This is What My Dog Knows

What is she thinking about?

I don't understand. Not even the most fundamental things come to me easily. I seem to be totally unaware, for instance, that the building we're passing is grilling meat because if I was aware, of course I'd turn and go inside . . . And eat the meat!

I never seem to know that now, right now, is a perfect time for going outside and walking around, because exercise is good. 

I'm ignorant of the impending invasive danger possible from the vehicle that is idling in the road outside our house. 

I don't know that there is a family of noisy, cheeky, thieving mice living in that hole in the ground. 

I fail far too often to respond to wounds in my relationship with my wife that must be healed, again, right now, and the way to do that is through, compassion, forgiveness, and physical contact, preferably cuddling. And our dog has to constantly remind me of this.

I love them, our dog Stella seems to think, But my goodness are my people dense.

In our arrogance, we've come to believe that human intelligence has emerged at the top of this planet's hierarchy of intelligences, that ours is the best and most profound way of knowing. But if we take even a small thoughtful moment to look behind the simplistic dominant-submissive narrative that many of us use when discussing canine intentionality, we find that our dog's behaviors demonstrate a genius for cross-species sociability. That their's is an intelligence that embodies the collective ideal. Self-actualization for domesticated dogs is about mood enhancement, not just for themselves, but for everyone. The dogs I've known care far less about individuality or getting their own selfish needs met, and far more about the wellbeing of the pack. And while they may not possess the kind of self-conscious awareness -- the knowing what they know or that they know -- that humans do, they are the masters of unselfconscious love.

I've often asserted that domestic canines stand as one of the most important human inventions. And they are human inventions at least to the degree that we've selectively bred these formerly wild animals, even our working dogs, for their sociability and their capacity to love us.

I've lived with many dogs and while they've each had unique personalities, interests, and aptitudes, they've all reminded me, daily, that there is so much in this world about which I'm ignorant. At one level, it's their superior ability to hear and smell that gives me pause. What is she following with her nose to the ground? What is she hearing outside the door? But it goes beyond that. She notices the birds sitting on the wire or the butterfly in the bush. She responds to both friends and strangers in ways that make me believe that she must know something about them I don't. I've read that our dogs can hear our hearts beating. I imagine they always know when someone is insincere or lying, even if they might not know exactly what they are insincere or lying about.

Like so many things, our ability to know that we know and what we know is one of our greatest strength as a species, yet within the soil of this superpower lies the seed of our destruction. When we make the mistake of believing that knowing-that-we-know makes us superior to other intelligences, then it tends to blind us to the great genius found in unselfconscious knowing: the knowing a seed has about growing, a bird has about nesting, and a dog has about connecting. We dismiss these things as mere instinct, as thoughtless, automatic responses to internal and external signals, but anyone who has ever loved an animal knows that their intellectual and emotional range is at least as expansive as our own. Just different. And by striving to understand their perspective, with their help, we can come to a fuller understanding of reality.

We will never have the sensory capacity of dogs, but we are born with a similar genius. We are not born consciously knowing that we must connect in order to survive, but through our every behavior we demonstrate that we do know it. Scientists have labeled a dozen or so behaviors as "instincts" or "reflexes" with which most of us are born. But consider the difference it would make if we could teach ourselves to view those behaviors -- crying, startling, nursing -- as intelligence.

We are born with the kind of unconscious intelligence that comprises most of the wisdom of the universe. As we grow and develop, our human capacity for self-conscious knowing naturally emerges, but we make a mistake when we strive, in our ignorance, to hurry children along to it. This is exactly what we are doing when we attempt to teach two-year-olds to read or three-year-olds to cipher, or four-year-olds to memorize science facts. When we dismiss a child's intelligence as mere instinct or reflex, what we do is assert our intellectual superiority over that child. We say, in effect, that the child is ignorant or innocent or unformed, and we give ourselves permission to "fix" them through educational efforts. In our hubris, in our own ignorance, we believe that we can one-up Mother Nature who has been working on human intelligence for billions of years. 

I can't prove this in a scientific sense, but it seems self-evident that our intelligence has evolved to develop, at its own pace, starting with the foundational unconscious intelligence with which we are born. This is wisdom that will remain true throughout our lives. It will not be overturned by some new scientific revelations or epiphany. It is the foundational knowledge that a seed has about how to grow, which is no less wise because it is unconscious. Self-conscious knowledge is far less reliable and far more subject to change than those things we dismiss as instincts. Today's scientific fact -- The earth is flat! -- is tomorrow's fiction. It seems self-evident to me that when we attempt to rush our children through the foundational part of their intellectual development, the part during which we engage the universal truths, we disrupt, even derail, their natural development.

Among the things that every human unconsciously knows from birth is that they must play, which is to say explore, experiment, and discover, a learning process that is driven by curiosity. When school-ish people see play, they dismiss it as a distraction because it looks like mere instinct, when, in fact, it is the foundation upon which all learning, all knowledge, all wisdom, is built. This is what my dog knows.

******

Hi, I'm Teacher Tom and this is my podcast! If you're an early childhood educator, parent of preschoolers, or otherwise have young children in your life, I think you'll find my conversations with early childhood experts and thought-leaders useful, inspiring, and eye-opening. You might even come away transformed by the ideas and perspectives we share. Please give us a listen. You can find Teacher Tom's Podcast on the Mirasee FM Podcast Network or anywhere you download your podcasts.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!