We are far too easily pleased

January 2018 – Unusually for me, during the recent Christmas festivities I viewed a voyeur-vision programme about dogs, featuring Paul O’Grady, the retired drag ‘artiste’. It provided me with an unexpected amount of food for thought.

Like many others I can understand why folks might want to hug a puppy. Most of us will hug-a-bub of any sort, given the chance. They are so defenceless and trusting; so curious and mischievous; so lively and cuddly. Then they grow and some of them aren’t quite so cuddly anymore.  Some aren’t even attractive when they slaver and dribble and grow fat. But I think true dog owners don’t even notice those things.

Most dog owners believe that dogs must be trained to behave according to our will and our standards. Training involves instruction (in a language the animal doesn’t know) and repetition re-enforced with rewards for suitable behavioural responses, usually food of some kind. We keep them warm and clean and exercise them. In return – they let us make a fuss of them or ignore them, whichever the human owner prefers. We clean their mess behind them to prevent them from spoiling ‘our’ world.  And they let us.  Who wouldn’t for regular square meals, warm baths and no need to make decisions?  If that is the extent of the animal’s life ambition, or the extent of the ambition we permit it, who could blame him/her/it?  We treat prisoners in gaol in much the same way.

Then came the thinking part. I recalled the words of a man with the unlikely name of Zig Ziglar. The late Zig Ziglar. Born in Alabama and raised in Mississippi, he was a businessman, author, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and a Baptist Christian. When he spoke it sounded as if he had a strangulated larynx. But he made a great deal of sense to me. (The version I first heard included the word ‘enough’. “You can have everything life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”  That is a useful description of power.

I thought about the meaning of POWER, which is inherent with being a dog owner. Dictionary.com defines POWER as: noun

1.      ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.

2.      political or national strength: the balance of power in Europe.

3.      great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force.

4.      the possession of control or command over others; authority; 

ascendancy: power over men's minds.

5.      political ascendancy or control in the government of a country, state, etc.:

They attained power by overthrowing the legal government.

6.      legal ability, capacity, or authority:          the power of attorney.

7.      delegated authority; authority granted to a person or persons in a particular office or capacity: the powers of the president.

Synonyms include: 1. capacity. 2. energy. 3. sway, 4. rule,  5. sovereignty.

The domesticated dog has little power beyond its inherent ability to snarl and bite when provoked. The same is true of the imprisoned felon. The same seems to be true of the ordinary men and women in roads and towns near you. It might even be true of YOU.  Perhaps we snarl at each other simply because we know we have little power to do anything else? We have delegated (given away) our own power and authority to others who seek to hold that power and authority over us, just like a pet dog.   

Why in the world did we do that? Answer: We did it because we didn’t realise we were doing it. We had listened to words in a language we don’t understand until we complied and conformed with the instructions and benefits given to us.

Sure, if we want to chase after a bright bouncy ball and play with it, we are ‘free’ to do so.  Sure, if we want to sniff around potentially interesting smelly attractions we are more or less free to do so.  Sure, if we gather bits and pieces around us to determine our territory and comfort zone we are free to do so. We are free to do all these and other things provided our owners don’t mind or else see some advantage to them in allowing us to behave as we do.

How on earth did I muse my way from watching a voyeur vision programme about petting a dog to claiming that all of us are similarly owned?  You might well ask. I believe it happened because our owners (also known as ‘they’ or ‘them’) can’t stop us thinking, so if we have open eyes and a working brain, we think.

The definition of power provides the link. Specifically, (a) Power over the minds of men - item 4; (b) delegated authority – item 7; and (c) the synonym ‘sovereignty’.

Power over the minds of men: I hear you say ‘nobody has power over my mind!’ Or words to that effect. But they have. Years ago we might have said something like ‘I’m free, white, and over 21, and nobody can tell me what to think.’  But that denies the power of inoculation – the injection of just a little of something to help you to resist the real thing. The word ‘democracy’ falls into that category. Let’s not argue over whether the injection word is inoculation or vaccination.

Commercially sponsored media will happily tell you what it wants you to believe, as will State sponsored media, of course. Advertising, propaganda, education, all can be described as policy created for you rather than created by you.  You’ve become and are targeted as the pet willing to do your master’s bidding.

Delegated authority: The political party system is contrived to make you believe that you have a say in the way the country is governed. For the most part, you haven’t.  Your constituency MP owes his job to the party he serves. The fact that you voted for him or didn’t vote for him is incidental. The choice of candidate was made by the Party, by the mostly invisible THEM. You were simply offered ‘take it’ or ‘leave it’.  From that understanding it is a small step to realise that those who control the party are really the people to whom you delegate authority when you vote. When parliament convenes it is only the ‘front men’ we see, not those who pull their strings.

Sovereignty: Ah, what a word!  The quality or state of being sovereign, or of having supreme power or authority, says dictionary.com.   

Think for a moment about the claim in some quarters that God made man in his image. I’m not asking you believe it (but if you do, that’s fine by me) but I am asking you to think about it.  What if it is TRUE? Wouldn’t that thought convince you that you are more than a pet or a pup-pet?  (Interesting word connection there, I thought).  Could you believe that from this concept you have your own power and authority?  Some call it sovereignty; some say inalienable (or unalienable) right but both mean IT IS YOURS TO HAVE AND TO HOLD UNLESS YOU CHOOSE TO GIVE IT UP – knowingly or unknowingly. 

It is otherwise known as ‘natural law’, sometimes called ‘common law’.  In most western countries it is YOUR birthright but others elsewhere are denied that right by those who rule over them. Common law trumps statute law (meaning those laws devised by men with their own reasons to devise them) every time. 

Common law is the natural antidote to statute law and everyone, including a monarch, is subject to common/natural law IF WE UPHOLD OUR BIRTHRIGHT. It puts the controls beyond the reach of commercial or state manipulators and political party owners. That isn’t true of statute law as is evidenced by the state’s need of enforcers to uphold statute law. 

Common law calls only for ‘We, the people’ to determine what is right and fair. I stopped musing around this point and then I read something written by the late C. S. Lewis, the world renowned Irish writer and scholar, which seemed to me to be a perfect summary of our modern social condition:

 “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about ... like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. 

We are far too easily pleased.” 

 - C.S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)  

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