Let’s begin with the opening lines of Lawrence Vambe’s remarkable history of pre-colonial Zimbabwe, An Ill-Fated People.
Almost as soon as you began to be able to absorb facts and to recognize human and animal forms you saw dogs everywhere. There was an infinity of dogs, little, big, tame or vicious dogs whose physical condition largely depended on what they could sniff and scavenge out of the village garbage heap rather than on the generosity and animal-loving nature of their masters.
Now, let’s isolate (or bracket) and give thought to this line: “…the generosity and animal-loving nature of their masters.” What type of generosity is this? The generosity that we find in a dog owner has its cause in the curious human need for something that is needy. Humans have the need to be needed. The dog owner needs the dog’s neediness. And the dog is loyal because its needs are met by the owner; and the owner’s need for being needed is satisfied by the dog’s complete dependence. And the more the dog depends on the master, the more love it gets from the owner. This is why certain dog owners often compare the care of a dog to the raising of a child—a child has nothing but needs. And the only thing we can fully trust is a thing that gives us all of its needs.
A person whose worst fear is betrayal is the sort of person who owns a dog.
Once the relationship between the dog and its owner is established, there is a strange development. The dog owner allows the dog to take control of more and more of his/her life. But this reward of control is in the context of the exchange of needs—the need for being needed that is satisfied by the absolute neediness, the dog. (Cats are not needy.) So, when a dog owner says, “I do not walk my dog, the dog walks me,” this is the need for being needed in its state of freedom. Because the dog has surrendered all of its needs, it is permitted to dominate the need that needs its neediness.
The end result of this domination finds its expression in the dog owner picking up his/her dog’s shit. For many of us, picking up dog poop during walks in the park or the city street is the very reason why we do not own the creature. We have no access to the pleasure of being fully needed. (We prefer cats.) Indeed, the owner of the dog wants us to see him/her picking up the poop. The visibility of the lowly act adds to the first pleasure—being dominated by the need the feeds your neediness. Everyone knows it’s disgusting, and the dog owner knows that what they are doing disgusts others, but they are indifferent to our disgust because all they see in this picking up (a raw aufhebung), and what they want us to see, is an absolute love of the thing that needs it absolutely. Holding the poop in his/her hand, the dog owner is showing us the power of this love. We cannot love like them. The dog owner’s love is beyond us.
@43
Do not blame philosophy! I have a degree in philosophy! I’ve met a bunch of people with degrees in philosophy! I’ve known very, very few who take themselves as seriously as Mudede. And I hated them. And everybody else hated them.
I have noticed that self-educated philosophers lean more towards douchebaggery, because they haven’t been forced to consider viewpoints they find uninteresting. By self-selecting the phil that interests them, they end up thinking that their own ideas are somehow new or valuable. When really, somebody already beat their idea into a pulp about 200 years ago.
Put down the books and get a damned dog!
And I say this as a cat owner! With a phil degree! LOL
@51. I’m not a philosopher. Philosophy is dead. I’m still very much alive. What I be is nothing more than a reader of good books. I’m not even really writer. I’m just a reader. I write about what I read.
No one enjoys feeling the squishy heat of poo emanating through their plastic baggies warming their hands. Everyone is embarassed by the fact that the ideal place their canine needs to lay a duce is in front of all the joggers, loaded buses and at the busiest intersections of the city instead of behind the closest bush, tree, garbage can or some other discreet location.
This isnt a measure of love or canine dominance but of the need to obey the law. A law that is enforced/enacted by people who dont/do love their dog. A law that is a reinforcment of the need to somehow find a way to get along with all the other animals in the urban jungle. A need to simplify existance while still allowing others to simply exist with or without their desired choice of existential egos aka progeny, pets or hobbies. A simple demonstration of nothing but the human need to leave something of themselves; in order to dominate time and its fleeting memory of all things urbane.
One thought about dog shit. Honesly, it’s like baby shit. Initially, you think it’s really gross to change diapers or to pick up dog poop. But, once you do it enough times, it’s a non-event. Parents deal with baby shit because they have to, and dog owners deal with dog shit because they have to.
And BTW, picking up dog shit is much less gross than when my cat peed on my bed. That was disgusting.
@ 51 – LOL. I hear ya, but what I wrote was “too much philosophy”.. I think some definite brain-warpage has occurred to our Mr Mudede, Dog only knows from what all deviant sources and arcane influences….
@ 52 – Fair enough. I’m-a remember you said that (“I’m not even really writer”) and I might even, you know, remind you of this post of yours… from time to time… in the future…….
@55, i’m not a philosopher nor really a writer. i’m really a cultural worker. think of a social worker; once you have grasped that figure, change the social into cultural–that’s me.
Fuck your “culture” to death, Mudede.
This post proves what I have always suspected:
Cat owners don’t care where their animals shit.
For years, neighborhood cats have been climbing my backyard fence to take a dump in my garden beds, leaving their disease-ridden, worm-studded, flea-egg laden feces where I am trying to grow vegetables. Dogs don’t do this.
Thanks for this confession, Charles.
this explains why my and my roomate’s relationships with older women with dogs ended badly. that, or we’re jerks.