Some Dogs

It was an unseasonably warm November day, and my friend and I were walking her two dogs wearing only long sleevers under a bright blue sky and searing sun. Bare trees and brown river banks seemed out of step with the weather, like they missed a costume change. The pandemic had been keeping us cooped up, and we were both happy to be outside, soaking up the sunshine and catching up. I was lost in my anecdote about my teenage kid when my friend interrupted me. 

“Here, let’s switch dogs,” she said. I handed her my leash that was attached to a 80-pound pit bull mutt, and she gave me the reins to the 10-pound chihuahua-dachsund mix. Ahead of us on the trail were people walking their dogs off leash, and one of the dogs was headed straight for us.

“He doesn’t really like it when dogs run up on him. It’s just some dogs, but he is really strong, and we just want to avoid that.”

Just before this, I had been telling her about my daughter’s experience in a local coffee shop. A middle-aged woman had walked in with a Glock strapped to her hip not wearing a mask. Though there were many open tables in the coffee shop, the gun-toter settled in at the one closest to my daughter, who was wearing her mask. 

“Mom, it was like she was trying to intimidate me.”

Colorado is an open-carry state, like 30 others in America. If you can pass the background check required to purchase a handgun, you can proudly wear that weapon around town while you do your shopping and get your coffee. My kids were shocked to learn this. 

“You mean ANYONE can walk around with a gun?” 

I explained that yes, people can open-carry guns where they are visible to other people and law enforcement. I clarified that to carry a concealed handgun, where it is not easily seen by others, you need to get a permit from your county sheriff. To get that, you have to pass a firearms training class and a background check. 

“So these people may or may not be trained to use these guns they are carrying around strapped to their legs?”

Yes.

My husband is a hunter, so both of my girls learned to shoot guns growing up. My oldest has passed a hunter safety class, has been hunting, and enjoys target shooting. The younger one prefers knives. 

Whether you like guns or not, it is unsettling when you are relaxing with a latte working peacefully on your laptop and someone walks into a coffee shop–refuge of writers, retirees, and students–and brings their armed and unmasked face into your safe social distance. 

“What did she actually mean by it?” My daughter asked. “I mean, it kind of just screams, ‘I could kill you at any time.’ Like, what is going on there?”

In the November 2020 election for Congress, my part of my state elected representative Lauren Boebert, who is one of those dogs: the kind who walks around with a gun strapped to her hip, endorses conspiracy theories and if you have ever heard her talk, well, oh my. If an assault rifle had a human voice, it would be her. She is a high school dropout who used to own a restaurant in Rifle, CO, the Shooters Grill until it closed when the landlords chose not to renew the lease. Its website showed pictures of women wearing or holding guns and described the restaurant as  “… a gun-themed, old timey restaurant … and a VERY safe place to eat.” 

I may feel many things sitting down to dinner among people with Glocks strapped to their bodies, but safe isn’t one of them. It’s not just Boebert’s extremist persona or her offensive attention seeking, it is also her incendiary manipulation of information and her constant meanness. When I read or listen to what she has to say, I feel increasingly threatened, angry, and agitated, which is clearly her goal because she is one of those dogs–the ones who aggressively seek drama in their interactions. The ones who are always mad about something. The ones who stir, who poke, who name call. The bullies. The ones who have emerged more visibly since the election of Donald Trump, who is perhaps the leader of the pack for those dogs. In reality these people lack the social skills and self-esteem to work with others in collaborative ways so they turn to intimidation. They see social interactions as contests to be won not opportunities for connections. They lecture instead of listen. They suck all of the oxygen out of the room. 

We proceeded down the river trail and kept our dogs steady and moving forward until the people got their dogs leashed. An altercation was averted. As we walked on, I began to wonder, is that the best option when you meet one of those bully dogs–just keep on walking? 

I don’t encounter many bullies in my everyday life, but I spend no time at all on social media. I do, however, enjoy conversations with people of differing opinions if the mutual goal is connection and understanding; sniffing around to see where the other person has been, seeing where they are coming from. I like to expand by opening to other perspectives. So often over the last decade, though, the person who sees things differently than I do sets about the lawyerly work of convincing me they are right. They dig in and double down on their opinions as if they were facts while disregarding my opinions as if they are uniformed nonsense until we are having no fun at all. 

With AI on board and the election looming, information has been flooding the Internet where conversations no longer happen (if they ever did), and the warrior within us all can feel the call to fight. Like adult video games, people log on again and again to play. Economists talk of this time being the Information Economy, which was preceded by the Industrialized Economy and before that the Agricultural Economy. Of course we still need food and use lots of stuff, so the other economies are not gone, but the Information Economy is one that asks us to pay with our time and personal information while giving us neither food nor stuff in return. It hopes that the flashing ads we see while being outraged online will lead us to shell out some money for the hormone-surging intoxication of fury. 

My friend’s dog doesn’t want to fight. He is a happy, friendly, goofball of a dog. And my daughter didn’t want to call me, freaked out and scared, because someone was snuggling up to her in a coffee shop with a lethal weapon. But some dogs just bring out the beast in you, and that’s when you have to ask yourself, “Do I care enough to give it to them or do I walk on by?” If the dog is unleashed and coming straight for you, you may not feel like you have a choice. You may feel like you need to fight back. 

If you are part of a disenfranchised group–gay, transgender, non-white, immigrant, poor, even women–then your rights may be the centerpiece of the current culture wars as we all navigate the shifting waters of what are the inalienable human rights. Do women have the right to abortions? Do same-sex couples have the right to marriage? In a nation where only 3% of its population is Native American, do new immigrants have a right to humane treatment from the old school immigrants? Do all people have a right to be treated fairly by the judicial system? Do children have a right to attend school free from fear of getting shot? Do we all have the right to see a doctor when we are sick? Do we all have the right to live on a healthy planet? 

What I find so interesting is that, when you step back and look at our nation as a whole, you find that most Americans actually agree on what are presented to us as polarizing topics. Per the Pew Research Center: 63% support some kind of abortion, 63% support same-sex marriage, 51% support Black Lives Matter, 56% support more opportunities for legal immigration, 58% of Americans favor some kind of gun control, 65% support universal health care and at least 68% think the government should do more to reduce the effects of climate change. 

So what gives? If most people agree with expanding human rights, how did the bully types who work to restrict them get elected? Like cravings for salt, sugar and fat, humans have other weaknesses hardwired in us: we have a taste for gossip and a hormonal response to drama. Simply said, it benefits animals living in complex social structures to know what is going on and who is involved. The more extreme the transgressions (true or not)–like human trafficking in babies–the more it violates our social code and the more attention we give it because we are hardwired to care, and we care a lot about babies. What we are NOT hardwired to do is easily discern facts from opinions, truth from gossip. Anyone who has been to high school can attest to that.

Business executives are well aware of this, and in the Information Economy, human hardwiring is big business. When we open wide for social media and newstainment, we think we are getting nourished, but it is like trying to get a healthy meal at a convenience store. The first step to addressing the health of your attention is realizing you have to provide your own leash. Untethered, I can easily eat a whole bag of chips, do a deep dive into social media outrage, check out in front of the television, and shop, shop, shop (online, of course). But does that yield the life I want?

When I look at it in the context of what I really want to compose my life–what I think, what I learn, and how I interact with others–these dogs don’t make the cut. In the words of Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To me that means I have to start with shepherding my attention and restraining my communication because if I don’t, there are countless vendors out there who will take advantage of my hardwired and unmonitored urges until I become someone I don’t want to be. So if what I see before me is not what I really want, it’s on me to course correct before I see the person I want to be and the life I do want to live in my rearview mirror.