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May 9, 2007
Reality Is Subjective: Theory Confirmed
I began to approach him from some distance away in order to offer help. As I approached, I noticed a woman also approaching the scene from a slightly different direction. She was a few steps closer to the man and his dog than I, though we were both perhaps 25 feet away.
As we got closer, the dog took the man into the low wall for a third time. The man spoke reproachfully to the dog with a raised voice, and pulled sharply on the dog's leather harness, slightly jerking the dog's head and shoulders.
Now the woman was perhaps 10 feet from them, and I perhaps 15. I was about to shout, "would you like some help, sir?" but the woman spoke first.
"Excuse me!" she shouted. "Are you abusing that dog, sir?"
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"No, I'm not," the blind man said, as he continued to tug on the dog's harness.
"That is animal abuse, what you're doing right there," the woman said.
I was speechless.
"No, it's not, I'm doing what the training says ..." said the man. He continued to try to get the very confused dog pointed toward the gap in the low wall about 10 feet from where they stood.
I turned and walked away as the woman began to threaten something about calling Animal Protection.
I should have stepped in, but I didn't. I was too astonished by the woman's reaction and intensity.
I felt like a subject in an experiment on human perception: two strangers saw a blind man growing angry while being led repeatedly into a wall by his seeing-eye dog. One stranger gave the scene his meaning: "A blind man is in distress and needs help." Another stranger gave the scene her meaning: "A dog is in distress and needs help."
A very odd moment.
Posted by Eric at May 9, 2007 3:57 PM
Comments
Through reading this article until getting to the end, I thought it was going to end up being an analogy for the Bush administratin. Talk about pre-conceived notions...
Posted by: K at May 9, 2007 4:41 PM
invisibility, yet again. part of this is that persons with disabilities really do get *seen* differently...that perceptions of who is burdened how. This woman seemed to have the mindset that seeing a work animal being trained was an imposition... Strange indeed.
As an aside...your site is running the "cost of innocence" ad for the three men who had been charged in the duke lacrosse case. are you comfortable with that?
ELM: Yes, I'm OK with the ad being there. Doesn't mean I agree with it.
Posted by: sly civilian at May 9, 2007 5:08 PM
Doggie discipline is often physical, and to call what you described abuse is ridiculous, never mind the fact that the owner was blind. Jerking a leash or scolding/barking is often exactly what the animal needs (and wants -- canines are comforted by authority, if raised properly).
I'd hate to see how that woman's dogs behave.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 9, 2007 8:00 PM
Jerking a leash or scolding/barking is often exactly what the animal needs
The dog's owner was entirely correct to say that the correction style offered was part of the training process. Guide dogs are given very specific training regimens from very early on, and their ability to learn depends on the user feedback being consistent with earlier training.
Guide dog users receive pretty intensive training themselves, and guide dog training groups are pretty careful about not placing dogs with people who might be abusive or otherwise would be poor hosts.
The woman's reaction was undoubtedly sincere, but it was grossly uninformed, or else so doctrinaire (there are people who object on principle to animal training and use) as to be distorted.
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at May 9, 2007 9:37 PM
Let's change the facts so that the blind man was clearly abusing the dog. Eric's penultimate paragraph could remain the same, but there would also be a third possibility: someone could think (accurately) that both the blind man and the dog were in distress.
Posted by: Henry at May 10, 2007 2:53 PM
I am not sure that reality is subjective.
Maybe reality is always objective.
Either the guy abused the dog.
Or he didn't.
Either you and that guy's perception are screwed up.
Or the lady's perception is whacked out.
Or you are both partially right, and both partially wrong, objectively speaking.
But, my point is, perhaps the reality doesn't change just because somebody can't percieve it.
This goes back to the first thing the Greeks were trying to figure out before we climbed out of antiquity. Plato's allegory of the cave. Oh wait, I guess we are still in antiquity.
Posted by: Tim at May 11, 2007 4:35 PM
Wow, Tim is an Objectivist, how unusual in this day....
Posted by: Reuben Moore at May 14, 2007 6:13 PM