Bebe, the black and white cat, demonstrates how a sense of “unfairness” leads naturally to “stealing” in a loosely structured multi-animal situation. Bebe’s a sweet guy. He’s not going to shout “cancel culture” and try to take peoples’ healthcare away. But he’s only two steps and mastery of the English language away from being a Young Republican as described by Politico recently. He doesn’t know the cat he’s trying to steal from has an inoperable tumor growing in her forehead that causes problems that make her appetite poor and that’s why she gets special treatment. Also, he wouldn’t care if he did know. But he’s not mean cat. He’s like us, in a lot of ways. We all make bad choices based on selfish motivations sometimes. It just, when it’s a cat, we think we can’t expect more and when it’s a human, we tend to expect far too much.
The black cat, Adaleen, is a Libertarian. She gets special treatment because she demands it by gorging herself to the point of vomiting at breakfast time if she doesn’t get snack time when the sick and old people do. She’s intolerant of unfairness, even when that hurts her. She takes no crap from anyone. She spends her days grumbling about the existence of the other cats in general.
Merle, the ginger cat, spent most of his life unhoused and barely getting by. Now, he’s a middle-of-the-road Democrat: quite pleasant generally, mostly going along to get along. He has one nemesis in the house, a blue cat who panic-screams if Merle looks at him wrong. Merle doesn’t like to be looked at wrong. Being seen as a nice guy is important to his self-image. He’ll fight anyone who says he’s not nice (and hypocrisy is… what? irrelevant to a cat.)
There are lots of ways to deal with the emotions an “unfairness” dynamic inspires. I like to give my animals a wide range of choices with many “problems” to solve and a loose set of boundaries to keep everything equitable. They know commands like, “don’t steal,” and most of them simply obey. “Don’t steal” means that if the food was specifically given to someone else, it’s not yours (unless it’s abandoned). They don’t have to obey. And tonight, Bebe didn’t want to. That’s OK, though. In our system, laws are suggestions if not strictly enforced. These cats don’t go to jail if they violate commands. Not even if they successfully steal a kibble or two. My job, as government, is to ensure the wellbeing of all my citizens, thieves and all.
That just means standing guard a little and sometimes talking and sometimes physically moving cats around. (Note: I don’t usually talk to them quite as much as I did in this video. They understand “don’t steal,” but the whys are lost on them. They don’t have context for recollecting their own historical dramas. Their brains react based on genetics and upbringing and past experiences, but they live very much in the moment. Hopefully, my chattering help viewers understand the dynamics at play better, though.)
When humans react to unfairness, they can come across as thoughtless, aggressive, horrifying monsters (see: the MAGA movement). But I’ve seen enough badly abused animals and badly spoiled privileged animals to know brains can be programmed by various kinds of circumstances to react badly to life in general. And although there are limits to reprogramming, any brain can make “progress,” when you define that as making more pro-social choices, having less intense emotional reactions, and learning better ways to respond to the emotions they do have.
People, in far more ways than most people might want to admit, are just really complicated cats responding to incredibly complicated cultural forces. We can choose to learn new things deliberately, but mostly we just react based on previous programming. And most economies these days are oversaturated with workers problem-solving the problems other problem-solvers are creating. We could relax more, but our brains need things to do. Nobody ever thinks they’re the problem. And you can’t begin to get them to stop being problematic until you’ve understood where they’re coming from and developed the highly-tuned persuasive skills necessary to sell them on a “better” way. We have the science; we know lots of good strategies to bring people into better alignment with the greater good. But science alone is not enough. Persuasion is about intuition. Faith, one might say. If you don’t understand faith, all you see is hypocrisy. If you do understand faith, all you see are misguided cats.
A misguided human might say, “I don’t care if that person has cancer. If I don’t get special treatment, they shouldn’t either.” But they hardly ever mean that literally. They’re not robots who can fail to care. They just say things. To seem tough. To make their point. In making points to each other, we hardly ever faithfully represent our actual highest values. When someone says, “Not to be racist but..” and then says something racist, they’ve told you their intent. And then failed. If you decide that means their statement of intent was a lie, you’re probably misunderstanding based on your own traumas. Understandable. Doesn’t make you a bad cat either.
Anyway, we’re all constantly giving offense and taking offense and generally doing the best we can even though our best is disappointing to someone sometimes. You can build a whole media ecosystem on just misunderstanding alone. Willful misunderstanding, even, because outrage drives eyeballs. But facts can be misunderstood as easily as anything else. Technically, a fact is just an intuition that’s done well at the scientific method Olympics and is predicted to keep doing well. Facts tell us about reality. And understanding reality is how we make more productive decisions.
Understanding how other people misunderstand reality allows us to lie to them and sell them things. Products, ideas, stories.
Sometimes, human brains convince themselves not to care about entire groups of people. If the group is “people of color,” that’s called “racist.” But when it’s “those neighbors with the loud parties,” that’s called “common sense.” People of good conscience know the difference, but what if you say “those people” about the party folks and someone misunderstands and assumes you’re racist (oh, the party folks happen to be of color?). Some people hate being called racist so much they become racist. Brains are fun, aren’t they?
Sometimes, maybe even often, brains get lost in the twisty maze of shortcuts and false beliefs and installed values and twist themselves into real beasts. But most people actually want to be nice. To be kind. To be good neighbors who throw parties everyone enjoys. We’re a social species. The tendency to cooperate is hard-coded in all of us. But so is the competitive stuff.
In a perfectly equitable system, all people would get special treatment according to their “special” needs. And it would feel fair for everyone. Unfortunately, our big American system is complicated and fails lots of different people at various times for lots of different reasons. We vote for politicians we hope will care about us and take care of us, specifically. But they can’t always keep promises. And there are checks and balances and bad actors and corruption. And the fastest way to make things feel more fair is first agree to on what “fair” might look like.
We need to be able to take on perspectives as different as possible from our own. That’s what a multi-ethnic, freedom-loving, diversity-including democracy requires to survive all the political “talking points” media conglomerates owned by giant corporations have been selling us for years. So start with grace. Even though that sounds trite. Treating our worst enemies like good cats who need a little retraining, a little boundary-setting, a little nudge in better directions, really is the best first step to a better future.
The black and white dog in the video, Jethro aka Jeff, came from a hoarding situation with a lot of physical abuse. The humans responsible for that needed help and didn’t get it. They just got more punishment on top of their existing suffering.
Jethro, though? He doesn’t get beat these days for peeing on the fridge. Even though it’s “bad.” He didn’t get to go outside before. He knows it’s the right place to go now, but sometimes he forgets. He jumps on the counters scavenging for food in memory of surviving only on what he could find in the sink. He isn’t motivated to steal by a sense of unfairness at all. He’s driven by food insecurity. Even with the bulk of the fear pressure is gone, the compulsion will probably always linger. We just try to keep the sink clean. He gets fed the right amount every day. And he doesn’t know what “wuss” means, so don’t come at me for negging him. Hex, the black cat who isn’t Adaleen, is my darling, easy-going stoner (catnip) boy who charms his way into having all his problems solved for him, so he isn’t really an intellectual, but he’s lovely anyway.
Bebe and Jeff are sleeping next to me as I write this and Bebe will not. stop. purring. But his joy is nice, even when he’s a wannabe thief who’d rip the chemo right out of someone’s arm sometimes. Adaleen and Lorelei “Bitey McBiterson” have joined us, too, and, even though they’re not always fans of each other, peace reigns for the moment. That’s what I wish for for America, too. I’m not talking peace, love, and understanding because it’s the “right” thing, either. Do it because it’s better for everyone, yourself included. And civil war would be bad for all these cats.
