Reality by Vote?

There was an incident tonight that triggered me meditating on what I and anyone believes and why we do.

First of all, there was no Wikipedia to answer every question when I was growing up in the 1950s. And so my wife and I had an argument that goes round and round that never ends regarding our dogs. Our 70 pound German Shepard and Australian Shepard mix dog who is now about 10 years old loves pizza. In fact, when I first got him at about 17 months he was so smart he was trying to compete with me for alpha dog in the house. So I hoped even though he was fixed that he wasn't going to be too much dog for me and the family. So one night he got aggressive and stole a whole cooked pizza off the stove. I had to rough him up a little and take the pizza back from him. Ever since then he has accepted me as alpha dog and we have been just fine and he has been the smartest and best dog I have ever seen anywhere. He had been trained to know 300 English words before I met him and he has that sheep dog quality of staring anyone or anything down like he was bred to when they stare sheep down to control them. So he does that with people too. So, my wife always gets upset with me when I give him pizza crusts and got angry again when she saw me to this.  My 14 year old daughter joined in and I decided not to make a bigger thing than necessary about it. But I decided this time to think the whole thing through to create a better outcome for my family and dogs.

When I grew up there just seemed to be a lot more unstable people everywhere. So you couldn't just believe what anyone said about anything. This was the world I grew up in. So, when you cannot trust people, especially adults to tell you the truth it makes a child more fearful for their survival. Today, because I have become educated not only by the streets and public school through high school, but in addition to that many years of college I look at things much differently than I used to. But the one thing that remains the same is what the men of my family always said to me, "Don't trust anyone." Now, on the surface this might seem kind of paranoid. But underneath it speaks to the human experience. And also I'm not completely advocating this point of view. But at least when I first meet someone I'm usually very reserved until I have completely figured them out (which usually takes about 5 minutes) before I decide whether this person is a loon, can be trusted, cannot be trusted, is a potential friend, or is just dangerous. Sometimes, all you have to do it look at someone and know you likely don't want to know them.

So, 62 years later I still "Don't trust anyone" initially. But I will warm up to people if I see it useful eventually. This way of functioning has saved my life countless times over the years internationally. Because in foreign countries even more than this one you may have no idea what is going on unless you are in Europe because of the similarities of Europe to the U.S. But in other parts of the world you might have no idea what is going on in many situations. So being careful will save your life in these situations.

So, in regard to feeding the dog pizza crust I said to my wife. "There are some things every being needs and without those things you might as well just shoot them in the head because they just won't survive very well without those things". I went on to describe the things her father would not want to live without, what she wouldn't want to live without and what I wouldn't want to live without and what my dog wouldn't want to live without.

So without personally offending her ethics and values I told all this to her.  However, I didn't like the response I got. But at least she began to understand my point of view.  In the world I grew up in and also have seen traveling around the world, dogs eat almost anything. Only goats eat weirder stuff than dogs do as far as I'm concerned. Dogs and cats will even eat their masters when they die in a home if there is no other food there. Dogs eat some pretty weird stuff.

So feeding pizza to my dog if he loves it is about like a man having a beer once in a great while. I don't see the difference. I'm not really a drinker but I don't think my dog would be happy at all if we didn't give him some pizza crusts when we have pizza.

Also, I realized that a place like Wikipedia as wonderful as it is is basically reality by vote. What I mean by this is that it is sort of like if you had a room full of people and you held up an apple and 1 person said it was an apple and the rest said it was a grape then even if the one who said it was an apple would be drowned out by the rest who said it was a grape and tasted like a grape. So, in a way this creates reality by vote or maybe a better way to say it would be reality by those who are persistent enough to have their views maintained.

But this doesn't necessarily lead to the truth about anything (or maybe it does)

How about if there was a group of people and a person stood up before them and asked them "Am I alive or am I dead?" If the majority of those people said that person was dead either people would think person  was dead or maybe they would kill that person and then that person really would be dead. This is the real problem with reality by vote. So, as good as wikipedia is it can never be just one person's experience or opinion because everyone has to be involved that wants to be.

What do you think?