This is due to the fact that you are much more aware than the dog. It could also be due to the fact that you (and likely other more aware creatures) have a must more distinct sense of the flow of time. What do I mean by this? Well, if a dog has little or no concept of the passage of time, might this explain why it does not investigate causality? Being, something happened only because something else must have happened previously.
It could be supposed that the dog will not look for a cause because it is only ever in the Present moment. I capitalized Present because I believe the Present moment is sacred. Why? Because there is much wisdom in embracing only the Present moment. Why? Because there only ever is the Present moment.
To a dog then, perhaps there is little or no sense of past and future. Therefore, what could causality ever mean to a dog? Hence the reason it finds little or no interest in the cause of an event. You can learn a lot from a dog.
Cicero once said that those who do not study history will remain children. It is my belief that those in the human race who only try to maximize the present moment miss out in learning from Time (which I capitalize for the fun of it). A person who abandons time will have only present emotions and will not carry thoughts from one moment to the next.
ReplyDeleteIt is also important to recognize that time is not a collection of moments but a bunch of patterns of change. It is actually hard to imagine at first, but nothing is outside of change that is also physical. Since a being is a single unchanging state like the number two, no being exists in time and space (or physically).
Yes the smear of time (not a single specific moment because moments do not exist) that we call the present is important. But, as Daniel Dennett's book Consciousness Explained points out, our brain works on multiple drafts (and dogs to a practical extent). The dog, for instance), would not be able to identify movement without comparing the multiple pictures of eye data and identifying micro-changes like four degree changes in rotation and finalizing the data for decision making processing. When humans see the television, there are millions of dots of three colors moving in blinking stripes at a speed in which our brain identifies movement and facial expressions despite it being an illusion.
On a more existential note, if we were more like dogs, we could die any moment and all our effort in life would be that of a dogs. Just a series of emotions, unrealized as a history or a life, we would meet our trail day with death and, not knowing our crime, be put to death like a dog. Why must we die! What a unthoughtful thought of the dog to know nothing and just Be (as opposed to Become).
Once we create a meaning in life, we can be satisfied with our death and see ourself go into the future with our meaning actions, creations, and living emotions (the impact of yourself on the emotional landscape of the world).
I still got a lot of grammatical errors in that last post, but I think some of my point got across.
ReplyDeleteThank you for commenting! I like being challenged. I want to be forthright that I do not necessarily cling "hook, line and sinker" to my ideas, rather I just like to present unusual ways to look at things so as to avoid "the status quo". In fact, much of what I write I DO NOT believe but rather I love playing devil's advocate. In this way, I pride myself on being a "stand in" for the girl or guy who is not there to defend their perspective(s).
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