Thursday, August 19, 2010

Books, Covers and When It's Polite to Point

What the hell was Lewis talking about, anyway?

For me, the expression "you can't judge a book by its cover" is especially amusing. My mother is the published author of over 35 romance novels. The names of the books and the cover art were a constant source of embarrassment and horror for my mother because while she had no control at all over those things*, she knew that people thought she did and judged her for it.

So, don't just a book or its author by the cover.

And don't take dog training advice from Ray Comfort or CS Lewis. (Dude, I loved Narnia, why you gotta play me like this?)

An ex-atheist [CS Lewis] once wrote, "You will have noticed that most dogs cannot understand pointing. You point to a bit of food on the floor; the dog, instead of looking at the floor, sniffs at your finger. A finger is a finger to him, and that is all. His world is all fact and no meaning. And in a period when factual realism is dominant we shall find people deliberately inducing upon themselves this doglike mind."

Actually, most dogs do understand pointing. They are, in fact, one of the few species other than humans to do so. It's possible Lewis' dog did not understanding pointing, but my dog does.

Also, how would anyone know if dogs engage in . . . "factual realism"? Dogs, while capable of understanding 300 or more words, lack the throat and jaw structures to speak as humans do, so we won't be talking to them anytime soon. And what's wrong with factual realism? Sure, my dog regularly bites his own tail, but he's never invaded the Holy Land because god told him so. We'd probably be a lot better off thinking as dogs do.


Seriously, facts and reality are bad? *sigh* That reminds me, you know what happens at the end of the Narnia saga? The preteen protagonists all die. Lewis considered that the best possible ending the story could have had. Yay! Children died! Isn't that great! O_o

How true are his words. Evolution believers dumb themselves down, believing that they are simply apes that have evolved a little more than their animal brethren. But man isn't slightly brighter than the animals. He outshines them in the area of arts, creativity, music, the preparation of his food, an appreciation of his being, the study of his history, language, speech, God, and in many other complex facets of life.

Food preparation? Humans are weenies when it comes to food. My dog doesn't need his meat cooked because his digestive tract is quite capable of eating raw meat, whereas I would likely die trying the same trick. But what about sauces and spice rubs makes us better than animals? Music? Sorry, birds and whales do that all day long. Art? Gorillas and elephants love art. Creativity? What does that even mean? What about birds and their nests or spiders and their webs? Are those beautiful creations not marks of creativity?


Ray, having recently been called out on his characterization of African natives as "savages", decides that it wasn't the hate that was the problem:

However, one area where he completely outshines the animal kingdom, is the area of law. No animal comes anywhere near man’s desire to see that justice is done. The most primitive of us (foul-mouthed white men with ugly tattoos and gaping holes in their ears) believes in retribution. Snatch his beer from his clasping hand, and it’s payback time. This is because those of us who are still sane are moral beings, made in the image of Him who is called "the Habitation of Justice."

Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray. I know you've been told a thousand times that a) vengeance is not justice, and b) humans are not the only animals capable of desiring justice. Monkeys and dogs both have a sense of fair play and demand justice.

Habitation of Justice? The same guy who recommends raping prisoners of war and killing babies? That guy?

Foul-mouthed white men with bad tattoos and gaping holes in their ears? So . . . you're pro tattoos as long as they are well executed? Foul-mouthed white women with bad tattoos and gaping holes in their ears are less "primitive"? I bet most of those people know dogs can understand pointing and monkeys are capable of justice. Unlike you, Ray.





*Editors chose the titles based upon their personal loathing for the authors as far as I could tell. The publishers would send over an "art fact sheet" for the author to fill out, including physical descriptions of the main characters, location of the story, era of the story, and then apparently shred the completed art fact sheet upon receiving it, because the covers never matched those descriptions at all. It was like some sort of bizarre metaKabuki.

8 comments:

  1. Well, my Corgi certainly understood pointing. I would point to a steer/sheep and then point to the gate and she would herd the steer/sheep to the gate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The greatest sin in Narnia was growing up. One of the siblings does not die at the end because she is acting like a grown up (wearing make-up and talking to boys) instead of playing pretend in Narnia. That is why His Dark Materials was written. Pullman hated the idea of not letting children grow up. Instead he showed that it was natural and was a service to the kids to let them grow up in their time and not be so overly protective to keep them sheltered from the world and making them emotionally stunted.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, most dogs do understand pointing.

    Hell, there's an entire breed known as "pointer." I don't think it has anything to do with the shape of their ears...

    One of the siblings does not die at the end because she is acting like a grown up (wearing make-up and talking to boys) instead of playing pretend in Narnia. That is why His Dark Materials was written. Pullman hated the idea of not letting children grow up.

    Neil Gaiman did a very different workup of that with a short story called "The Problem of Susan." His version of Aslan was...different...

    ReplyDelete
  4. *heads down to Chapters to check out "The Problem of Susan*

    ReplyDelete
  5. I will have to check that out, Geds. I have not seen it before.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's in his short story anthology called Fragile Things.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In fairness, though I agree with the rest of your post (naturally), I think you sorta missed the boat with this bit:

    « Food preparation? Humans are weenies when it comes to food. My dog doesn't need his meat cooked because his digestive tract is quite capable of eating raw meat, whereas I would likely die trying the same trick. But what about sauces and spice rubs makes us better than animals? Music? Sorry, birds and whales do that all day long. Art? Gorillas and elephants love art. Creativity? What does that even mean? What about birds and their nests or spiders and their webs? Are those beautiful creations not marks of creativity? »

    Not sure if you missed Ray’s point or were being deliberately misconstruing, but this is, sorry to say, blatantly wrong.

    Regarding food, Ray was obviously referring to the amounts of time, effort and originality we put into our culinary practices. Though, whether this makes us inherently superior to animals is debatable, but if you take it as a sign of higher thinking and greater abstract creativity, then yeah.

    (Actually, to bastardize the whole of the culinary arts as “sauces and spice rubs” makes me grin at the idea of the face Chef Gordon Ramsay would pull in response. xD)

    Regarding animals’ musical abilities, the examples you noted (along with any others that could be listed) are evidence of how their communication methods developed, not of creativity in the sense we understand it. It’s not like they feel like singing and stringing together melodies and chords and so on. I would say (don’t quote me) that it’s probably quite mindless and instinctual.

    Same regarding spiders’ webs, and any other animalistic architecture (ant/termite/bee-hives, otter dams, etc.). Again, they’re just inherent and/or learned behaviors, not a sign of abstract creativity or deep thought.

    Sure, animals (or, some) are capable of astonishing and beautiful (and damned mysterious) things. Not trying to demean that. But to compare their potential to the creative ability of humans is, well, a wee bit stretched, to put it mildly.

    (Not that it validates Ray’s point, of course.)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I take my dog Otis to the hospice once a week for canine therapy with the patients. He remembers all the patients he visits from the week before and he's unbelievable gentle with them. He knows exactly how to behave around bed-ridden people and when he's around patients who cannot move he nuzzles them instead of waiting for them to pat him. Otis is incredibly smart (I know everyone says that about their dog - but I am only going on my experiences with him for 15 years). He can also sense grief in the hospice and rest-homes and pays particular attention to patients and visitors who are upset. Pointing is sweet fuck all when it comes to Otis. He can do heaps of cool shit. He's way smarter than that douchebag Comfort.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are for you guys, not for me. Say what you will. Don't feel compelled to stay on topic, I enjoy it when comments enter Tangentville or veer off into Non Sequitur Town. Just keep it polite, okay?

I am attempting to use blogger's new comment spam feature. If you don't immediately see your comment, it is being held in spam, I will get it out next time I check the filter. Unless you are Dennis Markuze, in which case you're never seeing your comment.

Creative Commons License
Forever in Hell by Personal Failure is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at foreverinhell.blogspot.com.