INVITATION TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
In times like these, it helps to step outside the box.
My canine friend Barclay and his predecessors, Maggie and Sebastian (RIP), offered an opportunity to see ourselves and others differently.
REFLECTIONS OF AN ALPHA DOG
I love dogs. No one loves dogs more than I, except for Mark, and he and his latest golden retriever are in Maine. Like Mark, I have to have a dog! Living with Barclay, I’ve noticed the same thing I saw with Maggie and Sebastian.
Barclay is calmest when the Alpha Dog establishes and maintains authority: Heel Sit! Stay. Down. Off. Leave it. Fetch. Get the ball! Drop it.
Barclay loves his human Alpha Dog. It’s in his nature to submit to the pack’s Alpha Dog.
Without an Alpha Dog, Barclay is a mess.
We tell ourselves we’re not canines; we’re human beings. We’re not members of a pack, and we don’t have Alpha Dogs. We are the Alpha Dogs who give the commands that house-train Maggie not to look you in the eye and squat on the Persian rug, and Sebastian and Barclay to lift their legs on fire hydrants instead of the legs of the dining room table. The Alpha Dog’s house is not their ‘loo‘, as the British say.
Dogs seem happiest when the pack’s Alpha Dog has established clear limits and boundaries.
HUMANS, PACKS, AND ALPHA DOGS
Living with Maggie, Sebastian, and Barclay while obsessing over events in the U.S.A. recently lead me to wonder: Is there much difference between canines and humans? Are we also pack animals in need of an Alpha Dog?
Members of 12-Step groups answer yes. They join anonymous packs whose participants recognize that an addiction has taken over their lives — “My name is Bob/Harriet, and I’m an alcoholic/heroin addict” — and encourage each other in their shared day-by-day surrender to a higher power, however each member defines it.
Twelve-Step programs do not have a theology, but they do have an anthropology and a philosophy that runs counter to a dominant culture which, if is certain about anything, it’s that we’re not members of a dog pack. We don’t submit to anything; we’re the Alpha Dogs!
PARTS TWO and THREE
Part Two will look through the eyes of Paul Tillich, Willem Zuurdeeg, and Karl Barth as their wisdom applies the American scene in 2019.
Thanks for dropping by. Leave a comment, if you wish, to widen and deepen the conversation.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), available on Amazon in kindle and paperback, Chaska, MN, Dec. 3, 2019
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This seems to be roughly (some would say very roughly) analogous to having freedom but accepting responsibility. It seems to me that too many people think “freedom” means freedom from responsibility. Maybe we need an alpha dog to establish responsibility as a necessity to human life on earth?
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Carolyn, I agree that freedom is often understood as the opposite of responsibility. I’m not yet sure where I’m going with these reflections. The next — Part 2 — will take it one step farther in relation to what’s happening in the USA.
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