{"id":13624,"date":"2010-11-14T13:35:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T20:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=13624"},"modified":"2010-11-15T06:47:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T13:47:01","slug":"the-politics-of-dancing-mothertongue-and-the-art-of-negotiation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13624\/the-politics-of-dancing-mothertongue-and-the-art-of-negotiation\/","title":{"rendered":"The politics of dancing: Mothertongue and the art of negotiation."},"content":{"rendered":"

I could argue that much of what goes on in the social sciences consists of pseudo-scientific “proofs” that the human mind is nothing special. Sure, volitional-conceptuality — the ability to engage in mental self-reference by means of abstraction and the ability to act upon those abstractions as a free moral agent — is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, but this dolphin has learned four of the first five letters of the Roman alphabet, and that chimp can stack three boxes on top of one another to steal a cookie. If that ain’t human, they don’t know what is!<\/p>\n

Here’s what’s funny: They don’t know what animals are, either!<\/p>\n

Monkeys don’t need to do a charmingly poor job at deploying human tools to survive, and cetaceans are perfectly adept at communicating with each other without a notation system — without what I would call fathertongue.<\/p>\n

When I’m showing real estate, I’m careful to teach people, especially children, what a dog is doing with his tail. Up and wagging? Take it slow, but the dog is friendly. Straight down? Proceed with caution. Between the legs? Back off. The tail is a dog’s primary signaling device. That’s why people who want dogs to fight bob their tails.<\/p>\n

But that wagging tail tells such a tale: “Hi, there!” the dog seems to say. “I am thrilled<\/em> to make your acquaintance. As you can see by my wagging tail, I’m eager to make new friends. Might I have permission to sniff your anus? Full reciprocity, of course. Really, I’d be put out if you didn’t give mine at least a little sniff, too.”<\/p>\n

That’s mothertongue, a complex initiation of negotiations expressed entirely in bodily signaling, with zero conceptual content — with no fathertongue. Animals are perfect the way they are. They are not somehow “better” if they master what are, to them, ontologically-useless parlor tricks. Moreover, human beings are exalted, not diminished, by dancing bears: The vast chasm between emulating human behavior and actually living<\/em> it is only made more obvious when we see how pitiable that emulation actually is.<\/p>\n

The higher animals communicate by mothertongue, and all but one species is Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I could argue that much of what goes on in the social sciences consists of pseudo-scientific “proofs” that the human mind is nothing special. Sure, volitional-conceptuality — the ability to engage in mental self-reference by means of abstraction and the ability to act upon those abstractions as a free moral agent — is unprecedented in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,212,29,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","9":"category-marketing","10":"category-real-estate","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15812,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15812\/saturday-night-at-830-pm-is-human-achievement-hour-stop-cursing-the-darkness-by-turning-on-the-lights\/","url_meta":{"origin":13624,"position":0},"title":"Saturday night at 8:30 pm is Human Achievement Hour. 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Because you never trained your mind to think about the ontology of human nature \u2013 don\u2019t fault yourself for that; no one else did, either \u2013 you thought they were just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10988,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10988\/some-fun-keynes-didnt-give-full-value-to-human-behavior\/","url_meta":{"origin":13624,"position":2},"title":"Some Fun – Keynes Didn’t Give Full Value To Human Behavior","author":"Jeff Brown","date":"January 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It speaks for itself.","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11367,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11367\/uvex-missses-the-cluetrain\/","url_meta":{"origin":13624,"position":3},"title":"UVEX missses the Cluetrain","author":"John Rowles","date":"February 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"\"... learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about \"listening to customers.\" They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.\" -- The Cluetrain Manifesto, Chapter 1 Until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15672,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15672\/debunking-artificial-intelligence-while-programming-your-computer-to-be-almost-as-smart-as-your-dog\/","url_meta":{"origin":13624,"position":4},"title":"Debunking Artificial Intelligence — while programming your computer to be almost as smart as your dog.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Everything you've been taught about Artificial Intelligence for your whole life is false. AI researchers are not frauds, I don't think, but they're exuberant when they talk to reporters, and the reporters are ignorant, thoughtless and brash. In real life, AI is Siri, which can reliably lead you to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15869,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15869\/from-man-alive-evaluating-values\/","url_meta":{"origin":13624,"position":5},"title":"From Man Alive! – “Evaluating values.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 6. Evaluating values. We like to think of human history as a clash of great men, their hair flowing in the breeze, their muscles rippling, their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. 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