Tag: NaNoWriMo

The book! Part Three: Materialism

“Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.” Thus, it is reputed, spoke Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and who in many ways could be regarded as “the First American”.

In my previous chapter on short-termism, I quoted from an article by Larry Elliot, Economics Editor of The Guardian newspaper. The closing paragraphs of that article read:

“The premise of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate is that nothing will be done unless finance ministers are convinced of the need for action, especially given the damage caused by a deep recession and sluggish recovery.

Instead of preaching to the choir the plan is to show how to achieve key economic objectives – growth, investment, secure public finances, fairer distribution of income – while at the same time protecting the planet. The pitch to finance ministers will be that tackling climate change will require plenty of upfront investment that will boost growth rather than harm it.”

“ …. the plan is to show how to achieve key economic objectives ……. while at the same time protecting the planet.” [My italics]

That those two paragraphs and the phrase “key economic objectives” seem perfectly reasonable statements to me and, I don’t doubt, many, many others, illustrates how deeply we are entrenched in the money, or materialistic, world.

I have spent my whole life hearing the term ‘Gross Domestic Product’, or GDP as it is commonly described, and never ever stopped to wonder about the history of this well-known measure. Thus I was genuinely surprised to learn that the term is not yet one hundred years old, by some years. On the website Foreign Policy one finds a brief history of GDP: “One stat to rule them all.” It offers the following:

Out of the carnage of the Great Depression and World War II rose the idea of gross domestic product, or GDP: the ultimate measure of a country’s overall welfare, a window into an economy’s soul, the statistic to end all statistics. Its use spread rapidly, becoming the defining indicator of the last century. But in today’s globalized world, it’s increasingly apparent that this Nobel-winning metric is too narrow for these troubled economic times.

1937: Simon Kuznets, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, presents the original formulation of gross domestic product in his report to the U.S. Congress, “National Income, 1929-35.” His idea is to capture all economic production by individuals, companies, and the government in a single measure, which should rise in good times and fall in bad. GDP is born.

1944: Following the Bretton Woods conference that established international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, GDP becomes the standard tool for sizing up a country’s economy.

1959: Economist Moses Abramovitz becomes one of the first to question whether GDP accurately measures a society’s overall well-being. He cautions that “we must be highly skeptical of the view that long-term changes in the rate of growth of welfare can be gauged even roughly from changes in the rate of growth of output.”

1962: But GDP evangelists reign. Arthur Okun, staff economist for U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers, coins Okun’s Law, which holds that for every 3-point rise in GDP, unemployment will fall 1 percentage point. The theory informs monetary policy: Keep growing the economy, and everything will be just fine. [My italics]

Keep growing the economy and everything will be fine! Thank goodness we have unlimited resources on this planet! Please forgive my irony!

Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” but my understanding was that the saying came from William Edwards Deming; October 1900- December 1993. Deming was fundamentally an American statistician although his bio reveals many other talents: engineer; professor; author; lecturer; and management consultant.

Irrespective of the origins of the saying, it misses one fundamental point! That is of being certain that what you wish to manage is being measured appropriately. Not measuring pears if you wish to manage apples!

Stay with this idea for a while longer.

There is an organisation known as the Social Progress Imperative. The organisation is described on their website, as follows:

THE IMPERATIVE
Numerous studies have found a high correlation between economic growth and a wide variety of social indicators, yet there is growing awareness that economic measures alone do not fully capture social progress.

The Social Progress Imperative’s mission is to improve the quality of lives of people around the world, particularly the least well off, by advancing global social progress. The Social Progress Index provides a robust, holistic and innovative measurement tool to guide countries’ choices to enable greater social progress and foster research and knowledge-sharing on the policies and investments that will best achieve that goal. Social progress is defined as the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.

The Social Progress Index is a tool that we hope will be widely used to inform and influence policies and institutions around the world. The Index is founded on the principle that what we measure guides the choices we make. By measuring the things that really matter to people — their basic needs, their food, shelter and security; their access to healthcare, education, and a healthy environment; their opportunity to improve their lives — the Social Progress Index is an attempt to reshape the debate about development.

“…. what we measure guides the choices we make.” Pretty flippin’ obvious when you think about it! As is understanding the “things that really matter to people”!

Michael Green is the Chief Executive Office (CEO) of the Social Progress Imperative. He gave a TED Talk in November, 2014 that is introduced:

The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were “handed down from god on tablets of stone.” But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1920s. We need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs, says Michael Green: the Social Progress Index. With charm and wit, he shows how this tool measures societies across the three dimensions that actually matter. And reveals the dramatic reordering of nations that occurs when you use it.

As Michael Green said at the October, 2014 TED Global conference: “GDP is imperfect and incomplete: The world urgently needs a measurement revolution.”

If now writing about the BBC radio show, The Goon Show, suggests I have lost the plot, just hang in with me for a few more moments.

The Goon Show ran from 1951 to 1960 and was broadcast by what was then known as the BBC Home Service. It was hilariously funny and became a comedy legend. It starred Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, not forgetting the wonderful narratives from Wallace Greenslade. The Goon Show was an integral part of my ‘education’ during my formative years; I was seven in November of 1951 and the radio was the source of news, current affairs, education, and humour. Spike Milligan was an outstanding actor in The Goon Show and became a comedy legend in his own right.

A quotation from dear, dear Spike seems a very fitting way to round off this chapter on materialism. Namely: “All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.“

1,272 words. Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

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Now although it is not part of the book, I was so impressed by Michael Green’s TED Talk, that it now follows. You will love it!

Published on Nov 11, 2014
The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were “handed down from god on tablets of stone.” But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1920s. We need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs, says Michael Green: the Social Progress Index. With charm and wit, he shows how this tool measures societies across the three dimensions that actually matter. And reveals the dramatic reordering of nations that occurs when you use it.

The book! Part Three: Short-termism

Our modern madness!

We live in an era that is addicted to short-termism. Largely, I’m bound to say, brought on by the financial services industry. Yet the influence of that same industry is enormous and percolates its way through most levels of most societies in most cultures and, without question, through the societies of most European and North American countries. One only needs to reflect on the critical importance of gaining and maintaining financial solvency for individuals. From having the creditworthiness to finance, and eventually pay off, a mortgage on a private dwelling, to accumulating a pension to provide some level of comfort in the ‘senior’ years and along the way managing to bring up children, have the odd vacation or two, and enjoy a small luxury or impulse purchase. So for the great majority of us it is practically impossible to live a life that doesn’t interact with banks, savings plans, building societies, pension providers, and often many other financial and investment companies.

Thus the financial services industry is an intimate part of the majority of the lives of private citizens in the ‘Western world’. Yet, ironically, my sense is that the majority of those same private individuals run their lives quite differently. I have in mind what might be called planning horizons.

Clearly buying a home is the most obvious example of long-term planning. But there’s a myriad of other involvements that we sign up to that require, nay demand, a long-term perspective. Having a family, studying for a degree or a post-graduate academic qualification, becoming an apprentice, driver’s licence, heavy goods vehicle (HGV) licence, saving for a pension, for a vacation, working in a company, or similar, with an eye on longer-term promotion and career advancement. I’ll stop there for I’m sure my point is clear!

In my trawl across the internet looking for supportive examples, I came across a paper published by the Aspen Institute called “Short-termism and US Capital Markets”. This institute declares on their website (in part) that “The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues.”

This US-based institute published the paper on short-termism in view of “the serious consequences they see for both investors and society at large.” The report refers to research by JP Morgan that is highly critical of the present-day love affair with short-term results: “[the research] indicating that a focus on quarterly earnings in US companies in order to show short-term profits is leading public companies to defer spending on marketing research, product design and prototype development and this reduction in investment is causing problems.”

If there’s one relatively recent event (I use the word “recent” in relation to the period when writing this book) that shows, dramatically shows, the madness of short-termism then it has to be the financial crisis of 2008. (As an aside, the term financial crisis seems an inadequate phrase when one considers the full range of negative consequences that blasted into the faces of millions of people in 2008.)

The Boston College Law School held a symposium in 2011 that led to a paper being published by Kent Greenfield, Professor and Law School Research Fund Scholar at Boston. That paper is available to read online. It carries the title: The Puzzle of Short-Termism. I think a few quotations from that paper will underline the madness that came to light post-2008 and that appears to still be with us. The paper opens, thus:

INTRODUCTION

When pondering the question of the “sustainable corporation,” as we did in this symposium, one of the intractable problems is the nature of the corporation to produce externalities. By noting this characteristic, I am not making a moral point but an economic one. The nature of the firm is to create financial wealth by producing goods and services for profit; without regulatory or contractual limits, the firm has every incentive to externalize costs onto those whose interests are not included in the firm’s current financial calculus.

Not much further on, Prof. Greenfield writes:

The more difficult kind of externality to address—especially if our focus is on the sustainability of the corporation—is the future externality. What I mean here is the kind of cost that a corporation’s management can externalize to the future. From management’s perspective, the future is a much more attractive place to push off costs. Stakeholders who must bear such future costs will be less aware of those costs than current costs, and even if they do learn of such future costs, they will be less able to gain the attention of regulators.

Then he offers this stark analysis:

If one is worried about the sustainability of corporations from an environmental, social, or political perspective, the problem of “short-termism” has to be a central worry. This is because, at least according to many who have thought seriously about the topic, in the long run the interests of corporations conflate with those of society as a whole. (For the sake of this Essay I will assume this to be the case, though I have stated some disagreement elsewhere.) Short-termism is a problem whether we focus our attention on the sustainability of the corporation or the ethics of its management.

Short-termism is also costly economically, since the economy as a whole benefits when companies have a long-term strategy. The economy is a summation of the fortunes of the millions of companies and individuals that make it up; if most companies make decisions that prioritize the short-term at the expense of the long-term, we all suffer. A nation’s wealth grows more over time when companies invest for the future and maintain their viability as a going concern.

Just one more extract from the paper, that without the preceding extracts would not have carried the weight and gravity that struck me, and I hope strikes you, dear reader when you read the following:

The financial crisis of 2008 brought into sharp relief the economic costs of short-term management. Among the competing theories on the cause of the financial collapse—the over-dependence on derivatives, the overuse of leverage, the culture of greed and entitlement in the finance industry, just to name a few—a focus on the short term is an omnipresent narrative thread. If managers and financiers had taken a more long-term view of the health of their own companies and the fortunes of their investors, we might not have seen the myriad other problems come to such a head. The addiction to leverage, derivatives, and greed that caused the market to become a casino would only have been possible in a business culture where short-term gains are prioritized over long-term costs. What might have been assumed to be costs that would be suffered some time in the distant future are being absorbed now. John Maynard Keynes was wrong on this point: in the long run, we are not all dead.

So despite some naysayers, the problem of short-termism is very real. Shareholders hold their stocks, on average, for less than a year, and even less for small companies. Institutional investors have been said to be particularly bad on this front, acting “more as traders, seeking short-term gain.” Managers admit that they make decisions that harm the company in the long-term in order to meet short-term earnings expectations. In 2006, both the Conference Board and the Business Roundtable, two of the nation’s most prominent business organizations, issued reports “decrying the short-term focus of the stock market and its dominance over American business behavior.” And, let’s remember, that was two years before the collapse.

The paper really needs to be read in full, especially for any individual trying to understand the pros and cons of a wide range of personal investment decisions. If only, to use Prof. Greenfield’s words, “This is because, at least according to many who have thought seriously about the topic, in the long run the interests of corporations conflate with those of society as a whole.”

I sense readers might be on the verge of giving up with this book because it ain’t nothing to do with dogs! There was a large part of me that agonised over what to include and what to leave out, not only with this chapter but with all the chapters in this section. Perhaps I might be forgiven for making another ‘sales pitch’ for this whole section! That is that if good, honest folk aren’t as fully aware of the major characteristics of this new century, as this author wasn’t before the research, we cannot develop the passion and zeal for saying and promoting, as far and wide as we can, that ‘enough is enough’!

One more quotation to round off the chapter.

The Guardian newspaper published an article in October 2013 written by Larry Elliott, the newspaper’s economics editor. It was entitled: Saving the planet from short-termism will take man-on-the-moon commitment.

We choose to go to the moon. So said John F Kennedy in September 1962 as he pledged a manned lunar landing by the end of the decade.

The US president knew that his country’s space programme would be expensive. He knew it would have its critics, but he took the long-term view. Warming to his theme in Houston that day, JFK went on: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others too.”

That was the world’s richest country at the apogee of its power in an age where both Democrats and Republicans were prepared to invest in the future. Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, took a plan for a system of interstate highways and made sure it happened.

Contrast that with today’s America, which looks less like the leader of the free world than a banana republic with a reserve currency. Planning for the long term now involves last-ditch deals on Capitol Hill to ensure the federal government can remain open until January and debts can be paid at least until February.

The US is not the only country with advanced short-termism. It merely provides the most egregious example of the disease. This is a world of fast food and short attention spans, of politicians so dominated by a 24/7 news agenda that they have lost the habit of planning for the long term.

Tough stuff!

That doesn’t get any easier to read and take in as one continues.

Politics, technology and human nature all militate in favour of kicking the can down the road. The most severe financial and economic crisis in more than half a century has further discouraged policymakers from raising their eyes from the present to the distant horizon.

Clearly, though, the world faces long-term challenges that will only become more acute through prevarication. These include coping with a bigger and ageing global population, ensuring growth is sustainable and equitable, providing resources to pay for modern transport and energy infrastructure, and reshaping international institutions so they represent the world as it is in the early 21st century rather than as it was in 1945.

Or possibly for society to really grasp? Larry Elliot’s closing words:

Another conclave of the global great and good is looking at what should be done in the much trickier area of climate change. The premise of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate is that nothing will be done unless finance ministers are convinced of the need for action, especially given the damage caused by a deep recession and sluggish recovery.

Instead of preaching to the choir the plan is to show how to achieve key economic objectives – growth, investment, secure public finances, fairer distribution of income – while at the same time protecting the planet. The pitch to finance ministers will be that tackling climate change will require plenty of upfront investment that will boost growth rather than harm it.

Will this approach work? Well, maybe. But it will require business to see the long-term benefits of greening the economy as well as the short-term costs, because that would lead to the burst of technological innovation needed to accelerate progress. And it will require the same sort of commitment it took to win a world war or put a man on the moon.

Despite Mr. Elliot’s powerful plea, there might be a school of opinion, a growing school of opinion, that would argue fundamentally with the words of that plea. I’m referring to: “… the plan is to show how to achieve key economic objectives – growth, investment, secure public finances, fairer distribution of income – while at the same time protecting the planet.”

The next chapter on Materialism explains why “key economic objectives” may be the last type of measurement our world now demands.

2,217 words. Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

The book! Part Three: Power and Corruption

I am using the software Scrivener to write this book. I fail to recall how I came across Scrivener but, boy of boy, am I glad I did. It is fabulous. One can set out the raw structure of the book, section by section, chapter by chapter, much helping keep one’s mind on the construction of the book as the writing progresses.

All of which is a preamble for me telling you that when I clicked on the chapter ‘folder’ that was named Power and corruption, a folder empty of any words, my heart sank. Power and corruption! Where, oh where, does one start!

Then almost immediately kicked myself; metaphorically speaking! Simply for the reason that one of the most famous sayings is surely that of Lord Acton, the 19th-century British historian: “Power tends to corrupt; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is the place to start this essay on power and corruption.

History has plenty of examples of the tendency of power to corrupt. Of course, when the word ‘power’ is used on its own it misses its natural companion words; the words ‘other people’. Ergo: Power over other people tends to corrupt; Absolute power over other people corrupts absolutely. Napoleon Bonaparte declaring himself as emperor comes to mind, as does further back in time, the Roman emperors, who declared themselves gods, demonstrated absolute corruption from the absolute power, over other people, that they wielded.

Anyway, returning to Lord Acton, or to give him his full name, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton. He was the 19th century historian and moralist who was otherwise known more simply as Lord Acton, as in the first Baron Acton (Lord Acton lived from 1834 until 1902). His expression, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely; ……” arose expressed in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

Great men are almost always bad men: Now there’s a statement to play with!

Despite the text written in Lord Acton’s letter to the Bishop having become a favourite of the many collectors of quotations, it is probable that Lord Acton didn’t invent the idea; quotations very similar had been uttered by several authors well before 1887.

Let us explore the central question as to why it is that power has a corrupting characteristic; a largely corrupting characteristic might be more accurate. For in the Smithsonian magazine of October, 2012, there was an article that examined the social science behind why power brings out both the worst in some people, but also, at times, the best in people.

Why Power Corrupts

His [Lord Acton’s] maxim has been vividly illustrated in psychological studies, notably the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which was halted when one group of students arbitrarily assigned to serve as “prison guards” over another group began to abuse their wards.

But new scholarship is bringing fresh subtlety to psychologists’ understanding of when power leads people to take ethical shortcuts — and when it doesn’t. Indeed, for some people, power seems to bring out their best. After all, good people do win elective office, says Katherine A. DeCelles, a professor of management at the University of Toronto, and no few business executives want to do good while doing well. “When you give good people power,” DeCelles says she wondered, are they more able than others “to enact that moral identity, to do what’s right?”

In a study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, DeCelles and her co-authors found that the answer is yes. People’s sense of “moral identity”—the degree to which they thought it was important to their sense of self to be “caring,” “compassionate,” “fair,” “generous” and so on—shaped their responses to feelings of power.

Christopher Shea, the author of the Smithsonian article, went on to explain that:

DeCelles and her colleagues developed moral identity scores for two groups, 173 working adults and 102 undergraduates, by asking the participants to rate how important those ethically related attributes were to them. The researchers had some participants write an essay recalling an incident in which they felt powerful, while others wrote about an ordinary day. Then the participants took part in lab experiments to probe how they balanced self-interest against the common good.

Christopher Shea then concluded:

The experiment involving the adults found a similar relationship between moral identity, ethical behavior and innate aggressiveness. Assertive people who scored low on the moral-identity scale were more likely to say they’d cheated their employer in the past week than more passive types with similar moral-identity scores. But among those with high moral-identity scores, the assertive people were less likely to have cheated.

In sum, the study found, power doesn’t corrupt; it heightens pre-existing ethical tendencies. Which brings to mind another maxim, from Abraham Lincoln: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Yet despite the evidence presented that power does not automatically corrupt, the news is so often full of stories of powerful men, well predominantly men, behaving badly in all manner of ways: sex with their staff, assaulting others, such as hotel maids, cheating and lying. So if there is no direct wiring between power and corruption, that power does not automatically corrupt, it still leaves open the question of why power so often does corrupt. What motivates people in power to behave so badly?

In my research, I came across an article in WIRED magazine, How Power Corrupts, that revealed:

Psychologists refer to this [Why does power corrupt] as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. According to psychologists, one of the main problems with authority is that it makes us less sympathetic to the concerns and emotions of others. For instance, several studies have found that people in positions of authority are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging other people. They also spend much less time making eye contact, at least when a person without power is talking.

Then later on Jonah Lehrer, the author of the article, explained:

Although people almost always know the right thing to do — cheating is wrong — their sense of power makes it easier to rationalize away the ethical lapse. For instance, when the psychologists asked the subjects (in both low- and high-power conditions) how they would judge an individual who drove too fast when late for an appointment, people in the high-power group consistently said it was worse when others committed those crimes than when they did themselves. In other words, the feeling of eminence led people to conclude that they had a good reason for speeding — they’re important people, with important things to do — but that everyone else should follow the posted signs.

Concluding:

The larger lesson is that Foucault had a point: The dynamics of power can profoundly influence how we think. When we climb the ladder of status, our inner arguments get warped and our natural sympathy for others is vanquished. Instead of fretting about the effects of our actions, we just go ahead and act. We deserve what we want. And how dare they resist. Don’t they know who we are?

At this point, I sat staring at the screen for some time, wondering what to make of my research findings. Just ‘hearing’ my mind coming up with questions, questions that were rhetorical in nature, not hearing hard, clear questions that could command hard, clear answers. Questions such as:

• Is this characteristic of power warping our judgment, profoundly influencing how we think, as Foucault is recorded as saying, ‘hard-wired’ in humans?
• If so, has it always been this way?
• If not having always been this way with man, then what brought it on?
• Irrespective of the scale of an emergency affecting mankind, either on a regional or global scale, would power always have a tendency to corrupt?
• What cultural changes would need to take place to break the link between power and corruption?
• Indeed, could there be any changes that would achieve this?

Readers will have realised that I have not offered a single example, over and above the fleeting mentions of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Roman emperors, of power and corruption in recent times. For the straightforward reason that there are too many examples of the abuses of power around and picking, almost randomly, one from here and one from there, in no way adds anything to this chapter. That’s my view and I’m sticking to it!
1,443 words. Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

The book! Part Three: Selfishness

Selfish is a plain word that is easily understood. Well one would easily think so! Thus, one might grant, so too would the word selfishness be easily understood.

Let’s start with the dictionary.

Selfishness: n stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others.
Selfish: adj concerned chiefly or only with yourself and your advantage to the exclusion of others

The dictionary entry for Selfish goes on to explain:

Someone who is selfish cares only about themselves and doesn’t consider others. If a ship is sinking and you refuse to let anyone else into your 4-person lifeboat, you’re extremely selfish.

Selfish combines the pronoun self-, meaning to or for yourself, with the suffix-ish, for “having the character of.” So if your actions are selfish, they all have to do with getting something for yourself, like attention, or candy, or power. Selfish is usually meant to be an insult; someone selfish goes beyond just taking care of themselves, and actively takes from others. The opposite of selfish is self-sacrificing, which means, “giving everything to others and sacrificing your own needs.”

All well and good.

Where it starts to be less than ‘black and white’ is when the issue of boundaries is embraced. In other words, the boundary between what is absolutely selfish, what is moderately selfish, what is moderately self-sacrificing and what is absolutely self-sacrificing. Underlining the subjective nature of the words selfish and selfishness. That’s even before considering that one man’s selfishness is another’s normal behaviour!

There’s a blogsite called Psychology of Selfishness authored by Ifat Glassman, a painter living in Redmond, Washington, USA. I have no knowledge of whether or not she has an academic background in psychology but a post on that blogsite back in February, 2010 certainly offers some intriguing ideas.

Thursday, February 18, 2010
What is Selfishness?
Before I get into what selfishness is I want to briefly answer – why is it important to know what is selfishness and what is not?
The reason is that selfishness is a fundamental principle – whom are you live for – for yourself or for others, and what does it even mean to live for yourself? The answer to these questions can determine the course of your life, the kind of actions you take and the emotional reward you ultimately receive from your life.
Secondly, selfishness is an ethical issue. If one misidentifies what selfishness is, one can experience unearned guilt or live a life which is not as good as one could have.

Ms. Glassman is spot on, in my humble opinion, in regarding selfishness as both an issue of ethics and a fundamental principle of life.

However, she goes on to say, after quoting “one of Ayn Rand greatest achievements was her identification of the true meaning of “selfishness”, to say:

The person who kills and steals and the person who produces and earns are considered as having the same moral quality, since they both do it to promote their own ends.
Is it any wonder, then, that people condemn selfishness – and is it any wonder that so many people feel guilty for any kind of happiness or enjoyment they pursue for themselves, not for others?
The fault here is in the basic understanding of what selfishness is, and in replacing “lack of value for human life” with “selfishness”.

I have a significant problem with the idea that a murderer can have the same moral quality as one who produces and earns and I don’t doubt I am alone with that opinion.

As do I have a problem with a sentence towards the end of her essay, “Selfishness, is actually demanding. Because happiness is demanding.” Clearly a need to turn to Ayn Rand herself for greater clarification.

But before so doing, you and I need to understand what is meant by Objectivism.

The website of The Atlas Society explains:

Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-1982).

Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs. Happiness requires that one live by objective principles, including moral integrity and respect for the rights of others. Politically, Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism. Under capitalism, a strictly limited government protects each person’s rights to life, liberty, and property and forbids that anyone initiate force against anyone else. The heroes of Objectivism are achievers who build businesses, invent technologies, and create art and ideas, depending on their own talents and on trade with other independent people to reach their goals.

Objectivism is optimistic, holding that the universe is open to human achievement and happiness and that each person has within him the ability to live a rich, fulfilling, independent life.

In the introduction to her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand proposes:

The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.

Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.

This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

When Ayn Rand goes on to write about those differences between the murderer and the worker, it shows to me that Ms. Glassman misinterpreted Rand’s proposition. Again, from Ayn Rand’s book:

There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level (see Ayn Rand’s book, “The Objectivist Ethics”).

That’s clearer to me; much more so. Yet it only goes to reinforce the maze within which one can easily become lost when exploring these ideas of selfishness.

Let me offer a little more from Ayn Rand:

If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man — a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice.
To redeem both man and morality, it is the concept of “selfishness” that one has to redeem.

The first step is to assert man’s right to a moral existence — that is: to recognize his need of a moral code to guide the course and the fulfillment of his own life . . . .

The reasons why man needs a moral code will tell you that the purpose of morality is to define man’s proper values and interests, that concern with his own interests is the essence of a moral existence, and that man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions.

Since all values have to be gained and/or kept by men’s actions, any breach between actor and beneficiary necessitates an injustice: the sacrifice of some men to others, of the actors to the nonactors, of the moral to the immoral. Nothing could ever justify such a breach, and no one ever has.

Ayn Rand then closes her Introduction by offering this proposition:

Just as man cannot survive by any random means, but must discover and practice the principles which his survival requires, so man’s self-interest cannot be determined by blind desires or random whims, but must be discovered and achieved by the guidance of rational principles. This is why the Objectivist ethics is a morality of rational self-interest—or of rational selfishness.

Since selfishness is “concern with one’s own interests,” the Objectivist ethics uses that concept in its exact and purest sense. It is not a concept that one can surrender to man’s enemies, nor to the unthinking misconceptions, distortions, prejudices and fears of the ignorant and the irrational. The attack on “selfishness” is an attack on man’s self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other.

How to summarise all of this with respect to the central theme of this section of the book? Back to that definition of Objectivism from The Atlas Society that was included earlier on. Back to these sentences:

“Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs. Happiness requires that one live by objective principles, including moral integrity and respect for the rights of others.”

Back to one single sentence: “Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs.”

I am drawn to Ernest Hemmingway’s classic novel, For Whom The Bell Tolls. Simply for the reason that the phrase seems so apt for mankind in this 21st century. The bell tolls for all of mankind and will not cease its tolling until we embrace a rational respect for the facts about our human nature and our needs.

1,849 words Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

The book! Part Three: Introduction

I described in the previous chapter how these are ‘interesting times’; albeit not using that particular phrase. What I wrote was, “ …. the feeling that we humans have to look outside of ourselves to find the inspiration and the motivation needed to make the changes in the sort of short timescales our present circumstances demand.”

Expanding that to state: “We live in very challenging times. Widely acknowledged for it seems rare these days to meet someone who doesn’t sense, to one degree or another, a feeling of vulnerability to today’s world. A sense that many aspects of their lives are beyond their control.
These are also times where it is widely acknowledged that the levers of privilege and money are undermining the rights and needs of so many, that there are unprecedented levels of deceit, lying and greed; all enveloped within an abuse of power.
That’s even before we embrace the matter of climate change and whether or not there is a potential “end-of-world” tipping point; the so-called beat of the butterfly’s wing.”

The rest of this section, under the theme of the challenges of our present times, of necessity, takes a closer look at six areas that, when I was musing about the construction of this book, came to mind as worthy of a degree of introspection. Six chapters that explore Selfishness, Power and Corruption, Short-termism, Poverty, Greed and, lastly, Materialism.

Now the last thing I want you, dear reader, is to groan and put down the book simply because you have no wish to plough through a litany of all that is wrong with our present times, most of which you are probably familiar with.

My justification for the following chapters is fundamentally wanting you to see where I am coming from and why I believe that these modern times are so very dangerous times for humanity, and much else in the natural world, and that we, as in mankind, have to find a way forward.

That’s how I set out when thinking about the overall objectives of this section. That my purpose was to reveal my own knowledge of each issue, including a good dollop of research, to offer my personal perspective of each same issue, and to allow you, the reader, to form your own conclusions and, inevitably, how much you agree or disagree with me.

But there are also some surprises; well there were for me. As I undertook the research into each aspect of the psychology, and more, of these challenges, I discovered much that had never occurred to me before. I suspect I am not alone regarding these findings.

So gird up your loins for a while as we start into the first aspect of these interesting times. Which is about the power of negativity.

464 words Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

Whoops!

Yesterday, I published a chapter from ‘the book’ under the title of The Power of Negativity.

However, as I contemplated a number of chapters coming along that, taken collectively, might seem out of place in a book that, essentially, offers a positive message, I decided an introduction was called for.

Thus in thirty minutes time that introduction is published.

I also realised that this introduction should have come before yesterday’s chapter on negativity.

So for those of you that might be following my draft, you poor souls, try and come at the Introduction as if it had been presented before The Power of Negativity.

Now for a complete change of topic!

Neighbour Dordie recently sent me the following.  Here’s Part One.

ooOOoo

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit)

11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n):The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

ooOOoo

Weren’t they fun?!

Part Two later on this week.

The book! Part Two: The power of negativity.

All we have to fear is fear itself.

Our brains are hard-wired to fear the things that could harm us. It’s an essential legacy of our early days when spiders, snakes and other harmful creatures, too numerous to list, could kill us. The part of the brain that protects us in this manner is the amygdala, an area of our brain that could be seen as our “fear centre”. It is an essential part of the body’s panic response system and numerous studies have shown that it lights up when people get scared in response to frightening situations. (Although recent research suggests that it may not be as simple as the amygdala being the direct source of our fear. I’m referring to a paper published in Nature Neuroscience in February, 2013.)

But whatever the precise human biological process in dealing with frightening situations, it doesn’t alter the fact that, to a very great extent, our lives in the twenty-first century are hamstrung by this ancient reflex action we all carry. What I have in mind is how we all tend to react to bad news as compared to good news. How our attention is much more likely to be grabbed by something frightening or sensational than by something positive, with the media headlines being the prime candidates of this.

A web search for classic newspaper headlines brought to light some wonderful old-timers. What about the English newspaper The Sun that ran a now infamous headline ‘Freddie Star Ate my Hamster‘ on its front page on March 13, 1986. The story was untrue, by the way!

Or the Australian Daily Telegraph in 1974 that announced: DARWIN TERROR STORM: 40 DIE!
Or The Washington Post of Monday, July 28th, 1952 that proclaimed: ’Saucer Outran Jet, Pilot Reveals’.

The advertising industry knows full well that making people feel needy, even if only very temporarily, is essential to generating a sale.

Not just the advertising industry. I well recall when I was a humble office equipment salesman for IBM in the UK in the early 1970s and helping spread the acceptance of the IBM Selectric typewriter, or golfball typewriter as it was often called, that when in front of a potential customer, one tried all sorts of questions that focussed on the limitations of the conventional electric typewriter. Asking questions such as how frequently did the typebars clash, or was there ever a need to have a different typeface?

Now these are quaint, almost charming examples of stirring up fear. Utterly trivial when compared to the heavy stuff. Around the time of writing the first draft of this book, in October 2014, the International Business Times ran a headline: US-Russia Nuclear War Could Wipe Out Humanity – Nuclear Physician Warns. The story opening:

A nuclear war that will deplete the ozone layer, emit radioactive pollution, form massive fire storms, and a nuclear winter could ignite between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician, an advocate of citizen action to address nuclear and environmental crises, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a 1985 Nobel Prize nominee warns that the Cold War has returned and could escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. “It’s an incredibly dangerous situation. … If there’s a nuclear war tonight, that’s the Northern Hemisphere (of the entire world) gone,” she said at the National Press Club Newsmaker press conference.

“If there’s a nuclear war tonight, that’s the Northern Hemisphere (of the entire world) gone,”

Now that’s negativity of the first order, and if you detect a slightly light-hearted tone to my words, then that is not intentional. It is just that it’s almost impossible, in my humble opinion, to have any serious, rational response to such a news item. We have no control over the ‘games’ being played by the superpowers, we can do nothing to prevent such an event, and were it to happen there is no practical response one could take.

Still the negativity has the potential to be increased by more extreme dire warnings. And the dire warning of all dire warnings is the one about mankind’s impact on this planet: climate change; loss of natural resources; over population; et al. Again, to a very great extent, we have no control over the ‘big picture’. The difference between a nuclear Armageddon and climate change is that most people can see the signs all around them. That’s a powerful source of personal fear.

There was an article in Psychology Today written by Dr. Alex Lickerman (Alex Lickerman, M.D., is a general internist and former Director of Primary Care at the University of Chicago and has been a practicing Buddhist since 1989.) in October, 2011 under the title of How to Reduce Negativity. Dr. Lickerman made the point that, “Though we all have negative selves, there seem to be only two basic reasons they appear: one is as a result of a lack of self-confidence, or belief that we can solve a particular problem; the other is simply out of habit.”

If that is read quickly, it’s easy to take it as “one is as a result of a belief that we can solve a particular problem“, as I did. Then on re-reading it, the meaning became clear. One of the reasons our negativity can appear “is as a result of a lack of belief that we can solve a particular problem …” I underlined a part of the sentence because it needs to sit squarely on the shoulders of our consciousness.

Once one has understood the ease with which the wider world, and especially how it is reported, affects us then we are armed, so to speak, to actively counter any negativity that arises in us.
Now I quoted Dr. Lickerman from a little way into his article in Psychology Today. But his opening words are extremely valuable for all of us to consider.

In one sense, the battle to be happy is a battle against negativity. Bad things happen all the time but how we internalize them, how we react to them, is what ultimately determines their final effect on us — and over that we have simultaneously more and less control than we realize. More, because we assign the meaning of events, not the events themselves, even though it feels as if that meaning is somehow assigned for us. Yet less, because we can rarely simply decide when confronted with a negative life event that is is, in fact, actually positive. To do that, we have to find a way to actually believe it, and that requires a process of continual self-reflection and attitude training; a program designed to strengthen our life force, so to speak.

Later on in Part Four there are a number of chapters that explore the power of positive thoughts and ways of countering the negativity that is so often in our faces.

1,124 words Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

The book! Part Three: Mankind in the 21st century

Challenges of the present times.

In Part Two, I set out to show two things. Firstly, that we, mankind, are part of nature in every conceivable manner and that unless we recognise that pretty damn quickly then …. then I can do no better than repeat what Professor Dirzo and his colleagues spoke about in July 2014, namely that he and his colleagues :

… issued a warning that the present rate of what he called “defaunation” could have harmful downstream effects on human health. Professor Dirzo explained that despite the “planet’s current biodiversity, the product of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary trial and error being the highest in the history of life.” we may have reached a tipping point.

The warning explained that more than 320 terrestrial vertebrates had become extinct since the year 1500 and that, since then, “Populations of the remaining species show a 25 percent average decline in abundance. The situation is similarly dire for invertebrate animal life.”

Professor Dirzo further went on to explain that “while previous extinctions have been driven by natural planetary transformations or catastrophic asteroid strikes, the current die-off can be associated to human activity.” He even gave this era a name: the era of the “Anthropocene defaunation.”

Secondly, in Part Two, I wanted to offer as much information as I could find on the science of the evolution of the dog and how long the dog had been part of mankind’s history. Simply to support the argument, OK my argument, that we humans are so perilously close to “shooting ourselves in the feet”, so close to the massive annihilation of millions of us, that we need a new era of hope; not tomorrow but now!

Implicit in that last sentence is the feeling that we humans have to look outside of ourselves to find the inspiration and the motivation needed to make the changes in the sort of short timescales our present circumstances demand.

Let me expand on this.

We live in very challenging times. Widely acknowledged for it seems rare these days to meet someone who doesn’t sense, to one degree or another, a feeling of vulnerability to today’s world. A sense that many aspects of their lives are beyond their control.

These are also times where it is widely acknowledged that the levers of privilege and money are undermining the rights and needs of so many, that there are unprecedented levels of deceit, lying and greed; all enveloped within an abuse of power.

That’s even before we embrace the matter of climate change and whether or not there is a potential “end-of-world” tipping point; the so-called beat of the butterfly’s wing.

Yes, these are challenging times. As we are incessantly reminded by the drumbeat of the doom-and-gloom news industry every hour, frequently every half-hour, throughout the day. A symphony of negative energy.

Yet right next to us is a world of positive energy. The world of dogs. A canine world full of love and trust, playfulness and relaxation. A way of living that is both clear and straightforward. Albeit, far from being simple, as anyone will know who has seen the way dogs interact with each other and with us humans.

In other words, dogs offer endless examples of positive behaviours. The wonderful power of compassion for self, and for others, and of loving joy. A way to live that we humans often crave for. A life full of love, hope, play and positive energy. A way to live for the millions of us that desire a positive, compassionate attitude to our own life, and to the lives of all the people around us.

604 words Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

The book! Part Two: The dog’s ancestor.

Mankind, Nature and Dogs

The dog’s ancestor: the wolf.

When we look at some breeds of dogs, for example the smaller breeds such as the Chihuahua, it beggars believe that thousands of years ago there was a common ancestor to the dog and to today’s wolf. Of course, not so if one looks at, for example, a German Shepherd dog (GSD). Many GSDs look like they are first cousin to a wolf!

However, when we look at the Latin binomial nomenclature for the wolf and the dog it all becomes clear irrespective of the specific dog breed. I am, of course, referring to canis lupus for the wolf and canis lupus familiaris for the dog. For those, like me, that had to refresh their memory of this naming convention, the first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs; the second part identifies the species within the genus. For example, humans belong to the genus Homo and within this genus to the species Homo sapiens.

Thus both the wolf and the dog belong to the same genus. Conforming to the widely held view that the domesticated dog is a direct descendent of the wolf.
So far, so good!

When we turn to the history of how the particular species lupus familiaris split away from lupus then it all becomes much less clear.

Let’s take a little trip along that particular journey.

The widely held view was that sometime during the Mesolithic period, or around 10,000 years ago, when humans started settling down, turning their backs on hunting and gathering, there was contact with humans and wolves that led to (a few) wolves living their lives in and around humans and from thence the long evolutionary journey to the dog.

But it is an understanding that is not fully shared by all in the field.

Take, for example, husband and wife team, Raymond and Lorna Coppinger. In their book Dogs[ 2001 – The University of Chicago Press] , they challenge this view[ page 41] :

The widely popular view is that people created dogs by artificial selection. People took the pups from wolf dens and made pets out of them. They tamed them, trained them, and took them out hunting. After many generations of this regime, the wolves evolved into dogs.

The biological implausibility of this leads me to flights of fancy, and I tend to call it the Pinocchio Hypothesis.
…
What the wolf-pup-into-dog hypothesis is really depending on is that wolves are related to dogs (true), that dogs easily form associations with people (true), and that therefore wolves must have formed relationships with people in the past (not true).

The Coppingers go on to write[ page 51] that, “There is no archaeological evidence that Mesolithic people had a big enough population of trained or tamed wolves living among them.” Severe doubt is expressed about the connection between wolves and dogs.

Even if Mesolithic[ Page 49 of the book Dogs] people were able to tame generations of wolves, and then train some of them to obey simple commands (for example, to come when called, or sit), still the burning question remains: What changes wolf genes into dog genes?
….
When tamed wolves reproduce, they get wild pups (oriented away from human activity). When dogs reproduce, they get tame pups (oriented toward human activity). The two species are intrinsically, instinctively, generally distinct, one from the other, in this respect.

The Coppingers proposition is that there was a common ancestor to both the wolf and the dog, details of which have not been discovered. That this common ancestor goes back much further in time, sufficiently far so for the differences between wolves and dogs that we see today. Or, indeed, saw back in those earlier days.

Let me return to the Mesolithic period simply because many readers may again share my lack of detailed understanding of when that period was. A quick web search came up with the answer[and others]!

The Mesolithic period is generally regarded as that time period between the last glaciation, at the end of the Paleolithic era, some 12,000 years ago, and the start of the Neolithic era, some 7,000 years ago. In other words, between 7,000 and 12,000 years ago. This was the period where man evolved from a hunter-gather existence, when humans learned to hunt in groups and to fish, when farming communities began to be established as people first discovered how to cultivate crops and began to learn how to domesticate animals and plants.

Strikes me as perfectly reasonable to see this period as the most significant single development in the history of humans.

Returning to the differences between wolves and dogs already apparent as humans entered the Neolithic period one can quite reasonably infer that the split came about many thousands of years before.
That the domesticated dog is originally from the wolf genus is not beyond doubt even if the period when it occurred is unclear.

Dr. George Johnson wrote an article that appeared on the website ON SCIENCE that explored the evolution of the family dog. He found himself wondering about the origins of his dog, Boswell, who had recently died.

This week I found myself wondering about Boswell’s origins. From what creature did the domestic dog arise? Darwin suggested that wolves, coyotes, and jackals — all of which can interbreed and produce fertile offspring– may all have played a role, producing a complex dog ancestry that would be impossible to unravel. In the 1950s, Nobel Prize-winning behaviorist Konrad Lorenz suggested some dog breeds derive from jackals, others from wolves.

Based on anatomy, most biologists have put their money on the wolf, but until recently there was little hard evidence, and, as you might expect if you know scientists, lots of opinions.

The issue was finally settled in 1997 by an international team of scientists led by Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. To sort out the evolutionary origin of the family dog, Wayne and his colleagues used the techniques of molecular biology to compare the genes of dogs with those of wolves, coyotes and jackals.

Dr. Johnson went on to explain that Professor Wayne and his team collected, “blood, tissue, or hair from 140 dogs of sixty-seven breeds, and 162 wolves from North America, Europe, Asia, and Arabia. From each sample they extracted DNA from the tiny organelles within cells called mitochondria.”

He went on to write:

When Wayne looked at his canine mitochondrial DNA samples, he found that wolves and coyotes differ by about 6% in their mitochondrial DNA, while wolves and dogs differ by only 1%. Already it smelled like the wolf was the ancestor.

Wolves had 27 different sequences in the control region, none of them exactly the same as any dog sequence, but all very similar to the dog sequences, differing from them at most at 12 sites along the DNA, and usually fewer.

Coyote and jackal were a lot more different from dogs than wolves were. Every coyote and jackal sequence differed from any dog sequence by at least 20 sites, and many by far more.

That settled it. Dogs are domesticated wolves.

Dr. Johnson’s penultimate paragraph addressed the question of when dogs first appeared.

The large number of different dog sequences, and the fact that no wolf sequences are found among them, suggests that dogs must have been separated from wolves for a long time. The oldest clear fossil evidence for dogs is 12,000 – 14,000 years ago, about when farming arose. But that’s not enough time to accumulate such a large amount of mitochondrial DNA difference. Perhaps dogs before then just didn’t look much different from wolves, and so didn’t leave dog-like fossils. Our species first developed speech and left Africa about 50,000 years ago. I bet that’s when dogs came aboard, when our hunter-gatherer ancestors first encountered them. They would have been great hunting companions.

The scientist, who writes under the nom-de-plume of Patrice Ayme, wrote an essay in April, 2014 under the title of Neanderthal Superiority. Towards the end of that essay he explains:

NEANDERTHALS INVENTED DOGS, COAL BURNING, SHELL FISH DINING:

Some of the arguments against Neanderthals have been outright ridiculous: not only we were told, without any evidence, that they could not talk, but that the superiority of Africans came from eating shell fish, about 70,000 years ago (along the East Coast of Africa).

However, it has since been discovered that Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago, punching another torpedo hole in the theory that only Africans ate (supposedly) brain-boosting seafood.

Neanderthals also used coal, as long ago as 73,000 years. Once again, making a fire in present day France, then suffering from a pretty bad glaciation, made more sense than trying to stay warm in the Congo.

Earlier and earlier prehistoric art has been found. It’s getting ever harder to claim that Neanderthals had nothing to do with it. Neanderthals also domesticated, and genetically engineered dogs, from European wolves. That’s very clear.

How do I know this? Simple. The Goyet dog, pictured below, was dated around 32,000 years. In 2010, an even older dog was found in the Altai mountains. Both dogs were derived from Canis Lupus Familiaris, the European wolf, but were quite distant from it, genetically, they had been evolved probably on a time scale of more than 10,000 years, thus well before any arrival of Sapiens Sapiens from Africa.

Those dogs were completely compatible with people, just as contemporary dogs are. Proof? Ancient, 26,000-year-old footprints made by a child and a dog deep in the Chauvet Cave, France. (OK, by then Neanderthals have been just deemed “extinct” by some… However, these are still the same dogs Neanderthals invented.)

In that essay, Patrice included a link to an article that appeared on the NBCNEWS website.

An international team of scientists has just identified what they believe is the world’s first known dog, which was a large and toothy canine that lived 31,700 years ago and subsisted on a diet of horse, musk ox and reindeer, according to a new study.

The discovery could push back the date for the earliest dog by 17,700 years, since the second oldest known dog, found in Russia, dates to 14,000 years ago.

Remains for the older prehistoric dog, which were excavated at Goyet Cave in Belgium, suggest to the researchers that the Aurignacian people of Europe from the Upper Paleolithic period first domesticated dogs. Fine jewellery and tools, often decorated with depictions of big game animals, characterize this culture.

There was study published in the PLOS ONE scientific journal in March 2013 where the lead author, Dr. Robert Losey [Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta], explained:

Dog burials appear to be more common in areas where diets were rich in aquatic foods because these same areas also appear to have had the densest human populations and the most cemeteries,

If the practice of burying dogs was solely related to their importance in procuring terrestrial game, we would expect to see them in the Early Holocene (around 9,000 years ago), when human subsistence practices were focused on these animals. Further, we would expect to see them in later periods in areas where fish were never really major components of the diet and deer were the primary focus, but they are rare or absent in these regions.

The PLOS ONE paper went on to report that researchers found that most of the dog burials occurred during the Early Neolithic period, some 7,000-8,000 years ago, and that “dogs were only buried when human hunter-gatherers were also being buried.”

The strong implication being expressed by Dr. Losey is that the relationship between humans and dogs was as close and intimate as we modern-day humans know; to the point of almost taking it for granted. A relationship that had had thousands of years to become the way it was, and still is.

Back to Dr. Losey: “I think the hunter-gatherers here saw some of their dogs as being nearly the same as themselves, even at a spiritual level. At this time, dogs were the only animals living closely with humans, and they were likely known at an individual level, far more so than any other animal people encountered. People came to know them as unique, special individuals.“

If dogs had already been part of our lives for some considerable time by the time we humans had turned away from hunting and gathering and started settling down, then we are lead, inexorably, to the question of how did it all begin? What were the circumstances of early man befriending a wolf or two and how from that relationship did it evolve into the tameness that was the start of the dog journey?

Maybe a true story from recent times offers us an insight into the answer to that question. This story was told to me by DR when I was living in Payson, Arizona. An amazing true story of a relationship between a wild wolf and a man. A story of a particular event in the life of Tim Woods, a brother of DR.

It revolves around the coming together of a man sleeping rough, with his dog, on Mingus Mountain, and a fully grown female Grey Wolf. Mingus is in the Black Hills mountain range between Cottonwood and Prescott in the State of Arizona, USA.

DR and his brother, Tim, belong to a large family; there are 7 sons and 2 daughters. Tim had a twin brother, Tom, and DR knew from an early age that Tim was different.

As DR explained,

Tim was much more enlightened than the rest of us. I remember that Tim and Tom, as twin brothers, could feel each other in almost a mystical manner. I witnessed Tom grabbing his hand in pain when Tim stuck the point of his knife into his (Tim’s) palm. Stuff like that! Tim just saw more of life than most other people.

The incident involving the wolf was when Tim was in his late 40s and, as mentioned, was living in a rough shack on the mountain. The shack was simply a plywood shelter with an old couch and a few blankets for the cold nights. The dog was companion, guard and a means of keeping Tim in food; the dog was a great hunter. But Tim was no stranger to living in the wild.

DR again,

Tim was ex-US Army and a great horseman. There was a time when he was up in the Superstition Mountains, sleeping rough, riding during the day. At night Tim would get the horse to lay down and Tim would sleep with his back next to the horse for warmth.

Anyway, Tim was up on Mingus Mountain using an old disk from an agricultural harrow as both a cook-pan and plate. After he had finished eating, Tim would leave his ‘plate’ outside his shack. It would be left out in the open over night.

Tim gradually became aware that a creature was coming by and licking the plate clean and so Tim started to leave scraps of food on the plate. Then one night, Tim was awoken to to the noise of the owner of the ‘tongue’ and saw that it was a large, female grey wolf.

The wolf became a regular visitor and Tim became sure that the wolf, now having been given the name Luna by Tim, was aware that she was being watched by a human.

Over many, many months Luna built up sufficient trust in Tim that eventually she would take food from Tim’s outstretched hand. It was only now a matter of time before Luna started behaving more like a pet[ DR showed my an unaltered photograph taken in 2006 showing Tim lying back on a blanket with his dog across his waist and sitting on its haunches just behind Tim and the dog was Luna the wolf.] dog than the wild wolf that she was.

From now on, Luna would stay the night with Tim and his dog, keeping watch over both of them.

DR also recalls,

I remember Tim being distraught because, without warning, Luna stopped coming by. Then a few months later back she was. Tim never did know what lay behind her absence but guessed it might have been because she went off to have pups.

Unfortunately, this wonderful tale does have a sad ending.

About two years ago, what would have been 2007, Tim lost his dog. He was awakened to hear a pack of coyotes yelping and his dog missing. Then tragically some 6 months later Tim contracted a gall bladder infection. Slowly it became worse. By the time he realised that it was sufficiently serious to require medical treatment, it was too late. Despite the best efforts of modern medicine, Tim died on June 25th, 2009, just 51 years young.

DR’s closing words to me were: “So if you are ever out on Mingus Mountain and hear the howl of a wolf, reflect that it could just be poor Luna calling out for her very special man friend.”

I would close this particular chapter by pleading that whoever you are, wherever you are, if you hear the howl of a wolf allow yourself to disappear into your inner thoughts for a few precious moments and know that tens of thousands of years ago there was another Tim and another wolf. Keep that image in your mind for many reasons, not least so for this one. For those of you that have dogs in your lives and know what it feels like to gaze deeply into your dog’s eyes, then next time you are bonded eyes-to-eyes with your dog sense that first Tim cuddling up to that first Luna.

2,911 words Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover

The book! Part Two: Understanding the dog’s world

Mankind, Nature and Dogs

Understanding the dog’s world

A Dog is Man’s Best friend, but is Man a Dog’s Best Friend?

In the Prologue I offered a fictional, dreamlike story of how early man and wolf came together and from that special place in our history did flow the everlasting relationship between man and dog. I will return to that but first let’s get an idea of just how many dogs there are.

In 2012, the American Veterinary Medical Association reported that there were over 43 million [ 43,346,000] dog-owning households in the USA. That translated to over 36% of the total households in America. With an average of 1.6 dogs per household that came to the astonishing total of 62,926,000 dogs. In just one country!

It is therefore beyond doubt that millions and millions of people, of all ages, all around the world, understand what it is like to have a dog close to them. Likewise, those millions of dogs know what us humans are capable of. But of those millions of humans who have dogs in their lives, how many understand, really understand, the world of the dog?

In the next chapter after my Prologue, the Puppyhood chapter, I spoke of the circumstances that brought me into contact with Angela Stockdale of The Dog Partnership in Devon and how from that association I became aware of the three roles that dogs could be born into: mentor, monitor and nanny. How, generally speaking, out of every 50 dogs born there were just three carrying those roles, if ‘carrying’ is the correct description, and that the bulk of dogs born were straightforward pack members. Irrespective of the fact that we don’t normally own anything like the number that would constitute a natural pack of dogs in the wild, around 50 animals, that doesn’t alter the fact that when a puppy is born it’s social place, from a pack perspective, is hard-wired into the puppy.

I am indebted to Angela Stockdale for granting me permission to republish her descriptions of the mentor, monitor and nanny that are available on her website. In terms of man understanding the world of the dog, these descriptions are invaluable.

What is a Teaching Dog?

A Teaching Dog is a dog who has an instinctive desire to guide and support dogs in their learning canine communication.

A Teaching Dog helps other dogs develop their canine communication skills by displaying different body language to convey different messages. Such as lowering their heads and curving on approach as a polite way to introduce themselves. These essential etiquette skills are invaluable in preventing social issues.

A Teaching Dog teaches dogs canine etiquette to other dogs so they develop their communication skills as they go through the natural ageing process i.e. the transition from puppyhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood. At these essential times, their pupils develop their skills in canine communication to a high level, hence again preventing social issues.

A Teaching Dog has an instinctive desire to guide and support dogs who find communicating difficult. If a dog has an established social issue, a Teaching Dog will actively incite interaction with them in order to teach them how to relax and communicate with them. They will assess how the other dog feels and react accordingly. Keeping their distance if the dog is concerned and approaching thoughtfully when the dog relaxes. I say thoughtfully because that is really important to understand; they think about how to work with a dog.

When a Teaching Dog works, whilst there are some elements of instinctive body language, in the main they will consciously use appropriate body language for the specific situation. They will always maintain control of an interaction but will change their posture from assertive to more inviting in accordance to the other dog’s behaviour.

On sighting the dog they are working with, they will first watch and assess them. This can be done from quite a distance with an experienced Teaching Dog. Eye contact is made but the eyes are averted intermittently whilst the Teaching Dog decides how assertive they need to be, or not as the case may be, with that particular dog. What follows from thereon is purely dependent on the other dog and that particular Teaching Dog’s way of working.

Do all Teaching Dogs teach in the same way?

No. Different Teaching Dogs have different teaching skills and different preferred roles. It is essential to recognise the role each particular Teaching Dog prefers to take. There are three primary Teaching Dog roles – Mentor, Minder and Nanny.

Mentor

A Mentor is normally quietly assertive by nature. They rarely play unless flirting with the opposite sex. However, they generally build the strongest bonds with high ranking dogs of the same sex.

As a Teaching Dog they are passively dominant. They always meet a dog with assertiveness but never hostility. They tend not to use body language to relax a dog as such but often just their presence has a calming effect on most dogs anyway.

If working in a group, they watch from the sidelines and only become involved if absolutely necessary. Mentors can be quite lazy! They will support other Teaching Dogs where needed, showing by example what to do in difficult situations if the other Teaching Dog is not coping.

Other dogs reaction to Mentors vary. Some dogs take great confidence in a Mentor and whilst not necessarily submissive towards them, they are very respectful. Some dogs find a Mentor intimidating and will avoid making contact with them.

Minder

A Minder is totally different to a Mentor in their interaction with dogs they are teaching. When a Minder meets another dog, they actively approach with the intent of interacting with them. A Minder is also naturally assertive but not as strong as a Mentor. When they meet another dog, in the Teaching Situation, they assess the new dog as they approach and use appropriate body language in accordance to the other dog’s reaction to them.

They are more generally more demonstrative than a Mentor and will actively seek interaction within a few minutes of meeting a new dog. This does not necessarily mean that they invite play. If they feel the dog is not ready for that level of interaction, they will converse with them in a more subtle manner.

If the other dog is worried but shows signs of being ready to rush at them, the Minder will stand firmly with their head side on to the dog. Eye contact is made intermittently as the Minder ascertains whether the other dog is calming down or intending to rush at them.

They can stand firm and openly display assertiveness if they need to. Once ‘control’ of the situation has been achieved, a Minder will generally incite status based activities from the other dog. These can be by marking then walking away allowing them to investigate their scent. Or they may invite the other dog into a status game, often instigating a chase.

If the other dog shows signs at trying to drive them away, the Minder will turn their head towards them and eye contact becomes stronger. They do not reposition the rest of their body. If the other dog shows signs of moving away, the Minder will totally drop their body language and move away. They will then reassess the other dog from a distance, before approaching again.

In a group situation, a Minder will monitor the group closely and interrupt any unsociable or unruly behaviour. They interrupt unacceptable behaviour by physically placing themselves between the dogs and will remain there until the tension has reduced. When the dogs in question have calmed down, the Minder will usually walk away and monitor them from a distance. They tend not to interact with the other dogs after harmony has been restored. In effect, they police a group.

Other dog’s reaction to a Minder is either respectful or challenging. Most dogs recognise a Minder as a strong dog and usually respect them. Sometimes polite status games may be played when they first meet.

As the Minder does not naturally command respect in the way a Mentor does, some dogs who have limited canine communication skills and/or adolescents can challenge them. Once the dogs have learned how to ascertain status in a polite manner from the Minder, they will usually then settle and look to the Minder for guidance in future situations.

Nanny

The Nanny is the most amazing of all the Teaching Dogs. Although not their preferred choice, a strong Nanny can take the role of a Minder or Mentor if they need to. They are unique.

They are extremely generous dogs and are at their happiest when everyone else is happy, including other Teaching Dogs. They work very differently to a Mentor and a Minder.

They not only relax a dog who is uncomfortable or anti-social but they also help relax any Mentor or Minder in a group. Few Mentors get overly stressed in a teaching situation but Minders tend to take their job quite seriously, unless really experienced and so can become tense when working.

If they see another Teaching Dog, usually a Minder, showing stress they will also consciously use body language to reduce their tension as well.

Being happier working on a one to one basis or in a group is down to each dog’s personal preference. Although, of all the Teaching Dogs they are more likely to be equally happy in either situation.

When meeting a new dog, they will observe from a distance before making a thoughtful approach. Thoughtful being the operative word as everything a Nanny does is done with thought. The Nanny tends to assess a dog in more depth than the other Teaching Dogs. This means they often take longer in their approach. They rarely communicate with instinctive responses but with conscious body movements, using the eyes in particular, when conversing with another dog.

If a dog is confrontational with them, they will remain strong in their attitude but will incite play, in particular chase games. The game of chase can be a challenge, like the ‘Chase me Charlie’ game children play. Or a game of chase can be used to loosen up a dog who is so stressed they feel unable to move.

The Nanny knows exactly what distance to keep between them and the other dog. If they feel the other dog is too close for comfort or who is becoming too unsociable, they will stop and face the dog and take control again. Once they see the other dog is more relaxed, they will stop running and attempt to converse with them again. They repeat this routine until the other dog stays relaxed and sociable with them.

In a group situation, initially they will monitor from the edge of the group and then actively walk up to each dog individually and check they’re comfortable. This also gives the other dogs confidence as they know the Nanny is there for support should they need it.

Once they have seen every group member, including any other Teaching Dogs, they will then focus on the dogs that feel the most uncomfortable, this is not necessarily the dog who shows outwardly unsociable behaviour.

It could be a dog who becomes withdrawn because they are so stressed. Sometimes they will simply follow and walk alongside a dog who is not comfortable and other times they may invite play. It totally depends on the other dog and how, at that moment, they are feeling. The Nanny may walk alongside another dog and then invite play.

The Nanny will resolve conflict by approaching in a calmer manner than a Minder usually to interrupt the unsociable behaviour. Not necessarily by physically splitting the dogs. They may bark and then play bow and/or literally pat them on the shoulder to attract their attention. A strong confident Nanny will split if they need to but prefer to resolve any conflict by mediation.

When other dogs meet a Nanny, if they have a good command of the canine language they will greet them in friendly, but not submissive manner. A Nanny’s first response to a dog displaying aggression, is to increase the distance between them. But they do not turn their back on the other dog. This would show vulnerability.

They will move away at an angle and stand sideways on to the other dog. This indicates to the other dog that whilst they are not offended and are not going to retaliate, they are also not intimidated. Initially, this can be most confusing for the other dog.

A Nanny excels at being able to recognise signals of stress in other dogs. They will only advance towards the dog to the level the other dog can cope with. As the dog learns that the Nanny will not be coming close enough to pose a threat to them, they begin to relax. In time, the other dog will take confidence from the Nanny and will look to them for guidance in difficult situations.

Is a Teaching Dog the same as the Alpha, Beta and Omega in a wild dog pack?

No. The Teaching Dog is unique to the dog world. Whilst a Mentor is usually a dog of natural Alpha status, an Alpha is not necessarily a Mentor. In fact, many dogs of natural Alpha status can not or do not want to teach. They can not be compared to wolves or any other wild dogs. Teaching Dogs working together are not a pack. They can not be compared to dogs living in a group at home. Some Teaching Dogs do not want to work together with their own group but enjoy working with dogs they know from another family. All Teaching Dogs have equally important roles. There are situations where a Mentor is better able to resolve a conflict and another time a Nanny may be the better dog to the resolve the situation.

How can I find out more about these amazing dogs?

It may sound that it is impossible for dogs to consciously work in this way, particularly the Nanny. Seeing is believing and even then it is almost unbelievable. I run a four day introductory course on the world of the Teaching Dog. On these courses, participants can bring along their own dog for assessment. But it is important to understand and to recognise that this is not whether your dog can teach but do they want to.

You will see experienced Teaching Dogs in practice. And also those who are at the beginning of their career. I can not, of course, guarantee how they will work as I have not met their pupils yet! You will learn about the Teaching Dog as an individual, see experienced and apprentice Teaching Dogs working on video as well where you can study their conscious body language in different teaching situations.

At this first level, we will cover identifying Teaching Dogs and offering them the right learning ground to develop their natural skills. You can not train a Teaching Dog. A Teaching Dog is born a Teaching Dog. It is dependent on their life’s experiences and living environment as to whether they develop to their full potential. Many allegedly aggressive dogs are actually true Teaching Dogs. In domestic society such dogs have not been able to do what they were born to do; help other dogs without the interference of people trying to tell them how to speak their own language. Their life of frustration has resulted in aggression. Once given the time and freedom to develop their natural teaching skills, any aggressive behaviour disappears.

Time to stop talking and start listening to the real teachers – The dogs themselves

Thus one of the key learning aspects that Angela offers us humans is that dogs (and horses) learn most effectively when being taught by other dogs (and horses). This was observed countless times by me when Pharaoh was working as a minder teaching dog and using his natural pack instinct to teach puppy dogs their social skills and breaking up squabbles between dogs.

Before moving on, some closing words from Angela.

I consider myself so lucky for dogs alone to have been my teachers. I learnt from watching how my own dogs responded to another dog’s body language and vice versa their language. Watching, learning and working with Teaching Dogs was the only way I knew. Seeing how these special dogs change the lives of less fortunate dogs, who never had the opportunity to really understand how to communicate with their own species.

I was and always will be in awe of a Teaching Dog’s ability consciously to adapt their body language in accordance to how the other dog was feeling. The result being that they could relax nervous dogs but at the same time maintain control of a problem situation. Remember, dogs talk dog far better than we do.

It came as quite a shock to me when I learnt about other approaches. It seemed foreign for people to have so much input in resolving what were described as ‘ behavioural’ issues. For me, working with these dogs was far more than resolving a behavioural issue. It was about improving the quality of lives of dogs who were not coping with everyday life. If they found dogs or people worrying, sometimes this was shown in displays of aggression. It is important to understand, these dogs were not aggressive, they simply displayed aggressive behaviour.

How on earth to follow that, you might be wondering?

Very simply! By recognising that as much as we have had dogs in our lives, for thousands of years, we do not understand their world, how they truly think, what they feel, and we probably never will.

2,958 words Copyright © 2014 Paul Handover includes Copyright © 2005 Angela Stockdale