Misadventures in the Land of Fables #46

CONSIDER THE DOGS

The latest fable, ‘Two Dogs, One Bone,’ was another written in response to ‘Capitalism and the Way of the Dog,’ a little essay, or screed, published on Twitter (X) by a user who calls himself, ‘Dmitry.’ (See discussion here.)

Dmitry invited us to “go up to the next dog you see with a bone or food, and take it from him… Watch his reaction.” He was confident we would encounter hostility, which he construed as an assertion of ownership. I couldn’t really dispute that. I’ve been growled at dog with a bone between its teeth. Hell, we’ve probably all tried to take a toy away from a dog at some point; they tend not to want to let go. Whether this is evidence of ownership or not, I don’t know, but it could certainly be translated as the statement ‘mine, not yours,’ for that moment at least.

But what, I wondered, would happen if another bone were to be dropped nearby? Would the dog take any interest in it? Would it drop one for the other? Could it be tempted away from its possession and would it forget its ownership when it claimed the new item?

And what entitled it to either of the bones? Where did they come from? Who provided them?

These speculations started me along the road to the latest fable, in which two dogs contest first one bone, then another.

You can read it here: Two Dogs, One Bone.