'If you whip a dog while a violin is played...'

Jimmy bites Jumbo | Jumbo Whimpers

#memoriesfromdiaries

22 November 1996

Since the second week of November 1996, I had enrolled myself for my driving lessons, with a good driving school in town.

The Standard Gazel

The driving school’s proprietor - being a family friend - took that extra care to teach me well, the nuances and the intricacies of driving.

On this particular day, he taught us how to apply the reverse gear. I tried it out twice, and met with some degree of success!

Back then, our driving instructor, had the good ol’ Standard Gazel, in which we’d learnt the basics of driving!

Manufactured in Chennai’s own car manufacturing hub at Perungalathur, the Standard Car company’s Chennai plant was operational from 1951 to 1988.

The ‘Standard’ Herald company competed with the likes of Hindustan Ambassador (which had a cult following, and also the prestige of being a status symbol in the 1960s up until the 1990s). And then there was the Premier Padmini as well.

Interestingly, the Ambassador alone sported the unique, one-of-its-kind column shift [wherein the gear shift lever is mounted to the left of the steering column], while other cars usually had the floor shift.

The column shift was preferred in cars, as it gave more space in the front seat for ‘added passengers’ as well. 😊

However, for ‘L’ boards like me, we preferred the floor shifts, as they were easier to learn, and had faster response time while driving.

On an aside, there’s some good news for all ye Ambassador lovers – Good ol’ Amby is being relaunched in India next year. Ravi Saare.. are you listening? 😊

Coming back to a sentimental incident on sentient beings, that had happened on this fateful day –

Our pet dog Jumbo was such a sensation with everyone in our street, you see! However, there was another dog in the neighbourhood, which never got along well with Jumbo. He was Jimmy. 🐕

On this particular day, Jimmy badly bit Jumbo, to such an extent that Jumbo couldn’t even walk properly for a few days after that!

The words ‘whimper’ and ‘dog’ (that I’ve used to jot down this incident), immediately bring to mind, the Father of Modern Philosophy – Rene Descartes and his weird observations on animals, with particular reference to dogs!

To Descartes, one has to be human in order to enjoy experiences and feelings.

Shocking, ain’t it?

Animals, to Descartes, are really machines, or biological robots, without any mind. [Often referred to, as the Bête-machine doctrine].

According to his famous mind-body dualism hypothesis, the mind is a non-physical, non-spatial substance in itself. Moreover, the mind is conscious, not the body!

The human self - the person - is essentially the mind, and NOT the body.

The mind has free will, the ability to control and to cause the human body to act the way it wills!

To Descartes then, since human minds [oops… beings] 😊 are capable of thought and reasoning, we must have minds, while animals don’t!

He tells us that –

If you whip a dog while a violin is played, in course of time, it will whimper and whine to the music!

That’s hence, in his Discourse on Method (1637), Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” [a human].

It is also said that, Descartes had once kicked a pregnant dog and explained its whimpers as mere automatic expressions of a machine.

In another legend, he “nailed his wife’s dog to a board plank for vivisection” in order to prove to her that it was just a machine!

One doesn’t know how true these anecdotes are! However, Descartes stands quite disproved in some of his reductionist propositions or rather presuppositions, for sure!

Pic. courtesy for Standard Gazel: teambhp