“Suppose every mealtime consists of all 3 dogs getting their bowl of kibble. They are full, but after, I have all come round and give a milk bone to Sissy and Red, but not Peanut. At all other treat occasions throughout the day, they all 3 get a treat. If I keep this up, how will it play out?”
Thanks to Burl for today’s stump-the-chump question. Let me answer it by way of contrasting the dog’s mind with the human’s mind and the latter’s capacity to compare a moment or a point of view, with another moment or point of view versus the former’s “group mind” point of view. In other words, I’m going to compare how an immediate-moment, group consciousness frame of reference (the dog)processes inputs of energy in comparison to how a self-contained intellectually driven consciousness (the human) processes inputs of energy.
Imagine that you are working at a job wherein you sit at a desk and perform 4 units of work for $20 per hour. Then out of the blue you are promoted to a new desk where you perform 2 units of work for $40 per hour. The human mind is excited, this is great. I’m getting twice the return on half of the effort, what a deal. Wow, do I have a great boss. He’s very good to me. I really respect and admire him.
But then you become acquainted with your coworkers and in the course of inter-cubicle banter discover that the person sitting at the dest next to you is making $80 per hour for perfoming 1 unit of work. What now do you begin to think? You begin to THINK resentment. Your intellectual mind begins to race. What does my boss really think of me, maybe I’m being a sucker, my work is much more valuable than this measly pay if that slob next to me is getting twice for less. Who does my boss think he is, did he think he could buy my integrity for a measly $40 an hour? Why the nerve of that jerk. I’m outa here.
Meanwhile consider the group mind of the dog. As he makes his way through the world he’s expending 4 units of work for the doggy equivalent of $20 return. And then along comes a new situation and he finds himself experiencing $40 doggy dollars on 2 units of work. Wow, life is grand. Then it eventually becomes known to him (apparently by way of a short-lived burst of human intellectual relativism) that the dog next to him is experiencing $80 dollars of return by performing a mere 1 unit of work. How would he feel? A dog would feel that in order for him to earn $40 dollars for 2 units, the dog next to him must receive $80 for 1 unit. And this would mean that if his boss offered him a raise of $80 for 1 unit, he would say great, but of course for that to happen then the dog next to me must get $160 for 1/2 of a unit otherwise that wouldn’t FEEL right.
Dogs experience everything in terms of a group mind, not as an isolated self equipped with an independent agency of intelligence that takes stock of relative situations in order to compute some sense of the world. So if vibrating at a pitch of 40-to-2 makes the world go round, then whatever vibration others have, that ratio must constantly be maintained so that the world might go round ever faster. A dog’s mind is a circle and if being at his point on the circumference eventually gets him to the center of the circle, THAT’S ALL HE CARES ABOUT. Whatever pitch everyone else was vibrating at, (dogs can feel these pitches because of emotional projection) that precise scale of frequencies must be maintained as new energy comes in order for the feeling to be right. In other words, if dog A gets five biscuits to every biscuit given to dog B, then in dog B’s mind it takes Dog A getting five biscuits in order for it to get the one. If Dog B could think it would think “Thank God for dog A because that biscuit sure did taste good.”
Your dog is the luckiest dog in the world because you care about it. So don’t think guilt. You haven’t done anything wrong. There is no such thing as fairness in nature so don’t beat yourself up because then your dog will HAVE to express a behavior to make you think guilt and to prove you are right. In other words, to maintain the group harmony. Whereas if you treat dogs fairly then you are not creating a circle, you are being abstract and intellectual and a dog can’t feel an intellectual abstraction. DO WHAT YOU WANT. A dog can feel a want. Then however you are and whatever you did is the frequency that made the wheel go round. Keep On Pushing!
That is a great article!
I was speaking to my friend today, she had surgery a few weeks ago and is having a tough time recovering. To make things worse, she feels that her dog doesn’t like her anymore, because the dog stays in the same room with her but won’t cuddle on the couch (not NDT I know, but she is not asking for advice so I don’t offer), and looks “depressed.” In other words, the dog used to have a lot of personality with her, and now doesn’t show any “affection.” Also the dog is extra-animated with the husband, so my friend sees this as the dog being fickle, liking the husband more now and not liking her because she is sick.
If I am understanding the group mind/ratio of vibration right, then the dog’s behavior would make sense. Also, it seems that the dog has dropped its defense around my friend, because as you’ve explained before when you’re very ill you just don’t put a lot of energy toward maintaining an image, you are more genuine. So the dog is probably feeling good around my friend, she is a normally very high-energy go-go-go dog, yet now she is content to laze around the house every day.
It is interesting in our human way of thinking about things, with all of our intelligence, that we are able to get so confused.
Excellent observation. The dog is feeling vulnerable and closer to the woman than normally, but the woman is projecting thoughts onto her dog and these thoughts come from the judgments of alienation attached to the unresolved emotion in her emotional battery. Thoughts keep us separate from our dog, feelings are what we have in common.
I wish she could get some comfort from the dog, she needs it.
These past couple of weeks I’ve really been having a hard time with “guilt.” Some of it is just slipping into the “fairness” thinking that is in error, eg, the confining Happy while on vacation. But also I feel sorry about the stuff I did with Happy in his early puppy months, before I started using NDT – when his biting and jumping at me behavior seems to crop up and get worse it is confirmation that I did some damage that he is still not recovered from. I cycle through regret like that – but keep on pushing, right?
New question:
Only 7 genes are responsible for the huge amount of variation found in dog breeds. (NY Times) http://ow.ly/2qUUo
From an energy theory of evolution, how does this happen?
LCK
The problem of neo-Darwinian evolution by way of random mutation and selective pressure as a function of competition for limited resources, is that there aren’t enough genes to account for complexity and diversity. I remember the expectation before the human genome project that there would be found millions upon millions of genes, but then it turned out to be somewhere around 30,000 with some plants having over 60,000. It was a big shock to the Darwinians. Since then the emphasis has shifted to epigenetics since it’s been discovered that the environment has much to do with the turning on and off of genes and so fewer genes can do more work by dint of when and how long they are switched on. In other words, evolution theory is moving toward an energy theory.
One of the biggest environmental factors in the turning on and off of genes are stress hormones and related biochemicals. Since in an energy theory emotion and stress are inversely and directly related, I believe that emotion as the embodiment of the laws of physics, with stress the derivative of unresolved emotion, suggests that the experience of emotion–>stress–>emotion–>stress–>emotion–>stress is how environmental cycles of the basic thermodynamic forces of earth become imprinted onto the genome. (And for the record I would add the prediction that RNA, viruses, bacteria and “junk DNA” will prove to be bigger players in evolution than the active sequences of DNA proper. In network consciousness these aspects would allow the environment to tweak the gene code in terms of longer cycles. DNA “mutations” I believe are the result of these tweaks.Active DNA has a more limited in that it locks in the species’s niche role and transmits this specific vibration through time, but it isn’t the mechanism by which the organism adapts to change. The network shifts via its expansion, and then there are all these inputs that tweaks specific genomes which then locks in this particular definition of the network until the network expands and reaches a point that requires a new systems wide DNA statement of the equilibrium.)
I think an important clue as to the real player in evolution is that there is as much diversity of personality in a litter of puppies as there is between the various breeds of dogs. This indicates to me that we are witnessing a repeating fractal pattern, the distribution of genes within a litter being a microcosm of the pattern by which genes are distributed between breeds, and ultimately, throughout all species in the network. Since breed traits are the fractal pattern beneath personality types, and anatomy is a function of emotion, we see this kind of poly-polarities organization on every level in the canine genome. Beyalev in the Russian Fox Breeding experiment demonstrated that selecting for behavioral responses changed physical characteristics, rather than the other way around, and this means to me that the phenomenon of personality types as an offshoot of the emotional battery comes before the genes. Since in an energy model, the physiology, neurology and anatomy is predicated on the emotional battery, genes being responsive to the emotion/stress interplay is a form of ionization, diversity is not at random but in terms of a central organizing principle, this principle being most clearly visible in the nature, behavior and genes of dogs. The diversification of life forms reflect this internal ionization and then external polarization relative to the universal emotional dynamic all life forms share. So what I’m saying is that genes are construed to effect a virtual field of energy, and then they are distributed like ionized particles within a battery.
The more advanced a species, the less it would need genes to execute makeup, behavior and traits because it would be more “networked-enabled” and be able to pickup information directly from the network as it is manifested in the makeup of the environment and other species it finds around itself. For example, modern computers have evolved to pickup information from the internet rather than being equipped at the factory with as much information as possible. Likewise, the potential of the dog is catalyzed by the emotional environment in which it finds itself and it evolves in real time in the immediate-moment so that its behavior and personality is fine tuned to its specifications.
I think I can restate an energy theory of DNA more succinctly. We think of genes as dedicated to the particular organism they encode for, however, the genes of all species are configured in order to encode for the entire network. Think of the network as one organism, the species being parts of its makeup, like an organ or organelle in a body. The genetics of all organisms in their aggregate is a statement of information of the network, more than it is about the specific species that is generated from that particular genome. For example, think of the network as a deck of cards, and then a hand of five cards are dealt to four players in a game of poker, the rest remaining in the deck. Each player’s hand is a subset of information that in their totality, and in their interrelated connections to each other and to the cards not currently active, carries an overall network value; a value that determines the informational content of any given hand. In other words, a hand of cards has a lot of meaning that informs a player iand yet it doesn’t derive just from those particular cards that have been dealt him. The real information derives from what’s not in hand. The game of poker lasting several hours with many shuffles and recombinations represents one network, one statement of consciousness.
I’m hoping this scenario qualifies as a Stump the Chump question: My mom’s Sibe, Sister, is staying with us for a few days. Sister is deaf and she is sensitive about her ears, doesn’t like to have them handled and will pull her head away if you get too close. Well, Diva has developed an obsession with Sister’s ears. They’ve already had one good-sized altercation over this issue, with Sister finally crying about it. This evening I watched this scene with interest: I was sitting in my chair at the computer and Sister was lying behind me, resting. Diva would surreptitiously inch closer to her, all the while focused on her ear and trying to get her nose as close as possible being careful so as not to disturb her (I know, projecting thoughts but I’m just trying to convey an accurate mental picture of the scene). Of course Sister knew she was there even though her eyes were closed, so when Diva got to close her lips would curl and she’d emit a soft growl. If Sister moved or flicked her ear, Diva would jump back quickly. Right about this time Duncan comes over and quietly comes in around my chair, underneath the computer desk and makes a similar, cautious approach to Sister from behind and equally focused on her ears. This went on for a few minutes and finally Diva got too close and Sister snapped at her with Diva jumping back and doing a play bow, all the while barking in her shrill voice with teeth and gums fully exposed. Sister never got up but returned Diva’s snapping with equal force. Duncan of course beat a hasty retreat and I stood up and encouraged Diva into the crate.
What’s up with this? Why the fascination with Sister’s ears? This is a new behavior; I’ve never seen Diva or Duncan so interested in Sister’s ears and she’s been around for about 3 years now. So…what say you, Kevin?
a) ears might smell strange,
b) curious about “sister” and wants to play with her ?
That’s very interesting and this is how I would start looking at it. Behaviorally, Sister is holding back energy and is very concerned with keeping things in strict balance, hence inner-ear balance issue. She’s focusing her energy on her inner ear, literally, and trying to push excess energy out, (growling) so this sore point becomes a group trigger as this is where the most energy is concentrated and why she is so sensitive about ears (could be infectious history as medical analog for this energetic focus). On the level of a larger group dynamic however, does someone “have” your mother’s ear to an inordinate degree, or is there something she’s not willing to “hear” (equal/opposite of same charge) and this holding back is some kind of group trigger for your clan?
Hmmm…interesting. I’m not sure if anyone in my family has my mother’s ear to an inordinate degree; she’s always claimed to have raised six “only” children — hehehe. There are definitely things she doesn’t want to hear: that she’s getting old and might need our help, that she’s sick and needs someone to take care of her, that she needs to make some “end of life” plans…things along those lines mostly. She’s a tough old Scot and very independent.
What do you mean by “some kind of group trigger for your clan”? Are you referring to my human family or my furry family?
BTW…Sister and Diva had a good play session out in the back yard this evening. They were showing and snapping teeth, barking, play bowing, biting, running and generally flipping polarities quite nicely. Sometimes Sister would “flat” and sometimes Diva would, always with a great display of teeth and biting at the air. It was fun to watch. Bodie was out in the yard also but he mostly wanted to play ball, although sometimes he’d get excited by their playing and want to join in.
I’m also not sure I’m getting the inner ear-balance issue connection…
The main thing is to look for something in the family dynamic that is exactly analogous to dogs behavior, and at some point it will just jump out at you and grab your attention, and then you’ll know. Since the dogs ended up playing it sounds rather benign, could be about sibling rivalry (especially since dog is named “Sister”) for mother’s “ear” i.e. attention.
The inner-ear subliminal focus is about maintaining balance (pushing out that which doesn’t fit the pattern of balance keeping), previous generations of parents were a lot less self-conscious about having a favorite child and not so concerned that the other children knew the deal. Perhaps that happened to your mother as a child and she was afraid that she would be like that with her kids and so was hyper-sensitive about being fair with all her children, and so this would end up being the equal/opposite charge to how her parents were.
Sibling rivalry sounds right. We all want to be the focus of our mother’s attention (the apple of her eye) and I can see how the balance issue fits in with our family dynamic. My mother would never intentionally put one above the other, although I’m sure we’ve all felt left out at one time or another.