There is nothing I like more than spending time with other dogs, playing and discussing the problems of philosophy. Here I am this morning: Dogs are pack animals. We do not like to be alone. I don't think that humans really like to be alone either, but they sometimes give the impression that they do. I've written about this before. The sad fact that humans can so easily become fragmented and isolated from each other can be seen very clearly in the way they organise their work. The human philosopher Marx wrote about alienated labour, about the fact that the way humans work in capitalist society separates them from things in a way that is damagaing to them. Marx thought that workers under capitalism are alienated from the objects of their work, from their human nature, from the natural environment, and crucially from each other. Think about it like this. I am a dog philosopher - I don't really think of this as a job. It's more who I am. I philosophise with other dogs and with my humans; I pour out my thoughts on this blog, and it comes as naturally to me as woofing or chasing a ball. Philosophy, for me, is like play. If I was a human philosopher, I would do my philosophy in exchange for money for a university run - as they are these days - like a business. This would set me against other humans. I would compete with other human philosophers for scarce jobs, and however magnanimous I tried to appear, this would affect the way I interacted with them. I think this competition can make human philosophers aggressive (you should see some of the referee reports my humans get from journals) and always out to prove themselves. It would give me a strange relationship to students - unlike the excellent relationship I have with readers of this blog, I would have a kind of supervisory, sometimes even disciplinary, role towards students who, because of the fees they are paying, would be tempted to regard themselves as consumers: they would be constantly anxious about exam results, debt, their future..., I would be anxious about their feedback, the prospects of complaint... Then, of course, I would be set against my employer who, whatever the rhetoric may be, have an interest in spending as little money on me as possible. So, for example, Universities UK are plundering the pensions of the human philosophers they employ. Which is why they, along with other human academics and academic related staff are on strike tomorrow. Strikes, I think, make humans more sensibly dog-like. They bring people together. On a picket line, students can stand alongside their lecturers. Those who teach students have to appeal to them for solidarity, engaging as equals. Strikers learn from each other. People support one another: workers, students, supporters. At events like teach outs - I'm appearing in one at Leeds - education becomes something done for its own sake, not for exams, not for money, simply for the joy of it: it becomes like philosophy done my way. The silly divisions humans make around sex, sexuality, race, and religion seem not to matter when they are all fighting together for their rights. For all the sacrifices they involve, strikes are exhilirating experiences, they show us a way of doing things differently (as a character in the film Made in Dagenham puts it, they "show us how things could be"). And, of course, they are an excellent way of standing together against injustice: in this case the plundering of pensions by those penny-pinching Vice-Chancellors.
However I worry about humans. I spend a lot of time with human academics. The way they work is isolating and individualistic, very un-doglike (and, in actual fact, very unlike how human philosophy was done classically, in academies, market places, and debating chambers). It will be all too easy for them over the coming weeks to shut themselves away and get despondent, to think they have no prospect of changing things, to convince themselves they are damaging their students (which is of course, what university managers want them to believe: students meanwhile are themselves incredibly supportive of the strike), and generally to talk themselves into defeat. The solution to loneliness - and all of this is just a sophisticated, politicised, form of loneliness - is, as dogs have long realised, coming together. So I think that human philosophers should join in strike activities: come to picket lines, take part in teach outs, organise benefit gigs and so on. And I think other humans should support the strikers. You can find out how to do that here. In doing this, you'll not only be helping future elderly philosophers (this raises interesting questions about the metaphysics of future humans: I might write about this some time), you'll also be protesting against a society that turns everything, including education, into a commodity. Just remember, for dogs philosophy is like a game.
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I like meeting other dogs. It's an excellent opportunity to share my thoughts about the nature of reality, and to show that I am better at running than them. Here's a dog which I met earlier this month. I had a lot in common with this dog. Not only are we both dogs and both philosophers, we also liked sticks. And we both had some black hairs (the big dog was covered in them, I only have a few, on my spots). Exactly the same is true of my friend Roxy, who I've been spending Christmas with. All this meeting dogs with whom I have a lot in common has got me thinking. When two things (whether they are dogs, humans, sticks, or squirrels) have something in common do they literally have something in common? Is there such a thing as doginess that the big dog, Roxy, and me have in common? Or is this just a loose way of speaking, perhaps saying that you humans use the same word 'dog' of all of us? Is there no more to be said than that Lola is a dog, Roxy is a dog and the big dog is a dog? Or does doginess exist, but only because human beings have categorised us in a particular way?
I enjoyed thinking about this and was excited to learn that humans had thought about this stuff before. For now, though, I've had enough of thinking about doginess and I think I'll focus instead on the tastiness of my dinner. |
AuthorMental walkies with Lola, Archives
May 2019
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