We were on a break


Shantanu’s Friends meme reminded me of the classic “we were on a break” debacle between Ross and Rachel… I guess we could say Ross and Rachel fell victim to sense. They both may have known what “on a break” meant, but their sense of that phrase was very different. This in turn led me to think about how concepts that are seemingly so universal can be interpreted so differently. If we use love as an example (which I picked because of the argument that dogs don’t love us), at face value it seems like love is a concept that could be universal. Anyone, anywhere in the world, probably has some understanding of what love is. Last week in class, however, we discussed how symbols, including words, are arbitrary, and love is no exception. We use the word or concept of love to organize patterns of behavior that we see exhibited in the world around us. When my dog climbs up on the couch next to me, I interpret her proximity to me as affectionate based on my prior experiences; she must love me because of all the spaces in our house, she chose the spot closest to me. That sentiment is a lot nicer than the reality (I use that word loosely) which is the fact that the couch is more comfortable than the floor, and, given the chance, she would sit on the couch whether I was there or not. We assign very human notions, based on our experiences, to animals who are really only acting on stimulus and response. The couch was in my dog’s visual field, so she climbed up. If love is a mediating symbol for how we organize certain behaviors exhibited by those around us, then we look for patterns of behavior that we identify as confirming that mediating symbol. We were all thrown for a loop when Michael said that our pets don’t love us, because that challenged our organization of behaviors we see from our pets. As we learned last class, we don’t like when our mediating symbols are challenged. I don’t really like the idea that my dog’s behaviors have nothing to do with the fact that she loves me, but I suppose I see now how that could be the case. 

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