Jonah Goldberg’s latest op-ed can be summed up by paraphrasing the title of a famous Tom Wolfe article: “Sorry, but your dog’s soul just died” — at least according to a writer at the Chicago Tribune, Jonah notes:
Charles Darwin, a true secular saint of the modern age if ever there was one, loved dogs unreservedly. And, in The Descent of Man, he marveled at the ability of dogs to love back. He noted how even “in the agony of death, a dog has been known to caress his master.”
But even Darwin was a sucker, apparently. Eric Zorn, a writer for the Chicago Tribune, recently mocked a local woman, Jess Craigie, who dove into near-freezing waters to save her dog from drowning. Zorn wrote, “Note to Jess Craigie: Your dog still doesn’t love you.”
Zorn’s source for this dog slander is Jon Katz, who despite his name has written mostly wonderful stuff about dogs. Zorn uses an unfortunate quote from Katz to peddle the fashionable notion that dogs are, in the words of science writer Stephen Budiansky and others, “social parasites.” According to this theory, canines are evolutionary grifters that have fooled humans into believing they are our friends. “Dogs develop very strong, instinctive attachments to the people who feed and care for them,” Katz told Zorn. “Over 15,000 years of domestication, they’ve learned to trick us into thinking that they love us.” (In his book Soul of a Dog, Katz is far more nuanced about the nature of canine affection, suggesting a quid pro quo of food for love. Here, Katz is out of the bag.)
Look, few would dispute that dogs are complicated creatures with internal lives that fall far short of humanlike consciousness or self-awareness. And anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with dogs knows their priorities and our own differ dramatically. That’s part of the magic of doggy goodness. Dogs don’t care whether you’re rich or famous or popular. They care about you. Or, in the case of my dog, Cosmo (a shelter dog), he cares about me and about maintaining an orderly and secure perimeter on our block, as free of mail carriers, squirrels, raccoons, foxes, cheetahs, and wildebeests as possible. His biggest successes have been with the cheetahs and wildebeests — so far.
Here’s the question reductionists like Zorn don’t answer: Why does canine affection have to be a trick or a con? After all, according to the very same logic, I love my wife and daughter because I have strong instinctive attachments for them grounded in my genes. But even if the genetic explanation is absolutely true, it doesn’t change the fact that I love my family.
Why should it be different with dogs? It’s not as if dogs have a Terminator-like computer screen inside their heads that says “run fake-love subroutine now” when their masters come home from work. Dogs don’t pose in front of the mirror practicing their tail-wags like lines from a script so they can make it convincing. If it is true of any living thing, it is true of dogs: They are what they are. A happy dog can no more be faking his joy than a hungry lion could be faking his appetite.
Do we really want to live in a society in which love is a genetically mandated confidence game? Where will that argument take us?
Wolfe’s article (reprinted in his 2000 anthology, Hooking Up) helps to flesh out that last question. But Zorn’s B.F. Skinner for schnauzers routine isn’t exactly the best way to sell newspapers, no matter how leftwing your target audience is — needless to say, lovers of dogs (or “fur children” as they like to say in Berkeley) can be found across the political spectrum, and then some. So it’s a good thing the Tribune has a phalanx of editors there to nip such heartless writing in the bud before the readers see it!
Or not, as the case may be.
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50 Comments
1. Steven Den Beste:Sounds like a case of fashionable cynicism.
I do get so tired of people being fashionably cynical.
May 13, 2009 - 8:23 am 2. K:A basic tenant of the secular left is that people, and by extension dogs, are mere meat machines. No divine spark, just instinct driven consuming systems that must be controlled or they’ll use up the resources and kill the planet.
May 13, 2009 - 9:05 am 3. Rob C:One useful thing evolution has done for us is to give Eric Zorn a face that warns us all of the brainpower within. Google a picture of the guy; he looks like he would have trouble operating a Ziploc bag. Nothing of his that I have skimmed over his shockingly long journalistic career has changed that judgment.
May 13, 2009 - 9:21 am 4. Instapundit » Blog Archive » SORRY, BUT YOUR dog’s soul just died….:[...] SORRY, BUT YOUR dog’s soul just died. [...]
May 13, 2009 - 5:20 pm 5. theodorerud:Zorn obviously owns a cat.
Ed: Perhaps an Ocicat…
May 13, 2009 - 5:32 pm 6. KevinF:Oh bother it all. When I’m lying back on the couch watching TV and I see my cat gazing longingly at me, I know what’s going on: she’s trying to determine whether I’m still breathing or whether she can finally start feasting on my corpse. But either way I appreciate the affection when it’s offered, and she appreciates the cat food I pour into her bowl.
May 13, 2009 - 5:32 pm 7. Slashdot Vet:Jon Katz is an idiot and nothing he says can be trusted. Longtime Slashdot readers will confirm Katz’s annoyingly clueless nature. Now he’s spreading the idiocy previously reserved for technopolitical issues to that of dog ownership, where he seems to be equally clueless:
http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=8683
May 13, 2009 - 5:33 pm 8. Mike G:I long ago came to the conclusion that the difference between a dog truly loving you and a dog being programmed to love you is basically nonexistent. A dog’s nature is affection. A human’s nature is affection in return toward things that remind them of babies (big eyes, cuddly).
Both are intensely satisfied by the arrangement. What’s the problem? What would it mean to say that that was fake, or merely the result of programming? How would that change it? Do you really think you love your baby because you’ve considered the notion at a depth Tolstoy would envy, and come out pro-baby? You have the feeling despite yourself; it’s what you do with the feeling, not why you have it, that gives it meaning.
May 13, 2009 - 5:33 pm 9. cirby:We’ve spent thousands of years engineering dogs to love us. That has also had the beneficial side effect of training (most) people to love dogs back.
The humanoids who can’t understand this two-way street are cursed, and I feel very little but pity for them. If you can’t love dogs, you probably can’t love much else in the world, either.
May 13, 2009 - 5:36 pm 10. Rand Simberg:I call dog…excrement. Just apply a canine Turing test.
May 13, 2009 - 5:39 pm 11. tim maguire:As Jonah and the commenters here seem to get, the explanation of why a dog’s love isn’t real is nothing more than a linguistic trick, a trick that may be applied just as effectively against humans should we so desire.
The fact that Eric Zorn may not so desire changes nothing.
May 13, 2009 - 5:42 pm 12. Nina (Ed's wife):Several years ago, Ed’s mother-in-law (My mother, I’m afraid to admit) came to visit and met Willie, the epitome of dogs who think humans are alpha dogs with clever paws and thus love us to bits, for the first time.
Willie was part golden retriever, part lab and part irish setter, and all big happy lovable pooch. He came over to The Mother to wag his tail and say “hello person who can reach the dog yummies on top of the big white box where the cow meat lives.”
The Mother (a cat person) responded “See, that’s what I don’t like about dogs — he doesn’t even know me and he likes me.”
May 13, 2009 - 5:46 pm 13. Xixi:Then, I used to have a bird who tricked me into thinking he loved me. Nick, the cockatiel, believed in tough love. His pattern was to bite first then chirp about it later. He ate with me, slept with me, showered with me and got pissed when he waited up for me if I stayed out late. On election day in 2004, he bit the shit out of a democrat’s hand. His body departed for an extended stay in birdie purgatory in 2005, but he’s still in my thoughts and my dreams. Pets are about life. Cynicism is about death.
May 13, 2009 - 5:50 pm 14. Mike Puckett:Yep, Dogs and Cats risk their lives to save their owners from burning structures or wild animals or attackers at their own mortal peril for food. It is a very rational survival behavior………..not.
May 13, 2009 - 5:57 pm 15. Rob C:Then, I used to have a bird who tricked me into thinking he loved me.
Bless you, Xixi, I have an African lovebird who throws in a few cuddles before he latches on to my ear. The small parrots make the best companions in the world.
May 13, 2009 - 6:01 pm 16. Ron Hardin:A dog’s soul connects him to others.
May 13, 2009 - 6:02 pm 17. huxley:The House Dog’s Grave (for Haig, an English Bulldog)
I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you,
If you dream a moment,
You see me there.
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no,
All the nights through I lie alone.
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read‚
And I fear often grieving for me‚
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dears, that’s too much hope:
You are not so well cared for as I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided…
But to me you were true.
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.
– Robinson Jeffers
May 13, 2009 - 6:16 pm 18. Brian Macker:I’m a reductionist of the worst sort and yet I still believe my dog feels emotions. So what’s with slandering reductionists?
May 13, 2009 - 6:19 pm 19. Jabba The Tutt:Katz wrote wonderful things about dogs. Zorn means rage in German. And I think Zorn is living up to his name.
May 13, 2009 - 6:20 pm 20. bagoh20:Some writers are just responding to what cocktail parties have conditioned them to think is cool or new.
May 13, 2009 - 6:20 pm 21. lumpy:Cynicism is cowardice.
May 13, 2009 - 6:20 pm 22. Dave Eaton:@14 Mike Puckett-
That’s exactly it. We hear story after story of dogs getting between their people and mountain lions and bears. If it is a con or a grift, apparently the dog is just as conned. If I think he loves me, and he thinks he loves me enough to take on a bigger animal, what do I care what the mechanism is?
Heroic behavior in canines is not automatic- some dogs are, well, pussies. Words like ‘instinct’ are verbal tags for stuff we do not understand.
May 13, 2009 - 6:20 pm 23. Morton Doodslag:KevinF has it just about right, at least when it comes to cats.
May 13, 2009 - 6:21 pm 24. Jay Guevara:I think we should defer to liberals on “social parasites,” a group with which they have …uh…intimate familiarity.
Gotta defer to liberals on the lack of self-awareness too, for the same reason.
Are dogs talking about “hope” or “change” now? I missed that. If they are, they are absolutely tricksters and con artists, but with better breath than most such.
May 13, 2009 - 6:27 pm 25. Bob Finer:‘Lock your wife and dog in the trunk of the car. Open the trunk an hour later and see which one is glad to see you.’
May 13, 2009 - 6:28 pm 26. Richard Aubrey:Kipling had it right when he remarked, “We’ve trouble enough in the natural way. Why give your heart to a dog to tear?”
May 13, 2009 - 6:33 pm 27. Kuwn Tina:And I believe it was Twain who observed that he’d known many men and a few dogs and wished it were the reverse.
“Dog” is neocon code for “black.” You are a racist bigot.
May 13, 2009 - 6:35 pm 28. Akatsukami:Note to Eric Zorn: Jess Craige’s dog still doesn’t love you. And that’s perfectly understandable.
May 13, 2009 - 6:35 pm 29. Richard Wood:Darn you huxley… I always tear up at dog poems. I guess that makes me an intellectual inferior.
May 13, 2009 - 6:36 pm 30. Jay Guevara:Seriously, though, extend the reasoning to foreign policy. These liberals question the affection of dogs, characterize them as “social parasites,” who feign affection in return for their own aggrandizement. Yet these same people almost certainly advocate making handouts to Hamas, welfare recipients, and other assorted real social parasites, in hopes of gaining their affection, despite a scintilla of even feigned affection from the recipients.
May 13, 2009 - 6:38 pm 31. toad:Zorn doesn’t appear to have much knowledge of dog breeding. Over the years humans have bred dogs not just for a certain look but also for “temperament.” Also this long breeding process has led dogs to be in a permanent state of puppy hood. They don’t grow up like wolves do. People who have tried to raise wolves and wolf/dog hybrids have found this out the hard way. A wolf may regard you as the alpha of the pack but if he senses a weakness, like a limp, he’ll challenge you for leadership. They are what they are. If anything people are the “parasites” on dogs not vs. versa. I think it was a comedian whose name I can’t remember summed it up best. A dog is a child who never grows up. It’s sad in a way, they never get well paying jobs, go to graduate school, and move out on their own.
May 13, 2009 - 6:43 pm 32. nospam:http://www.animaltalk.us/for/Animals/do-all-dogs-go-to-heaven/
May 13, 2009 - 6:46 pm 33. Lord Whorfin:Jay:
Great point.
“Those things nearest to us pass by all too quickly”
Willem Lange
May 13, 2009 - 6:55 pm 34. Seerak:I’m reminded of a Berkely Breathed “Outland” comic, where one of the characters wonders what is really going on behind a dog’s gaze. (”A vasectomy scar?!?!”)
Do we really want to live in a society in which love is a genetically mandated confidence game? Where will that argument take us?
For humans, it is aimed at excusing the individual from moral responsibility for his character; in that, it does for the Left what the “tragic view of human nature” (”original sin”, for the religious) doctrine does for conservatives.
May 13, 2009 - 7:09 pm 35. Dave:Dogs at least deserve credit for their loyalty. My mother once spent two years in Europe, and when she returned, her dog was deliriously happy to see her again. I spent two weeks in Europe, and my cats didn’t even notice my return. Seeing that my friend had a nicer apartment and kept the food dish filled, the cats forgot all about me.
May 13, 2009 - 7:13 pm 36. John:The Tribune has runs Eric Zorn’s column for years. No newspaper would publish Eric Zorn unless it hates its readers.
May 13, 2009 - 8:20 pm 37. bour3:‹anthropomorphication alert›
My Belgian sheepdog actually showed an appreciation for humor.
I could tell when she was starting to become a car sick because her mouth would begin to foam, so I pulled off to the side of the road and we took a short hike down a hill through a copse. She was filled with glee and took off running, thinking this was our destination. What I didn’t know, was the slope leveled off to a beaver dam. Evidence of beavers everywhere including a large wet muddy slick. My dog slipped while running and slid through the wet muddy ground struggling to regain her footing, she was utterly hilarious. Totally cracked me up. I was holding my sides laughing and she returned to me delighted to see me having fun and laughing, she ran back up the hill and took another running start at the mud slick attempting to repeat the original slide. Of course it wasn’t as funny the second time but I’m certain my dog was trying to entertain me and to get me to laugh some more. That episode will live in my heart until I die. How I miss that wonderfully funny dog. Not a trace of gile.
May 13, 2009 - 8:23 pm 38. peterike:‹/anthropomorphication alert›
Huxley @ 17. Thank you for reminding me of a poem I knew and had forgotten. Even though it’s painful to read, with my loyal and loving dog in the last days of his life.
For those who think a dog is a bag of furry instincts and nothing more, go and read “Merle’s Door: Lessons From a Free-Thinking Dog,” by Ted Kerasote, and then dare to look anyone in the eye and say a dog is nothing more than a bag of furry instincts.
For those that know better, it’s a wonderful book. Be prepared to cry, because you will cry. You will also laugh, and know joy.
May 13, 2009 - 9:10 pm 39. Robohobo:This whole discussion reminds me of this paraphrased quote. From who, I forget.
‘A house without a dog or cat in it is the house of a scoundrel.’
Most dogs are better people than people.
May 13, 2009 - 9:34 pm 40. Bilgeman:#12 Nina:
“The Mother (a cat person) responded “See, that’s what I don’t like about dogs — he doesn’t even know me and he likes me.””
That’s a…howler!
The best line I’ve ever heard on the subject is that dogs think people are their family.
Cats, otoh, know that humans are their STAFF…
I have 2 of each.
May 13, 2009 - 9:53 pm 41. Salamantis:Dogs give us unconditional love;
May 13, 2009 - 10:42 pm 42. Jack:Cats teach us humility.
Zorn is a dick.
And I bet a dog is better company.
May 14, 2009 - 2:32 am 43. Nicholas:I think people and dogs ARE just “meat machines”, as “K” puts it. So what? They can still love, that’s part of the machinery.
At the end of the day, when the dog has been fed, watered, exercised, entertained, etc. and is just plain exhausted she still flops down next to me rather than in the corner. What more evidence do you need than that?
May 14, 2009 - 2:55 am 44. GW Crawford:I firmly believe that there is no soul, no divine spark and that we are bags of chemicals with memories – and there is no way in hell you can convince me that me family dogs did not love me
May 14, 2009 - 5:20 am 45. Percy Dovetonsils:When I would come back from university, my original family dog would start wagging her tail so hard that she was skipping back and forth and she would start crying.
They see us as dogs, pack members. We see them as human, family members. We are not seeing the same thing but the end result is the same.
If some liberal cat owner cannot appreciate love that is because they attribute to others the same selfish, evil motivations they possess.
Also, to any culture that considers dogs unclean – maybe if you understood the fundamental decency of dogs, you would overlook their personal hygiene – like I frequently have to overlook on you
Personally, if I came upon Eric Zorn drowning in near-freezing waters, I’d jump in myself… to make sure he didn’t get out.
May 14, 2009 - 6:52 am 46. Jonathan:If you’ll permit a detour into rational thought: one of these guys (I forget which, but I think it was Katz) claimed (approximately) “Give me a bag of treats and a week and I’ll make your dog forget you ever walked the earth.” That’s either provably true or it isn’t. Instead of blustering and blithering, someone who cares about this controversy should run the test.
Fact-free emotionalism is the province of liberals.
May 14, 2009 - 7:15 am 47. Rob Crawford:The dog I grew up with was cared for by the entire family. Mom and Dad fed her; I let her out after school; I played with her.
Fast forward more than a decade. I’m a freshman in college. Over the last seven months I’ve been home maybe three weeks. Mom and Dad came to visit, and brought the dog with them. Now, according to the “they’re just acting as they’re conditioned”, what connection have I had to the dog’s life lately? I haven’t fed her, walked her, played with her, ANYTHING for months.
Yet… as they pulled onto campus, I was walking across the quad. They said the dog saw me out the car window and “woofed”. They parked, let her out, and she took off for me like a bullet.
If it’s all about their basic needs being met, if it’s all about them rewarding US for taking care of them, then what did she care for me at that point?
May 14, 2009 - 7:39 am 48. Number 6:This is an old and ugly idea. Rene Descartes was a great mathematician, an interesting philosopher. Desscartes taught that animals are nothing but machines. So we should feel nothing at all when dismantling a machine no matter how much it screams. A few years later the leaders of the French Revolution applied that standard to humans, since they’re nothing but meaty machines, destroy the ones that are inconvenient to your purpose. This idea has been useful to governments in the 20th century.
May 14, 2009 - 8:01 am 49. RebeccaH:“Give me a bag of treats and a week and I’ll make your dog forget you ever walked the earth.”
This has already been disproved to my satisfaction several times over. For example, when my daughter and her family spent two weeks in Florida, I kept their dog. She’s a sweet-natured, funny, playful boxer, and I spoiled her outrageously. Yet sometimes she would stand on the back deck and whine for no apparent reason (I maintain she was missing her family, prove me wrong). When they came to pick her up, she practically tied herself in knots she was so overjoyed.
Obviously Mr. Zorn and his like have never lived with dogs.
May 14, 2009 - 10:15 am 50. Grimmy:C’mon, people. Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here? HIS NAME IS ZORN!
If that doesn’t clue you in …
Anyway, yes, to Darwinists, we are all nothing but meat driven to survive. So what we think of as love and courage and honor are nothing more than evolutionary tricks of the “mind” – which is nothing more than a bag of chemical reactions shaped by that drive.
Most of you don’t remember, but Darwinism also brought us “scientific” racism not too long ago – e.g. Nazism, the plight of the Aborigines in Australia. Sneakily, this is being rewritten today in movies (e.g. “Gettysburg”) where Darwinism is said to bring thoughts of universal brotherhood instead.
May 14, 2009 - 11:11 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.