Memory, anger, forgiveness

The other day, on the homeward leg of our regular exercise, our dog dashed off after, presumably, a rabbit or a squirrel. It does remind me of 'Up' where the dogs seem to be only too easily distracted by just the possibility of a squirrel. Anyway, I found myself waiting for Alfi to come back, calling him every so often. Time drags when you're waiting in those circumstances: I couldn't see where he'd got to, couldn't hear any clues. It was probably only two or three minutes but it did drag. Then, Alfi shows himself, loping up the hill towards me looking as happy as a dog ever does.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling annoyed. He's kept me waiting, he's ignored or been slow to heed my calls. If he'd been human I might even have regarded him as being rude or inconsiderate. So I'm cross.

If he were human.

There's the rub. Of course. He isn't. And my feelings are just not really appropriate. More than that, if I act on those feelings, my dog will likely completely misunderstand and I will end up 'saying' to him things which will likely increase his likelihood of staying away.

Firstly, my feelings are not appropriate. At least to some degree. This is because they are based on reactions to models in my head based on human social interactions and their interpretation. Alfi isn't being disobedient, or rude. He's following a strong instinct and we haven't yet found a way to get his attention to stop him doing so when we need him not to do so. He's not making a choice in the way a human would. He's not disrespecting me. My reacting as if he is disrespecting me is simply a misrepresentation on my part. 'Misrepresentation' in terms of my representing the matter to myself; my understanding of it.

And then my dog would not understand this. He's a dog. I'm told that he has a short-term memory of around 7 seconds, meaning that if something happened longer-ago than those 7 seconds, he won't have a chance of associating it with whatever I might do in the present -whether it be to praise or to punish. As he comes back, the main thing in his mind is likely to be that he's coming back to me, not that he ran off and perhaps I called after him (whatever that might 'mean' to him). So if I chide him, all I'll probably succeed in doing is to apparently express my displeasure that he's coming back! He's no means to associate my displeasure with his running off; that's out of the frame of his memory and attention. So my only option at this point is to reinforce that it is good that he's coming back by making something of a fuss of him. I need to do this because, whatever else, it's important that he knows that it is good (for me and so for him) for him to come back. I want him to come back. It's just that I'd like him to be more prompt about it in certain circumstances.

So I'm left reflecting on myself, as so often when considering interacting with our dog. I'm not alone: Raising Hero: "Dogs are here in our lives for one reason; to help us become more conscious". I resonate with that.
I reflect that my own anger/displeasure is borne of my perception of the intentions of the other as well as of being thwarted in my plans or desires.
I reflect that, therefore, suffering a hurt or detriment is one thing; experiencing it (through our interpretation) as a personal hurt is another thing.

I may become agitated because my desire to do something (eg get home at the end of a walk) is frustrated. That may pass once either something else replaces my concern or when the activity can be resumed. That is if it is simply circumstances that have interrupted my ability to fulfil my desire at that point. If, on the other hand, there is personal agency involved in frustrating my aim, the frustration remains even after the passing of the blockage to my goal. It remains because the frustration now associates with the personal 'detriment'. That is, if someone does something to frustrate my goal, and I perceive the frustration to be a result of their personal volition, then the displeasure I feel is associated with that person and in particular their attitude or design; their ill-will. It is now personal, not impersonal.

In such a circumstance, then the mere removal of the blockage to my goal in physical terms (let us suppose) is not sufficient to begin to assuage my displeasure or anger. I need to deal also with the personal relationship dimension: the perceived or presumed ill-will. If that is still there, or thought to be there, then I can't move on. If I discover that there was no ill-will, just a mistake or even 'not unreasonable thoughtlessness'. Then, on the whole, my displeasure disperses, as if the matter were impersonal.

If I discover that the matter did involve some kind of ill-will, or that it has now acquired an overlay of ill-will (because the other party becomes pleased, for some reason, that some misfortune has visited me); that's a different matter. I head towards 'fight', 'flight' or 'reconciliation'. If 'fight', then I seek to impose on the other some punishment or revenge. If the reconciliation then I 'absorb' the distress myself rather than 'export' it by imposing it on the other person. If I choose 'flight' then I absorb it but without reconciliation and it becomes stressful and is likely to erupt in future relating with the person concerned; it is, so to say, a latent 'fight'.

This is why memory is so important to this whole issue. Without memory of the detriment, there is nothing to forgive. Without memory of it, relating is not hampered by recollection or reactivation of past wrong.

And of course, if it is no longer interpreted as 'wrong' (as for example when it is recognised to be accidental) it also is not a barrier to relating. Hence, on both counts, forgiveness is not something my dog can give or receive. To forgive and be forgiven we have to both be able to recall a wrong and to associate it with current conditions and/or relationships. We also have to have a concept of 'wrong' to hang it on. Without a sense of ill-will we can't conceive of 'wrong' in anyway except something that happens not to have suited us at the time. Ill-will gives a detriment the status of a wrong and turns a wound into an injury (in-jur-y).

150 friends at most…

If Robin Dunbar is right then this answers a question I've mused on in odd moments. For a number of years I've been familiar with the idea in church growth research/opinion that there is a church size threshhold at 150 or 175 or thereabouts. It has tended to be justified by the notion that around 150 is the maximum number of people we can really relate to. This would appear to be grounded in the kind of research Dunbar is in touch with. For example here: Robin Dunbar: We can only ever have 150 friends at most… | Technology | The Observer: "within the primates there is a general relationship between the size of the brain and the size of the social group. We fit in a pattern. There are social circles beyond it and layers within – but there is a natural grouping of 150. This is the number of people you can have a relationship with involving trust and obligation – there's some personal history, not just names and faces."
My question has been whether this figure is and absolute related to the individual or relative to any particular social context, iow whether an individual can have several networks of up to 150 people. Robin Dunbar seems to say it is the former.

This being so, it means that there is a problem with using the 150-relationships per individual as an explanation for a church size boundary. This is because an individual within the church 'comes' with a certain number of relationships already in place: family, extended family, friends, colleagues etc. Some of these, at least, will be significant relationships in terms of Dunbar's research. Therefore, any individual in church will have capacity for less, perhaps significantly less than 150.

Of course, it may be that something about the way that figures aggregate may still give 150, but I'm skeptical about that. (Anyone able to do the maths on that one?). So I think we need to look elsewhere to explain the 150 or 175 threshold.

A bit Wallace and Grommit, but it works....

I loved this; check it out. Basically a Yorkshireman for £500 managed to take photos 20-odd miles up which got NASA impressed. Trust a Yorkshireman to do it cheaper! The Northerner: Views as sky-high as allotment prices | UK news | guardian.co.uk: "'Nasa had heard what was happening and wanted to know how I'd done it so cheaply,' he said. 'People think this is something that costs millions but it doesn't. You just need a bit of technical know-how. I know nothing about electronics and what I do know, I learned from the internet. My family and friends thought I was a bit mad a first but they were suitably impressed with the results."
Now, that's the kind of thing that makes me proud to be British!

Food at the Last Supper in picture

I find this interesting:
Food culture and the Last Supper | Culture Making:

"From the 52 paintings, which date between 1000 and 2000 A.D., the sizes of loaves of bread, main dishes and plates were calculated with the aid of a computer program that could scan the items and rotate them in a way that allowed them to be measured. To account for different proportions in paintings, the sizes of the food were compared to the sizes of the human heads in the paintings. The researchers' analysis showed that portion sizes of main courses (usually eel, lamb and pork) depicted in the paintings grew by 69 percent over time, while plate size grew by 66 percent and bread size grew by 23 percent."

What I'm thinking about is why this should be. I can think of two or three possible reasons but not yet decide between them.
One of the reasons could be that, rather like the following of social fashion around the production of the painting, the portions are reflecting a greater wealth in society. However, that doesn't necessarily work; these works would have been commissioned by the rich and they probably didn't have stingy portions. But then, how would the painter have viewed that ....

Which brings into play another line of explanation: culture, but culture of depiction. Perhaps it could be to do with ideological considerations about what amount of food one should portray saints as eating. In a culture which values the ascetic, small portions would presumably be regarded as more seemly than large. However, that probably doesn't entirely do it either: ascetic attitudes continued through quite large chunks of this period and yet, presumably, the increase continued.

Perhaps it's a bit of both these explanations? A change from portraying ascetic ideals to reflecting actualities. This would fit, to some degree, with the shift to humanism; observation of the actual, valuing of human life as lived, desire by patrons to display wealth ... yes, that sounds plausible at first sight ...
What do you reckon?

PS more recently, a helpful response article on this...

Barbarism, civilisation, and culture

Barbarism, civilisation, and culture: Tzvetan Todorov keynote at The Inner Lives of Cultures conference « Counterpoint

Bishops’ seats & Lords reform

It's right that we should look at this. I'm a bit concerned that the way that the 'official' CofE response lookstoo much like self-serving justification.Church Times - Bishops’ seats threatened again in Lords reform: "“Any notion that a wholly elected second chamber will be other than a body dominated by the main political parties, to the exclusion of bishops and other senior faith representatives (for example the present Chief Rabbi, who is a member of the Lords), and of the many other able and experienced people who are not politicians and currently sit on the cross benches, is fanciful.”"
Of course it all depends on the way that the election was held. I too am not in favour of simply reproducing a Senate with a party political agenda: that would indeed be more of the same that the country seems to be rather sick of. But if we were to consider elections from a different kind of constituency which didn't really suit party politics, and perhaps favoured issues, well, that'd be worth doing: and it could make room for Church representation too ... See my proposals here and more posts here.

Just when you thought it was safe to eat Kit Kat ...

They've put fair traded chocolate on Kit Kat. Great. However ... "Nestle, maker of Kit Kat, uses palm oil from companies that are trashing Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orang-utans towards extinction. We all deserve to have a break - but having one shouldn't involve taking a bite out of Indonesia's precious rainforests. We're asking Nestle to give rainforests and orang-utans a break and stop buying palm oil from destroyed forests."
Greenpeace | Ask Nestle to give rainforests a break: