#1b THE SHELF PHILOSOPHER - AS PHILOSOPHERS ARE WONT TO BE
“You asked some good questions when you were two.” This is how our second conversation started. While AristophBunnies spoke, he invited Scooter to join him atop my desk.
“Your two-year-old self worried when a 13-week-old pup was stealing your attention. Your mom wrote about it.
SCOOTER SUBLIME
You were accustomed to attention ownership, and so you asked, “Was I 13-weeks old once? Can I be again?” “Your question brings me from the shelf today. People are asking, “Wasn’t America great once? Shouldn’t we be great again? ‘Again’ intrigues me. So does the word, ‘great.’”
“Is he going to spoil things, Mom?” asked Scooter.
“It’s possible,” I said. “He’s already suggesting trouble.”
“As philosophers are wont to do,” said AristophBunnies.
“Wont? Mom, Is that a word?”
AristophBunnies was undeterred. “Here’s what philosophers do. Philosophers ask big questions about morality, knowledge, life, and reality, You, had asked a little question – about yourself. Asking about yourself is not a bad thing, unless . . .”
Scooter backed closer to my computer where I was documenting this conversation.
“Unless,” said the rabbit, now belly-resting like Dürer’s Young Hare , “unless the question is simply self-serving. Here’s a big reality question for you and Mom.”
ARISTOPHBUNNIES MIRRORS A MASTERPIECE
“He did it again!”
“When was America ‘great’?” AristophBunnies asked, ignoring the resident dog. “What made her so? Was she then at her kindest? Most ethical? Most benevolent? Most powerful? What is it that her people want when they want “again”?
“Think about this, dog.” Scooter was slightly offended. “In another week or so,” said philosopher rabbit, “you will celebrate your seventh birthday. Can you be 13-weeks old ‘again’? Should you want to be? You didn’t even know what to do with pee pads. Or should you want to be the best seven-year-old you can be, having learned from the past—which in your case might mean noticing some attitudes and behaviors worthy of correction—which in the case of America’s greatness, ditto.
In her book, mom lingered over discovering the beauty of her world, the value of people, and the development of personal character. I’ve left my shelf to say I’m lingering on the big question of how to bring a philosopher’s concerns – morality, knowledge, goodness, truth, beauty - to people busy battering the world’s beauty, devaluing life, not only lives of people but of all living things; and are pursuing some blurry great past in the place of present good character. Don’t get me started! People of the world have some real problems.”
“Don’t get him started?” Scooter scoffs. “How to get him stopped, is the big question. Are things that bad, Mom?”
“Let’s have a story, Scooter Sublime.”
“He knows my name!”
AristophBunnies needed a deep breath after explosively declaring the state of things in the world. “Mom wrote about you in 2022. I’m lingering over this line of hers in that old story: ‘you are safe, you are heard, we are connected.’ How good is that? It’s about the greatness of being, my friend.”
“There! He did it again! He called you Mom!”
“Scooter, just pay attention,” I said.
AristophBunnies bent toward Scooter, and said, “Here, brother of the earth, your story, again.” He directed me to the blog he wanted.
A review for Scooter: #44 PUPPY “MISCHKA” 5-20-‘22
“She’s a pup, that’s why. She’s small. She’s soft. She fits on the woman’s lap. Nicely. You are now a 28-pounder. A big boy.”
Scooter was a bit taken back by being ever so slightly overlooked. He’s not accustomed to “overlooked.”
“Yeah, but . . .” said the expression in his eyes as he looked from me to the group of people admiring a puppy.
“She’s 13-weeks old, Scooter. She’s darling.”
“Was I 13-weeks old once?”
“You were. In this very place. You were small. You were darling. Your coat was soft and silky. You had baby teeth.”
SCOOTER SUBLIME MEETS BANANA PEEL
“Baby teeth?”
“You were lifted to many laps. But you know, you’re a teenage boy now. You are two-and-a-half years old! You’ve seen teenaged human boys, and how they behave. Put it together.”
“Would it help if they were castrated?”
“Scooter!”
“Those silly sounds these people are making over Mischka; fawning, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s not fawning, Scooter. Experts in such things call it Parentese, infant-directed speech. With babies, people automatically lift the tone of their voices, they go all sing-songy. Well, you are hearing it now. The woman holding baby Mischka didn’t earn her Ph.D by cooing but when a baby anything is propped in a person’s lap (unless they are heartless), they automatically, even without embarrassment, drop into what you are watching now.”
“Did they make those sounds when they held me?”
“They did. Babies bring it out of people. And this is good. Infant people, and even infant dogs, operate mostly from the brain’s right hemisphere, and you better believe those silly sounds you hear from these people ignoring you are serious signals emanating from the right hemisphere of human brains. The baby, in this case fawned-over Mischka, hears those high-pitched, exaggerated messages, and long before any word means anything, she learns ‘you are safe, you are heard, we are connected.”
“And cats?”
“What?”
“Things without brains, like cats. Can they catch signals?”
“Scooter!”
AristophBunnies winked at Scooter. I was trying to decipher the meaning of that when he hopped from my desk. As he left the office for his shelf, he said, “I’m lingering over what your mom said in that story that describes the greatness of being: ‘you are safe, you are heard, we are connected.’ Let’s linger on that line, shall we?”
