Humans instinctively require membership in a pack

To add to my previous two post, my dog just reminded me why humans feel the need to join a church.

My dog, Foxy, is a mixed breed sheltie with something else. A lovely and loving little animal with a sad history. She had belonged to a family, and either ran away, or they moved and abandoned her. She was skin and bones when she politely came up to my Buddhist daughter-in-Law begging for food as she was going into work one day. Foxy was still outside her office when she left work that afternoon. Since no one was caring for her, my daughter-in-law brought her home. We tried to find her owners through the Vetinarian named on her rabies tag, but could not do so. The phone was disconneted and the Vet would not give out the name or address. That was about eight years ago and the newly named "Foxy" (with her skinny features and reddish fur she very much resembled a fox - and besides, she is a beautiful dog) is still with me long after my son and daughter-in-law moved out.

The thing is, with that history she has abandonment issues and frequently needs reassuring that she is a member of the pack. The pack is, of course, me and my daughter who live here along with the other dog of the house. Dogs, like wolves, instinctively must be members of a pack. Part of the evolution of dogs is that they have accepted people as the alpha members of the pack. Foxy's feelings of abandonment surface easily, so she is frequently appearing and looking up expectantly asking for reassurance by a few head scratches or by petting.

So what's this got to do with humans and religion as I wrote about in the previous two posts? Simple. Humans are primates with much the same instinctive demand to belong to a pack as dogs and wolves have.

Foxy just reminded me why humans feel the need to join an organization when they are "looking for roots." The humans are looking for a pack to join that will accept them. It is one of the essential emotional needs of most human beings. Family provides one pack, but with Americans and their mobile life style, the family is often not available. So people often choose to join the pack that clearly wants their membership - Churches.

The opportunity to join with others is a much stronger draw than religious doctrine for all the fact that it is instinctual and below the level of consciousness. In fact, for many of us the exclusiveness of the doctrine is often a strong turn-off. It becomes an all or nothing choice. The choice is to accept the doctrine as the price of becoming a member of the human pack, er, uh, church. That membership is probably the strongest element of the so-called "search for roots."

That's my opinion, anyway. Of course, it is an entirely secular explanation with no consideration of the unobserved, unproven and unprovable magical intervention by God.

Cats, dogs adn People

When someone says the sentence "Cat owners" they don't mean the same kind of thing as they do when they say "Dog owners." There is a subtle difference in the structure of the two sentences.

In the first sentence, it is the cats themselves who are the owners. In the second, it is people who own the dogs.

Just ask the cats if you don't believe me - and if they will deign to answer you.

Libertarianism and property rights

I discovered an interesting article entitled What's wrong with libertarianism which does a good job of debunking Libertarianism. Go read it.

The author points out that Libertarianism was essentially designed by the escapee from the Soviet Union, Ayn Rand, as the Uncommunism. This was quite interesting to me:

Communism	Libertarianism
Property is theft	Property is sacred
Totalitarianism	Any government is bad
Capitalists are baby-eating villains	Capitalists are noble Nietzchean heroes
Workers should rule	Worker activism is evil
The poor are oppressed	The poor are pampered good-for-nothings

That's a pretty good summary.

Let me comment on just one small part of the post I referred to. Note the contradiction between the two parts of Libertarianism I placed in Italics. Those are Property is sacred and Any government is bad.

Libertarians make property rights into an unquestionable area of faith. That reminds me of a recent speculation regarding where the idea of property rights may have come from. Property rights may have been a side effect of the taming of wolves in north east Asia when they first became because dogs. But the idea of property was not that of the dog owner. It was the idea of the dog.

Dogs are hierarchical animals, and they adopt leaders. It is thought by some that when the the dogs first adopted their own people as leaders or Alpha dogs, then other people recognized that certain dogs belonged to certain people. As a result, the concept of property rights was born.

But the concept came from the dogs first. The dogs adopted leaders, people recognized that certain dogs belonged to specific people, and the concept of "Property rights" was born. Dogs first acted as property, people then recognized the dogs behavior as property, and people later adopted the idea.

It is clear, though that there is nothing natural or religious about property rights. Property rights are a social concept which do not exist unless society enforces them. Natural law is garbage until its supporters can demonstrate (scientifically) a mechanism by which it can be shown to be enforced in society. They've had a long time, and failed totally.

A person does not own land unless that ownership is recorded by the government and enforced in the courts. The same is true of a person's car, their wristwatch, or anything else. Not only must the ownership be recognized by others and recorded, there must also be socially accepted rules that determine how such ownership can be transferred from one person to another.

That makes Libertarianism quite contradictory. It makes an article of faith of property rights but also declares any government as bad. The two cannot coexist. It is really that simple. No government means no property beyond that which can be personally enforced using force. [Note - this is another basic belief of Libertarianism - no one can use force on any other person.]

Is property ownership an innate characteristic of human society? No. It is a good idea, enforced by society through government. Ask the dog who owns you. Or the cat who owns both of you. They know that they only own you while they have you in sight and under their paw.