Just got back from tea with J. & D.. The conversation turned around certain rich people, and annoying things they'd done. J. was saying, I don't like snotty people.
Think of it from the point of view of a dog trainer, I said. When people act snobby, they are acting exactly like dogs who are afraid of other dogs. Unfriendly. Might snap if you get too close. Snobby people want to chase away people, because they're afraid.
"What are rich people afraid of?" D. asked.
I said, "Of becoming poor?" But dogs and people really are an awful lot more alike, socially, than we are different. We evolved around the same garbage heaps. Dogs couldn't have survived without humans, humans couldn't have survived without dogs. We share certain working and playing behaviors. Also territorial aggression, fear agression, resource guarding: you've got to treat it the same way that you treat this kind of aggression in dogs. If you act like aggression bothers you, then it reinforces the aggressor. You've got to just ignor the aggression, and reinforce the positive behaviors.
So J. rolls his eyes. He says, "Talk about territorial aggression: the guy behind us there wanted to put a right of way right to the beach. I caught him clipping bushes, wacking right through my garden. Okay, I said, go ahead, put a right of way through there, so I can drive my trucks through there. I've got cars I want to work on, some oil to change. A right of way would work out great for me too. That guy wasn't so hot on the idea anymore." J. stirred his tea. "I don't want people walking through my yard. I never heard another peep."
Wealth and success can seem so arbitrary and precarious. Maybe in this one bizarre way, poor people feel more stable.
J. rolls his eyes.
But still, I think snobby people are displaying some sort of fear aggression. Or maybe it's like resource guarding. They're afraid of losing their resources.
D. said, That accounts for most of the aggression in the world. People fight more over resources than they do over anything she said.
Maybe remaining few percent of aggression is some mix: genetic reinforcement of fighting, mental illness or disability, or physical illness or disability. But just like in dogs, those kinds of aggression are rare in human beings. Most of the aggression is fear-based, and treatable.
J. goes, yeah, I had a mentally ill dog once. All that dog would do was pace in circles. He'd poop right there and walk right through his poop. He'd bite people, ALL the time. He bit a LOT of people. You couldn't go anywhere inside his circle, no living thing could get inside that circle. Talk about territorial aggression.
"This sounds like a story."
" No! I'm telling the truth! See that window? We had a desk in front of it, she went through the top half of the window. I had to tie her up inside and outside, and so she went out there on an 8 foot rope. Glass and blood everywhere. Then that dog, she really went insane. I think she was sick. She put her head through a fish-tank."
"You are making up this story."
"No I'm telling you it's the truth. One night I got home and she was in there, frothing, just going insane. Growling, in some kind of a rage and you couldn't go in there. Couldn't get anywhere near her. It was dangerous. I thought, distemper maybe? She had this look in her eyes. So I went out and got the police, figuring someone would have to shoot her. I didn't dare go in there. So I bring them back, and they go in and they tell me, she's gone, she slammed her head into the fishtank, and then killed herself trying to pull her head back out."
I still didn't believe him. This guy is an old fisherman. They make up stories all day long. I thought for sure J. was about to deliver a punchline. "And so what? Most of all, you missed the fish?"
"It was an empty tank, I'm not making this up, that dog went insane."
"Didn't you get your dog immunized?"
"It's all I can do to pay for my own health care. What, poor people can't get a puppy? Anyway, that's not why rich people are unfriendly. I haven't had a dog for years."
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