“Animals like good people.”
No.
At least, not in the way that saying is often intended by people I will refer to now as the “Nominally Naïve” - NN for short.
For a start, many animals that have not been domesticated, and too many that have, have experience of humans as predators and sources of harm. The human scent is enough to trigger a survival response of fleeing - and, occasionally, fighting - for most untamed animals. (Note that there are FIVE stress responses.)
The NN may argue that what the NN consider “good” people can calm an untamed animal, but they are too often envisaging forcibly restraining that untamed animal, and forcing it into a form of exposure therapy where the untamed animal learns that hiding its fight or flight response may actually lead to it being freed - which is NOT the same as being calm or unafraid.
Even if there was what seemed to be a calming, the harm caused by the confinement against the animal’s wishes and will is inherently harmful - and is harm that the NN seem to be as oblivious to suffering as those appalling people who falsely claimed crabs being boiled alive are not screaming in pain.
(I have come across descriptions of the ABA abuses [see here, here, here - note the reference to illegal action, here, here, and here, and also note the gravely disturbing connection to the appalling, discredited, and increasingly banned anti-LGBTQ conversion practices - see here, here, and here] that involved a similar level of cluelessness on the part of those applying those abusive practices to forcibly restrained children to enforce a superficial appearance of compliance ... but I have also come across some opinions that not all ABA practices are harmful.)
I have read descriptions in Tibetan Buddhism of something that superficially seems similar, but is actually fundamentally different: people who have such as strongly calming aura that, without forcible restraint of the animal concerned, animals may be calmed - for instance, a barking dog may cease to see the person with the calm aura as a threat, and in fact, may see the person as a friend.
Note that I am referring to a calm aura. That is often interpreted as a spiritual person, but ... not necessarily. Apart from anything else, there can be occasions when spiritual people are manifesting a well-justified, righteous anger - for instance, at obstruction of action against the climate crisis, poverty, or dismissiveness of screaming as a sign of pain (although the emotion will not be expressed by the spiritual person in a way that is harmful ... but they may still be profoundly unsettling, uncomfortable, or otherwise unpleasant to the person who should have known better [or is evil] and is on the receiving end).
So ... if the barking dog was to encounter a spiritual person who is justifiably angry, the dog may bark more intensely and be more aggressive.
At this point, it is worth pointing out the unsaid undercurrent - the bit that the NN do not say out loud, and which they wrongly interpret as “the other side of the coin”:
“if an animal is indicating dislike of a person, it means that person is “not “good”” ”
The problems with that include:
- if a normal person who is mostly good, or even calm, is having a bad day (for instance, injury, illness, threats, or death of loved one(s)), their aura will not be calm, and they may be showing signs of distress - including anger ... but that does NOT mean they are a “bad” person, it means they are a good person having a bad day;
- the same caution applies to the animal concerned - they could be having a bad day as well. Animals can and often are traumatised by humans, for instance (especially those humans who use abusive, Newtonian, application-of-coercive-force practices that the humans mislabel as “training”), and that may manifest as a fight response that is based in a combination of fear and not having been able to escape (i.e., being forcibly confined/restrained); and
- this is the big one: the NN’s of of what are “good” and “bad” may actually be projection of the NN’s conscious and unconscious biases/bigotries, warped worldviews, other personal/character/logic flaws and even personal likes/dislikes/preferences - and may be being used to justify spiritual bypassing or the avoidance of personal growth.
So ... if someone is categorically claiming that the behaviour of animals (by which the NN usually means their own pets, who have been subjected to the NN’s ... “influences”) is a definite indicator of something about the person on the receiving end of the pet’s/animal’s behaviour, the one thing you actually do have a good chance of knowing is that the NN has a too simplistic, unspiritual view of animal and human-animal behaviour and character.
Such animal responses may be evidence of cause for concern, but the situation needs further consideration - especially of the character of the human-animals who own the non-human animals ...
PS - then there is also the situation of animals - not only dogs - trained in guard duties, etc. Their behaviour is unlikely to be an indication of anything other than their training ...
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
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(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)
Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024 NO AI
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