Working in business we live oppressingly linear lives. Sure, there is some creativity that we permit to creep within the constraints of the vocational structure that governs much of our conscious action. But we tend to be especially linear with respect to time. We are fixated on the future, and more often than not focused on a vision of ourselves in that future. Every scintilla of our energy is dedicated to advancing us towards a distant picture resting in our mind’s eye. Now I am one of the worst offenders. Yet one part of me knows that we also need to try harder to occupy the present. And sometimes it pays to wrestle away from the vocational structure that suffocates current-time.
So my admittedly pithy attempt to intellectually veer off the chosen path during the summer sojourn, and hopefully stimulate some otherwise incommunicative neuronal connections (ie, the synapses sitting in your brain that aren’t talking to each other), was a bout of off-road reading. I will confess here that not much of this material could be seriously classified as off-piste. Think, for example, Paul Kelly’s The March of Patriots. Most of it was an indulgence. Nevertheless, one bona fide and honestly inspiring effort was The Philosopher and the Wolf by the eccentric Mark Rowlands. It really is a bizarre book that employs Rowlands’ extraordinary experience rearing a pure bred wolf from cradle to grave as a vehicle to refine his philosophical views on the human condition and the meaning of life.
Rowlands is a curious cat: he completed a PhD in philosophy at Oxford in eighteen months, which he followed up with academic positions around the world. He is also a mad keen rugby player, self-confessed alcoholic, and vegan-cum-piscean animal lover.
He writes in an exceptionally clear and crisp fashion, which makes the assimilation of his frequently intricate philosophical concepts easy for the reader to bear.
And as the owner of two fierce tea-cup poodles with acute Napoleon complexes, which one can often find terrorising the canines of Bellevue Hill (so long as said beasts are well and truly secured behind their fences), Rowlands’ story resonated in a deep and personal fashion.
Perhaps most pointedly, Rowlands’ arguments about the human condition appear novel and counter-intuitive. Without trying to do his thesis justice, he observes that we ‘simians’ are unique amongst living things for at least two reasons: (1) our relationships are defined by our ability to deceive and lie, which necessitates the ‘social contract’; and (2) we base on current actions on our perception of what might be classified as ‘future time’, which encapsulates our aspirations and goals for both our personal and professional lives. Rowlands' analysis is thought-provoking, and one of those rare pieces of work that I would be motivated to read twice.
The tale of his hulking wolf, Brenin, who grows to an impressive 150 pounds, is even more remarkable (I have inserted a picture below). While making enormous sacrifices in order to avoid impacting too much on Brenin’s innate instincts, Rowlands nevertheless manages to train the beast to obey his commands and walk/run off a leash within a few days. Brenin accompanies Rowlands to his university lectures where it is said he would howl if he became bored. Rowlands claims that while Brenin derived immense pleasure from fighting with other large dogs, he would never engage in a brawl unprovoked, or with another creature that was unable to protect itself (unless, of course, he was hunting rabbits!).
In one example of Brenin’s apparent munificence, and the distinction he made between the need to feed himself and his relationships with other beings, Rowlands recounts how while living in Ireland Brenin forged a seemingly intimate bond with the cows that grazed in the fields contiguous to their home. On sighting the wolf these crazy-brave hunks of meat would purportedly run up to it and, astonishingly, be warmly greeted with long wolf licks on their noses!Rowlands describes an intelligent, loyal, loving and majestic creature with whom he commits to sharing 11 years of his life as a true partner. He claims to have learnt more from Brenin than any other being. A critical element in his account is Brenin’s inability to lie, and the likelihood that Brenin has no real conception of 'future-time', which seems a reasonable case to make. A corollary is, therefore, that Brenin lives in the present. And death is, in this view of the world, an irrelevancy since it never affects current consciousness and cannot deny Brenin his goals and aspirations given that these ambitions never existed in the first place.
All told, an inspiring, educational and tear-jerking journey that I would highly recommend.
