Acceptance of others is one of humanities higher traits. Accepting a large number of others who differ from us is not easy. Accepting a large number of others who differ from us goes against our animal nature. When we care for and truly accept others as our own we’ll be less likely to harm others for personal gain.
When groups love their group at the exclusion of others they’re planting seeds of hatred. To love only one’s own group is a natural animal behavior. Since we are only acting animal like when loving our in group I call this kind of love animal love or lower love. Love based on our lower nature is common among humans, and other animals.
We accept others from our own county or others who share our customs and sensibilities. If everyone tried to be courteous and Considerate we could begin to move past our lower forms of acceptance. It’s difficult to like someone who is acting aversive. It’s even more difficult to like someone who is going out of their way to cause us grief.
We see this in pet dogs, from both the dog and the human’s perspective. If a dog isn’t behaving well it’s common for people to want to hurt the dog as either punishment or worse, as revenge. Revenge is a lower animal like behavior in humans and is something that should be considered carefully. So far I have only been thinking about pets that are part of a family, people treat dogs that are not their own even worse.
It’s hard to accept others who we compete with or who are acting as aversives in our lives. From my observation this is a root cause of humanity’s animal like behavior of lower level love. In our economic system we must compete. A paradox of competition and acceptance exists and will grow more troublesome. Human development towards a higher nature is necessary if humanity is to survive our own technological advancements. In modern societies there is an evolution to a higher nature that is taking place and it needs to take place, however, it will be difficult. Our higher human nature is an evolving trait.
One goal of domestication is to make it so a wild animal can peacefully accept another foreign species. As societies advance we insist that dogs become more accepting of people, other animals, and new unfamiliar environments. The evolution from wild animal to supper dog is the path from privative exclusivity to universal acceptance. If dogs were not so accepting they could not have become so evolutionarily successful.
We can begin to practice acceptance in our own home and with our own pets. If we can accept our dog’s personality we can set realistic goals for our pets. If we can accept our dog’s shortcomings we can manage those short comings through the environment and a little extra effort.
Positive reinforcement is very popular at the time I write this post. If we are to use all positive reinforcement in our training we must accept our training subject. In our punitive society it can be very difficult to use all positive reinforcement. It’s especially difficult to teach with all positive reinforcement if we don’t truly accept those we are teaching. This is one reason I do not do all positive reinforcement training when someone pays me to train their dog. The people I help with dog problems are not paying me to teach them about positive reinforcement. The people who hire me are paying me to help them solve a problem that has persisted too long.
I hope to use the RenChenZa.com site to help people learn about positive reinforcement. If positive reinforcement trainers were more positive I think dog training could benefit society more than it does. The problem is that competition makes most positive trainers a little less than positive. When we have competition we begin to get the us and them divide that leads to aggression. Among dog trainer this is mostly ritualized aggression, but it’s not very positive.
Self management
Another effect of accepting others is that it can make seeing our own shortcoming easier. To self identify one’s own shortcomings is not easy. When we know our own deficiencies we can start to make arrangements to manage them. The other option is to start making arrangements to organize the environment in a way to supplement our deficiencies.
Wishing you the best in dog training and in life,
Andrew Ledford