Do Cats and Dogs See Ghosts?
Recently, a friend of mine told me that she believes pets see ghosts. This comes from the observation that there are times when cats or dogs simply stop doing anything for a couple of seconds and just stare into apparent nothingness.
I am not the kind to entertain paranormal statements like this one, but, at that moment, my brain was feeling particularly creative (and high). After thinking for a bit, I realized there is a way to reasonably state that cats and dogs (and even other animals) do indeed see ghosts.
Now, I will go on and show how.
What is a ghost?
A spirit
What is a spirit?
Dictionary.com gives many definitions but I want to focus on a particular one:
An attitude or principle that inspires, animates, or pervades thought, feeling, or action
Dictionary.com
I know it seems like I’m talking about something completely different now, but do stick with me.
Using this definition, one could say that someone has, let’s say, the spirit of a warrior, for example.
But what does it mean for someone to possess such a spirit?
It means that someone possesses the qualities that we collectively attribute to such spirit. In the case of the warrior spirit, those would be qualities like strength and perseverance.
We even used to make gods out of those spirits. Take Kratos for instance, the god of war from Greek mythology, or Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom.
The thing is that we no longer have gods in the sense of external entities that represent certain ideals. That came with the advent of the scientific way of thinking. In the framework of science, such external phantasmagorical entities no longer make sense.
So did we do away with them? No, they just moved inside. Remember, we can say that someone possesses a certain spirit.
Nevertheless, this is how people used to see the world. Think of how many encounters with God there are in the bible, God being in himself a spirit.
A slight tangent…
The Christian God is a special kind of spirit actually; when a culture changes from a polytheistic religion to a monotheistic one, it can be said that the previous gods and what they represent move into a more cohesive hierarchy of values, the new god being what sits at the top of said hierarchy.
One can even argue that some of us see the world in a polytheistic manner because of how much they are engaged in superhero comics and especially movies. What is particularly engaging is when all superheroes come together in order to solve a crisis (i.e. Avengers). That is because we are basically able to see how those higher values (the superheroes) interact with each other in stories that reflect the modern crisis.
Getting back on track… how does this all come together?
What I am getting at is that, in the same way we used to project those internal archetypes in the form of external spirit, our pets might be doing exactly the same right now when they stare into blank space. They might just be projecting their own internal ‘gods’ if you could call them that.
So we are done, right?
But this only shows that pets see spirits, albeit internal spirits, but not ghosts. At first, I was OK with just this conclusion, but, after a while, I realized I can take the argument further.
So, getting back to our own human spirits…
How do they form? How do they come to be?
We first need to look at the individual level and, there, we simply observe and imitate. We observe how other people play out those spirits and, if we find certain behaviors to be desirable or if those resonate with something within us, we try to integrate them into our own being through imitation. Even though we may look up at people younger than us for certain traits, it is usually those with a longer life experience that possess most of the wisdom we are looking for. In the same way we may look up to those people, they must in turn have had their own idols which had other idols and so on and so forth.
Even though in this process of transmitting wisdom modes of being change and take different forms depending on the individuals they touch, certain traits remain stable and those become definitional for those spirits.
So spirits come from our ancestors imitating each other. Ancestors are dead people. Therefore spirits are the cumulative wisdom of people passed.
A beautiful life
that came to an end,
he died as he lived, everyone’s friend.
In our hearts a memory will always be kept,
of one we loved,
and will never forget.
A Beautiful LifeSo, …*drum rolls*… we can say that spirits are ghosts and therefore that our pets see ghosts!!! Not human ghosts, but the ghosts of their ancestors…
Actually, dogs might even be able to see human ghosts considering how long they have been our companions throughout their evolution. They must have created certain imagery of us by now.
So what did my friend think of this explanation?
She actually preferred the mystery of it all.
For the Romanians, i-am strivit corola de minuni a lumii.
