sense is that it probably started the whole ‘green’ movement. The Times Literary Supplement of October 6, 1995 regarded E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered as among the 100 most influential books published since the end of the Second World War.
Just a personal note that for many years I lived just a few miles from Dartington in Devon (UK) where Schumacher College was founded in 1991. Named after the great man, it provided, and still does, learning for sustainable living. Perhaps no surprise at all that nearby Totnes became the world’s first ‘transition town’.
Want to find out more? Then go to the New Economics Institute website here and discover,
The New Economics Institute is a US organization that uniquely combines vision, theory, action, and communication to effect a transition to a new economy — an economy that gives priority to supporting human well-being and Earth’s natural systems. Our multidisciplinary approach employs research, applied theory, public campaigns, and educational events to describe an alternative socio-economic system that is capable of addressing the enormous challenges of our times. Our premise is that a fair and sustainable economy is possible and that ways must be found to realize it.
The Institute, formerly the E. F. Schumacher Society, is working in close partnership with the New Economics Foundation from London to add the programs and experience developed in the UK to its own work in the US.
Finally, to get a flavour of this wonderful man and the amazing legacy that he has left the planet, watch this short video of E.F. Schumacher answering a question from the moderator about whether or not Buddhist Economics can work in the West. (Question & Answer Panel at Great Circle Center, 3/19/77. Peter Gillingham Collection, E. F. Schumacher Library Archives.)
A big vote of thanks to Paul for plugging away for so long without any contribution from me. Unlike Paul who is retired, well retired in the sense of a paying job, I have a family, a dog (Jess) and the usual set of household overheads to cover, so the week is very much a working week for me. Ergo, I shall never be able to contribute to Learning from Dogs in the same manner as Paul but a regular contribution is assured. To get things rolling again, I want to re-publish an article that I wrote on my business blog the other day.
Removing the fear of the unknown
Seeing the light
I’ve been working with most of my clients recently through painful transformations brought about by the economic downturn.
An interesting metaphor really because since the first wave of uncertainty triggered panic, first noticed in the UK banking system, I have been picking up on that uncertainty that feels like it’s stalking the globe and has been for some time. Recent stock market crashes have simply exacerbated this and that, coupled with the riots taking place in major cities in the UK, make for pretty disturbing reading.
Interestingly, I, too, have been aware of an underlying fear that was difficult either to name or source.
It has been rather like a deep river in that whilst the surface feels slow-moving, currents are moving things powerfully below.
So this ‘fear’ has caused a few household changes.
1) We now are the proud owners of 12 chickens. Our youngest son and I have dug up the back lawn and planted vegetables and built a poly tunnel.
2) We have also installed a wood burning cooker. Right back down to the base of Maslow’s triangle really!
Maslow's triangle of needs
These feelings have brought about such change everywhere and I wonder seriously whether we will ever return to what was; indeed would we want to?
I might not have mentioned it in previous blogs but as well as an engineering background, in latter years, I have focused on how success in business is linked directly to aspects of relationships and how we are in our relationships with others, so things like integrity, self-awareness and the ability to see the point of view of others, and modify our approach appropriately.
To inform this, some 7 years ago, I embarked on an MA in Core Process Psychotherapy, primarily to work on myself so that I could be the best I could be in my relationships, in and out of work.
The point I’m trying to make is that the same panic I notice in many of the companies I work in, and in me, is based on fear of the unknown and on a lack of trust in all its forms. I’ve deliberately underlined that last phrase because it is so incredibly important.
The truth is that we get more of what we focus on.
So we can choose to focus on the constant news of more difficulties, hardship and redundancies, or we can focus on what is working.
In the workplace this positive focus has been pulling people together across functions and sites and pooling resources and ideas.
When we realise we’re not doing this alone it’s amazing how much lighter a load can feel and how much more inspired we all feel.
I also notice how humour begins to flow and what a powerful antidote for doom and gloom that is.
Transformation is never easy but the rewards far exceed the effort put in ten fold.
So what is it going to be? Are we all going to bow down to the god of Doom & Gloom, fear and anxiety, heaping more and more gifts around it, or are we going to start noticing and focusing on the other neglected god – that of relationship, joy, trust, abundance and lightness?
Whatever the future holds for us all a belief in our inherent ability to adapt and change and focus on the greater good rather than fear, anxiety, greed and selfishness is the only sustainable way forward.
In Paul Gilding’s book, The Great Disruption, there is a chapter called When the Dam of Denial Breaks. On page 121 Paul Gilding writes this,
To argue we are naturally greedy and competitive and can’t change is like arguing that we engage naturally in murder and infanticide as our forebears the chimps do and therefore as we did. We have certain tendencies in our genes, but unlike other creatures we have the proven capacity to make conscious decisions to overcome them and also the proven ability to build a society with laws and values to enshrine and, critically, to enforce such changes when these tendencies come to the surface.
So don’t underestimate how profoundly we can change. We are still capable of evolution, including conscious evolution. This coming crisis is perhaps the greatest opportunity in millennia for a step change in human society.
The United States of America gets a lot of stick, rightly so, for it’s greedy consumption of energy, especially the use of coal. According to the World Coal Association, the USA in 2010 produced 932 million tons of hard coal, second in the world to China that produced 3,162 million tons.
Coal mine in Wyoming
But the one thing that the USA has shown time and time again is that it has the capacity to change very quickly, especially when the country, from its leaders to its entrepreneurs, senses a global leadership opportunity. With that in mind, read the latest release from the Earth Policy Institute, reproduced below,
AUGUST 10, 2011 A Fifty Million Dollar Tipping Point?
Lester R. Brown
At a press conference on July 21, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was contributing $50 million to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. Michael Brune, head of the Sierra Club, called it a “game changer”. It is that, but it also could push the United States, and indeed the world, to a tipping point on the climate issue.
It is one thing for Michael Brune to say coal has to go, but quite another when Michael Bloomberg says so. Few outside the environmental community know who Michael Brune is, but every business person knows Michael Bloomberg as one of the most successful business entrepreneurs of his generation.
The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign has two main goals. The first is to prevent the permitting and construction of new coal-fired power plants. So far 153 proposed power plants have been taken off the board. The second goal is to close the 492 existing plants. The Sierra Club lists 71 plants already scheduled for total or partial closure, most of them by 2016.
The efforts to stabilize climate will be won or lost with coal, the world’s largest source of carbon emissions. The effort to phase out coal is now well under way in the United States, the world’s second ranking coal user after China.
There are likely to be many ripple effects from the Bloomberg grant. To begin with, it may encourage other philanthropists to invest in climate stabilization.
The prospect for investment in coal, already deteriorating, will weaken even faster. In August 2010, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) announced that several leading U.S. investment banks, including Bank of America and J.P. Morgan, had ceased lending to companies involved in mountaintop removal coal mining. Now with Bloomberg’s opposition, investors will be even more wary of coal.
The Bloomberg-Sierra initiative again focuses attention on the 13,200 lives lost each year in the United States due to air pollution from burning coal. If deaths from black lung disease among coal miners are included the number climbs even higher. The number of coal-related deaths in one year dwarfs total U.S. fatalities in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We invest heavily in protecting the lives of our troops in the Middle East, and rightly so. Bloomberg is saying let’s do the same for our people at home.
In addition, this initiative brings attention to the health care costs to society of burning coal. These are currently estimated at more than $100 billion per year, roughly $300 for every person in the United States or $1,200 for a family of four. These costs are real, but it is the American people, not the coal companies, who shoulder the burden.
Further reinforcing the urgency of phasing out coal are the more extreme weather events that climate scientists have been warning about for decades. During the first half of 2011 we watched TV news channels become weather channels. First it was a record number of tornadoes in one month, including the one that demolished Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Then, a few weeks later, an even more powerful tornado demolished Joplin, Missouri. As drought and heat sparked record or near-record wildfires in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the lower Mississippi Basin was flooding. Searing heat waves scorched the southern Great Plains, the Midwest, and the East Coast. Intense heat has continued to break records across the country as Texas suffers its most severe one-year drought on record.
For coal, the handwriting is on the wall. Between 2007 and 2010, coal use in the United States dropped 8 percent. (See data.) Meanwhile, more than 300 new wind farms came online, totaling over 23,000 megawatts of generating capacity—the electricity output equivalent of 23 coal-fired power plants.
When people were asked in a national poll where they would like to get their electricity from, only 3 percent opted for coal. Despite the coal industry’s heavy expenditures to promote “clean coal,” it is still a loser in the public mind.
In addition to the Sierra Club, RAN, and a talented team of Earthjustice lawyers, the anti-coal movement also has allies in Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, the latter with its highly developed capacity to focus public attention on environmental issues. This was evident in May when a Greenpeace team of eight daring activists scaled the 450-foot Fisk coal plant smokestack located in Chicago and painted “Quit Coal” on it. They were drawing public attention to the deadly air pollution in the city coming from the plant.
As the United States closes its coal-fired power plants, it sends a message to the world. With Michael Bloomberg’s grant bolstering the Sierra Club’s well-organized program to phase out coal, we can now imagine a coal-free United States on the horizon. The United States could again become a world leader, this time in stabilizing climate.
“The United States could again become a world leader, this time in stabilizing climate.” That would be a dream come true, a dream of unimaginable consequences.
My fellow author, Jon, returns from a long journey into the interior!
Fellow author, Jon.
If you look at the right-hand margin of Learning from Dogs, you will see that under the label Founding Authors there are two names! Over the past months Jon, as many of you may have noticed, has been absent. Indeed, Jon’s last Post on this Blog was on the 2nd January.
Jon’s absence has simply been the result of the total focus that was required to complete his Masters degree in Core Process Psychotherapy, thus adding another string to an already very professional bow. That focus included the writing of an extremely challenging thesis, all 16,000 words, then the total re-write of that thesis! That is now all behind Jon!
So from next week, Jon will be participating again on Learning from Dogs with his unique blend of professional and personal experiences. Indeed, one might argue that the challenges that face our global society need, more than ever, the insight and wisdom of such people. Am I biased? Yes, deeply so!
In the early part of 2007 I drew heavily on Jon’s expertise as I tried to make sense of what, at the time, was a deeply traumatic period. The testament to that relationship with Jon was a greater self-awareness and contentment than I had ever known and, subsequently in December 2007, me meeting Jeannie in Mexico and our ultimate marriage and new home in Payson, Arizona. As outcomes go, it doesn’t get better than that!
Back to that last article from Jon. In it he wrote,
Plus I did want to expand, just a touch, on what Paul wrote yesterday, more or less reflecting on an article by Leo Babauta. In that post, Paul quoted Leo writing:
The thing I’ve learned, and it’s not some new truth but an old one that took me much too long to learn, is that if you learn to be content with who you are and where you are in life, it changes everything.
In a very real sense what Leo is saying is that if you don’t love yourself you can’t possibly ‘love’ the world around you. Now this is incredibly easy to consider, too easy in fact, because the truth of loving oneself first is, for the vast majority of people, a complex, confusing and unclear journey, as in ‘self-journey’. Read that quote from Leo again and see how he writes, ‘an old one [as in truth] that took me much too long to learn‘.
I’m sure when Leo writes ‘too long to learn‘ he is, in effect, acknowledging the very individual circumstances that lead to a person developing the awareness that is expressed in that quote ‘if you learn to be content with who you are and where you are in life, it changes everything‘.
So if 2011 is going to be a challenging year then hang on to the only rock in your life – yourself! Embrace the reality that you, like all of us, do your best. Be good and kind to you.
“So if 2011 is going to be a challenging year then hang on to the only rock in your life – yourself! Embrace the reality that you, like all of us, do your best. Be good and kind to you.”
So to each and every one of you reading this, be good and kind to you!
Welcome back Jon.
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes.
But if one believes, then miracles occur. Henry Miller
For a number of reasons, both private and public, I have not been feeling as creative as normal these last 24 hours. What I am conscious of is that events of this week, from the riots in the UK, the chaos of financial markets, right through to the death of our dog Tess have all contributed to a mental heaviness.
So I am taking a small creative short-cut, as it were, by writing about a film that we watched on Monday night; Fierce Light.
There is a trailer on YouTube. This is how it is presented,
A Feature Documentary By Velcrow Ripper
From the Director of Scared Sacred & The Producer of The Corporation
“Fierce Light” is a feature documentary that captures the exciting movement of Spiritual Activism that is exploding around the planet, and the powerful personalities that are igniting it.
Fueled by the belief that “another world is possible,” the film portrays stories of what Martin Luther King called “Love in Action,” and Gandhi called “Soul Force”; what Ripper is calling “Fierce Light.” Acclaimed filmmaker Velcrow Ripper (Scared Sacred) takes an insightful look at change motivated by love, featuring interviews with spiritual activists Thich Nhat Hanh, Desmond Tutu, Daryl Hannah, Julia Butterfly Hill, and more.
If you would like to sink a little deeper into the film and what the motivations are behind the making of it, then do go to the web site Fierce Light.
Jean and I found the film inspiring and beautifully presented. It came over as a film that seriously approached the topic of human consciousness and gave plenty of opportunity to reflect on some of the many forces within our societies at this present time.
Then you may like to watch this talk by the Director, Velcrow Ripper (actually born Steve Ripper in 1963), broken into two parts as follows,
The film and this talk by Mr. Ripper both date back to 2009 so, in the light of where we are in August 2011, they are proving to be extremely relevant.
A new book about dogs by John Bradshaw offers a theme for today.
Yesterday, I mentioned an article from the current issue of The Economist. Also in that issue was a review of a new book from John Bradshaw, called Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behaviour Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet. You can read the review here. But in terms of the theme of today’s post, read this paragraph from that review,
Dogs are not like nicely brought-up wolves, says the author, nor are they much like people despite their extraordinary ability to enter our lives and our hearts. This is not to deny that some dogs are very clever or that they are capable of feeling emotion deeply. But their intelligence is different from ours. The idea that some dogs can understand as many words as a two-year-old child is simply wrong and an inappropriate way of trying to measure canine intellect. Rather, their emotional range is more limited than ours, partly because, with little sense of time, they are trapped almost entirely in the present. Dogs can experience joy, anxiety and anger. But emotions that demand a capacity for self-reflection, such as guilt or jealousy, are almost certainly beyond them, contrary to the convictions of many dog owners.
That last sentence is key, “But emotions that demand a capacity for self-reflection, such as guilt or jealousy, are almost certainly beyond them, contrary to the convictions of many dog owners.”
So in yesterday’s post, when I wrote about the terrible uncertainty that millions and millions of humans must be experiencing, there is no useful metaphor available to link this human idea to how the dogs feel; as John Bradshaw writes, this level of reflection is just beyond them.
We hug a dog (or any animal) to escape from matters complex. As Sue Miller wrote so beautifully, “I was taken up by them [pets] and their life and energy, by what they needed and asked of me. I let go of everything difficult or complex in my life. As I was driving home, I thought of all this, and it seemed to me that I’d chosen work which offered me daily the presence of pure innocence, a forgiveness for all my human flaws.”
So accept the gift of pure innocence that our pets give us.
But what ‘gift’ can we humans accept that relates to the very complex world that we humans see all around us?
What about hope? Let’s accept the gift of hope. As I wrote recently in an email to a friend (before the London riots burst upon our consciousness),
‘Hope’ is going to be the key message over the coming weeks and months because the feeling that the ‘end of the world is nigh’ is incredibly strong, well it is to me!
Of course, the ‘end of the world’ feeling is, as you well know from me, really the end of an era. But an era where for decades money has equalled power; ergo money has equalled control.
Now the speed of change must be terrifying to millions across the world. So out of that terror must come a new order, a new way of understanding that how we have treated our planet is a busted model and that it is time, indeed the 11th hour as it were, to find that new order, of love and sustainability with our planet, both in earthly and spiritual ways.
We must have faith in the hope that we are living through the chaotic transition from an era of greed and destruction to one where we have a future that goes on for thousands of years.
Learning from Dogs 