JackieG
A case of hoping to gain more traffic to your article by mentioning Mel Gibson? You may have some valid points to make but it can also come across as pandering to the people who crave information about celebrities and their private lives.
Hi, Jackie,
You make a valid point. I was torn about using the Mel Gibson tapes as a reference point for one of my arguments, but felt it might be enough of a touchstone to help people understand my positions about emotion vs. rational thought.
Here's the final section of the article (with a few of the preceding paragraphs to provide context):
Let's say that two dogs meet and there's tension between them. (Why
else would one or the other need to be calmed or pacified?) Depending on
the level of tension, this would probably create at least a small burst
of adrenaline in each dog's system. That would also create changes in
the their blood chemistry, which would in turn create subtle changes in
each dog's overall scent. Those changes would activate receptors in
olfactory cells, cells that have the capacity to distinguish between the
odor proteins of a relaxed, sociable dog and those of a tense,
fearful/aggressive dog. This information would theoretically go to the
DNA in their receptor cells and activate a sequence of regulatory DNA,
which would turn on a part of the gene that says, "Danger, danger,
Will Robison! Keep your distance!"
So in this scenario,
"pacifying behaviors" would be nothing more than a "down-and-dirty"
(i.e., cognitively simple) reaction to an olfactory stimulus.
There
are other explanations, which I'll go into in future articles,
though I've already laid some of the groundwork, primarily in my
articles on the canine emotional GPS system "How Lost Dogs Find Home" and "How Dogs Find and Retrieve Our Unconscious Desires,"
as well as my article on the strange behaviors of The Druid Peak Pack in Yellowstone.
For now
though, if we apply this formula (or some variation on it), where
so-called "pacifying behaviors" can be distilled down to a simple energy
exchange, based on the way certain odor proteins vibrate differently
than others, I think we're on more solid ground than we'd be by
believing that dogs send each other calming signals because [as Turid Rugaas says] "it's the
language they think everyone understands," or that dogs use their body
language with the deliberate (i.e., consciously-arrived-at) intent to
communicate.
Of course we can't know with any real precision how
dogs process their experiences. The most we can do is apply what we know
about our own feeling states. For example, I don't think it's
much of a stretch to say that when we're angry or in pain or under a
great deal of stress, we can actually feel a very real, and very
unpleasant, physical vibration taking place within our own bodies, one
that is quite different from the kinds of vibrations we'd feel when
we're relaxed and at ease.
If you've listened to the Mel Gibson
tapes, you know that Gibson's voice has a specific set of vibrations of
pain, hate, and rage (among other things), while the voice of his former
girlfriend is very cool, almost lacking in affect. If we just tune in
to their tones of voice, ignoring the words they're using to manipulate
and inflict pain on one another, we can feel that each voice has a
specific emotional vibration that creates a very unpleasant feeling of
physical and emotional resonance inside of us.
My question
is, why shouldn't we consider the idea that dogs feel their emotions in a
similar fashion, as pleasant or unpleasant physical vibrations? And if
they do, wouldn't it make sense to think that, lacking a ToM
(etc.), their motives in producing what we think of as "calming signals"
or "pacifying behaviors" may come from a very different set of
cognitive abilities, primarily the desire to do whatever they can to
stop the unpleasant vibrations they're feeling within their own bodies?
(After all, on a certain level, everything in the universe vibrates.)
As
I stated in an earlier article, the concept that learning is a result
of positive reinforcement is simply a clinical outgrowth of Freud's
pleasure principle. And Freud's definition of pleasure is the reduction
of "unpleasureable tension." He also writes that "unpleasure corresponds
to an increase in the quantity of excitation [i.e., vibration]
and pleasure to a diminution." (The Freud Reader, "Beyond
the Pleasure Principle," 594, 595.) This is where the human and canine
mind meet and share the most similarities, on the level of positive
social emotions, which have been designed by nature and evolution for
the purpose of engaging in an activity with a shared purpose, i.e., the
hunting of large, dangerous prey. That's the key to not only training
dogs but to understanding who they are, where they're coming from, and
why they do what they do.
1960s pop-music genius Brian Wilson (of
the Beach Boys) revealed that the idea for his song "Good Vibrations"
came from something his mother once said to him and his brothers. "Our
mother told us that dogs can sense a person's vibration -- whether they
have a good vibration or a bad one."
I think if we're going to
truly understand dogs, on their level, we need to learn how to tune out our
need to make them into miniature versions of ourselves, and simply
tune in to their good vibrations.
We could learn a
lot about dogs, and ourselves, by doing so.
I hope this helps.
LCK