Anthropocene Psychology: Dogs as mirrors of human behavior
The global lockdown and the Anthropause are an existential crisis: the disconnection of humans from the environment, from animals, and themselves as a whole species.
MARC BEKOFF: Marco Adda is an independent scholar, anthrozoologist, and expert on the behavior of dogs, focusing on free-ranging ones living in Bali. He also is an eclectic scholar and his recent essay, “Recognising Anthrozooalgia on the Way to the Symbiocene” is a future-looking, thought-provoking piece that weaves together different views of where we are now—living in the Anthropocene (a time that rightly can be called “the rage of inhumanity” rather than “the age of humanity”) and the Anthropause, how we got here, and where we’re going.
The word “anthropause” was coined in an essay by Christian Rutz and his colleagues called “COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife.”1 It refers to “a considerable global slowing of modern human activities, notably travel.” New Scientist writer Graham Lawton notes that when humans were confined because of COVID-19, we had a unique chance to see how human activity affects wildlife. It also affected us…
The ways in which he weaves together different topics, ranging from human behavior before the lockdown, anthropocene psychology, to behavior during the Anthropause, to deep concern for dogs and other animals that often results in human suffering “anthrozooalgia,” to the ways in which dogs mirror our thoughts and feelings, to how we can all work together to make the better place for all animals, human and nonhuman—topics that at first glance seem to be unrelated, is remarkably novel and important…
Adda rightfully concludes that the global lockdown and the Anthropause are an existential crisis: the disconnection of humans from the environment, from animals, and themselves as a whole species. The disconnection is counterbalanced by deep concern, which also causes several forms of collective suffering. One solution is for all of us to rewild ourselves, rewild hope, remain positive, and deeply reconnect with all beings, human and nonhuman, on our magnificent and wondrous, but wounded and finitely resilient planet.
Science and common sense warn that we can’t go on living as we do. Even as an optimist’s optimist, I (and others) know there is no way that will work or be sustainable. We continue to leave wakes of destruction that at some point will be irreversible. We are, as Warren Hern aptly puts it, Homo Ecophagus, a species that devours ecosystems. SOURCE…
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