Consciousness or self-awareness, and its concomitant side effect “imagination”, are more or less doomed to create CULTURE. Maybe it won’t be YOUR culture, maybe not particularly advanced – but it’s there …
I’ve noticed it with the dogs I walk, Boomer, Bailey, Kia and even that pimp-daddy Shaggy (the Hungarian Puli) … they share behaviors, and beliefs … like the strange belief that kicking up dirt and making a circle is a way to bring forth more happiness and cheese … which is the same thing.
Whether its crows or dogs … or even the octopus with her gardens … there are these actions that do not simply reduce to instinct.
In fact, I can imagine an old angry grey and black reservation dog, somewhere up in the Uinta Mountains … in a cave. And he’s slaving away on his masterpiece:
“DECLINE of the DOG” by Oswald Spaniel
(a french bulldog is on the cover)
