musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

When I ope my lips, let no dog bark


Don’t you sometimes wonder about the way we humans think? Why do we assume that how we understand things transcends all other mammals -all other animals or plants for that matter? Is it simply a matter of our hubris, or is it because each of us is conscious of our own individuality: our difference from others, our ability to entertain different thoughts from them; our freedom to react independently?

I remember a discussion -no, an argument- I once had with James, a young man at a dinner party. He announced to everybody at the table that, all things considered, sheep were stupid, especially compared with us. It was not at all clear to me why he had singled out sheep for stupidity, but he seemed so adamant, so sure of his categorization, that I decided to enter the fray.

Entry was easy; no qualifications were required it seemed -no zoological credentials, nor even any ethological background; I suspect that was the point…

“Why do you think sheep are stupid?” I asked –lamely, given the heated look on his face.

He was briefly taken aback that he might have encountered some opposition to such a supportable thesis. “You mean, compared to us?”

I shrugged provocatively. “I assumed you weren’t using, oh, dogs or cats as comparators, were you…?”

He smiled, mischievously. “Well, even using them, I think sheep are stupider animals, don’t you?”

I returned the smile. “Well, if you mean the ability to perform tricks, or retrieve balls, I suppose you have a point.” I hesitated briefly, and then said, “But that’s not what you meant, surely.”

He actually rolled his eyes that I could be so… well, stupid, I suppose. His smile assumed a wry look on his lips. “What do sheep do all day? They eat and then lie somewhere chewing their food again and again… They follow the flock so no one individual has to make any real decisions.”

I shrugged again. “Well, following is a decision -but again, I suspect you are trying to get at something else about sheep behaviour. Surely you’re not trying to compare intelligence between species though, are you?”

He looked at me for a moment, deciding whether or not to prolong the engagement, then signed loudly enough for it to reverberate around the table. “When it comes to intelligence, are we not the Gold Standard?”

My smile broadened. “Tell me something, James,” I said, glancing briefly around the table wondering if anybody else wanted to step in at this point. But everybody seemed amused at the vigour of the argument and content to hear me out. “These supposedly ‘stupid’ sheep are able to survive in a field of grass are they not…?”

His eyes widened for a moment at my feeble attempts to dissuade him. “Of course they are -they’re sheep, for goodness sakes!”

“And how long do you think that a human could survive in that same field?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes once more. “Again, they’re sheep, we’re not!”

“But they use what faculties they were awarded, and the anatomy and physiology they inherited, to survive and, from the point of view of a sheep, to prosper, do they not?”

I was getting under his collar, and his expression indicated that I was being silly; I wasn’t worth arguing with. Still, the table was watching and listening; he didn’t want to lose face. “But they don’t have to think about what they do; they’re trapped in their evolution…”

He hesitated for a moment, but it was enough for me to interrupt. “And we’re not?”

He shook his head defiantly. “They can only think like sheep… if they think at all -which I very much doubt. There’s a boundary they don’t have the ability to cross. Evolution simply didn’t give that to them…”

I risked a glance around the table as people began to nod their heads. “But… Aren’t we similarly trapped? Are there not things we are unable to comprehend -and perhaps never will?”

There was a sudden silence from the listeners. Had I inadvertently crossed a line -a vanity line? We are so used to thinking of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, and that our imagination and thoughts know no boundaries… But is that actually our blind spot?

I thought back to an essay I had read that questioned whether or not evolution -the process forming who and what we are- makes it difficult to transcend some issues.[i] We can no more understand the value of eating grass, than a sheep can the need to save for its retirement. We evolve (hopefully) to process those things important for us -either personally or as a species.

Living things are what they are because they were born with some special ‘essence’ that defines them as such. Sheep have imbedded within them, what they’ve inherited as sheep. And we have imbedded within us, the essence of humanness inherited in turn from our ancestors. So, if a sheep’s thinking is somehow trapped within the neurological ability provided by its mind, might we be similarly constrained?

Like a sheep, might we find ourselves unable to think some thoughts simply because we have not evolved to think them? Aren’t we prisoners as well, but in what we feel to be a mansion rather than a hut? It matters, because how we think likely defines what we think. The famous existentialist philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, once wrote that ‘existence precedes essence’, meaning that we only become what we are –who we are- when we make choices, when we become something, decide something. And if we find we cannot even imagine something -such as thinking like a sheep (for which we were not designed)- what does that make us? Not more intelligent, surely… just different, perhaps. We can really only compare like with like…

It seems, well, unnecessary to ruminate (sorry) over something like that, I realize, but also inappropriate to try to append human qualities to sheep -aliens, who likely have no desire, or capacity to return the insults.

I felt like telling James that calling sheep ‘stupid’ was itself stupid, but then I realized that the entire, attentive table might accuse me of the same thing: I am not a ‘James’ and I cannot presume to think like one…

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/our-innate-ideas-prevent-us-seeing-what-is-innate-in-human-nature

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gozzter

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