We Are Not the Only Experiment - a trans-species encounter

I watched a woman shout at and beat her little dog in the centre of town yesterday. The animal had run gleefully into a charity shop and his keeper was highly distressed - I think she felt embarrassed. She was violent. It was horrible to watch. 

I thought about domestic animals and how hard they work to exist within our systems. Interpret our language. Translate our signs and symbols. How they come more than half way to meet us on our side of the species fence. 

I thought about blindness and deafness and disability and age and how intolerant our systems and languages are of alternative species experience. Of vulnerability and weakness. How hostile our systems are towards fragility and uncertainty. Ambiguity. How so easily we take our dominant hegemonic cultural frequency for granted.  

And this idea of 'ownership' of another being - canine or otherwise - and the implications of that word. The power relationship it implies. When really you are visiting each other for a while and agreeing to a relationship. 

I think of colonialism. 
Land ownership. 
Speculative markets. War. 
Annexation. possession. 
And the ancient idea that we are the land and the land is us. That it is a symbiosis. Equal responsibility.
​I think of the idea of being in service. 
The idea that you and your dog - both of you - are agreeing to this relationship for a time. The time of the dogs life. And as with your dog, so with all things. 
Anyway. That happened. 
​
Then later I bought some jeans.

‘Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.’ Buckminster Fuller

Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash

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