Karen Pryor, this animal trainer lady, in 1984 she writes a book called Don’t Shoot the Dog! Sounds nice, right? Cute title, makes you think of puppies.
But what she actually says is there are “eight, only eight” ways to stop some behavior. And number eight is, no joke, shoot the dog. Boom. Always works. Dog stops barking, dog stops chewing the couch, dog stops living. Problem solved.
She says it is a bad idea of course. That is why she wrote the book. She is trying to convince us there are better ways. Now here is the thing.
Skinner, you know, the rat-maze guy, he proved that conditioning works best when the subject does not even know it is happening. You do not tell the rat, “Hey buddy, I am training you.” You just do it.
Same with dogs. If you asked a dog if it was trained, the dog would tell you, “No way man, I am making my own decisions. I sit because I want to sit. I heel because I like it.”
Bullshit. That dog has been conned. And here is the kicker. People walk around thinking they are making rational, everyday choices. “I chose this job. I bought this crap at Walmart. I voted for this smiling meat puppet.”
Rational decisions, right? But the consequences of all those choices, always, always, benefit the rich. Not you. Not me. Them. Always.
And here is how it works. In our world, we do not live on primary rewards anymore. Nobody is handing out sandwiches and shelter. We run on secondary reinforcers like money, status, reputation. And if you are lucky enough to get higher up, you get the tertiary stuff, power, control, influence.
And guess what? Those rewards are doled out for being a complete asshole.
Hoard resources, crush wages, buy off politicians, dump your garbage on poor people and the planet. Congratulations, you are a genius, a role model, a “captain of industry.” They write glowing profiles about you in business magazines. You are not a parasite, you are “competitive, efficient, admirable, sexy.”
Those tertiary rewards cater to the people who do not only seek more money but who also seek more prestige, privilege, a sense of worth. So behaviour shaping methods (remember Skinner and Karen Pryor) such as "extinction", "train an incompatible behavior", and "change the motivation" work very well to isolate and pressure those susceptible people into a common set of antisocial behaviors.
There's no cabal. It is not an overt plan or a conspiracy, it is another invisible leash.
Meanwhile, if one of us gets in the way, or whole communities, or whole countries,or whole groups of people, there is always option eight. Shoot the dog.
In this system, “bad” does not mean wrong. It does not mean immoral. It means you are in the way. Workers laid off, neighborhoods bulldozed for pipelines, entire populations erased through exploitation, war, genocide. Does not matter.
Shooting the dog always works. And unlike Karen Pryor, this setup is not trying to set you up with a warm and fuzzy pet.
This machine needs growth. Unlimited growth, baby! You do not get more than one or two percent return on an investment unless somebody is getting fucked.
Capitalism creates the most poverty and kills the most people than any other system. That is how the game is built. And we think it is winning because we only get shown the side that gets to brag about it.
And here is the parallel. Training is invisible to the dog. The leash just feels like life. The way the rich get shaped is the same. They do not even know they are being trained, they just think they are shrewd, smart, strong.
But the reinforcements are always there, making what is destructive to the many feel rational, inevitable, even good, to the few. The leash is always in hand.
If I were to write a book, I would call it Don’t Shoot the Trainer!
Get it?
Good boy.