What if the Butterfly is a Behaviorist?

Note:: This post was written in 7-13-16, back when Brownie was still alive. So it's a "Blast from the Past." I found it in my drafts this morning. I could have sworn it had already been published.

In the backyard this morning, all was calm and green and beautiful.

Bow was chewing his cud in his favorite pose, lying on the very edge of the top of the bench. The dogs were pursuing canine interests. For Brownie, this meant digging up and re-burying stones. Then along came the red-spotted purple butterfly. I dropped everything I was doing -- mowing the lawn -- in order to follow it.

I wanted to get a really good picture, but this was the  best I could manage.

Brownie kept coming too close, and the butterfly flew off.

If this had been an isolated incident, why then I would have thought nothing about it. But the butterfly and its mate have been toying with me for days. They keep flying in and out of the yard, as if the eight foot tall fence meant nothing at all to them as a marker of boundaries!

It lies in wait for me, resting on the wall of the house, but when I approach it flies away, leading me on a merry chase.

It rests for a moment on the grass, but as I approach, off it flies.

And there isn't just one -- there are two of them cavorting and plotting together. One acts as a decoy and flies to the roof, while the other remains on the day flowers, just long enough for me to spot it.

It makes itself known not only to me, but also to the dogs and to Bow.

One red-spotted purple stays perched up on the roof as a lookout, while the other leads me on a merry chase.

And the result? The result is that I keep assiduously mowing the lawn every single day, while leaving the day flowers to grow unharmed. My muscles ache with all that mowing. Not because I want to mow the grass so much, but because I long to catch a glimpse of the butterfly.

This is one way to motivate someone to exercise. The other is Pokemon Go. Or maybe it is all exactly the same thing. Does it matter whether there is a real butterfly outside or it's all in the mind of the beholder in a rigged game set up to motivate people to exercise, or go where you lead them, or become targets of ad-men and assassins? The theorizing about this has gone wild on the web the last couple of days.

What if the butterfly is a behaviorist, and my yard is his Skinner box?

When my own recent guest was here, she admired my two cockatiels.

 "Are you studying the birds?" she asked me.

"No," I said. "The birds are studying me." It's true. They love to watch me eat. They have free access to the food all day, but they take the time to eat with me, when I am eating, as if I provide them with a very amusing show. And so my guest was eating, and the birds congregated as close to her as possible, and ate when she ate, and spoke when she spoke.

Just then, one of the birds threw a spent seed, and it landed right in front of my guest.

"What's this?" she asked.

"A gift."

The birds were mimicking our speech, but not well enough to be understood. I do nothing whatever to encourage it. It's just their natural behavior.

 I do know of someone who seriously studies birds. That is Irene Pepperberg. And just recently she published a very short review of the field of animal language research. Here is a link

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304710994_Animal_language_studies_What_happened

I requested and got the full paper. And reading it, I realized something that somehow never occurred to me before. My guest was a behaviorist. And I'm not. And this could account for a mountain of misunderstandings between us.

Skinner, I was taught, didn't believe that any of us had minds. Now I don't know if that's actually true, but that's what we had to say in order to pass the qualifying exam at the Rice Linguistics Department. One person could not quite bring herself to say that, and she did not pass the exam. She hedged. She tried to be nice about it. "He wasn't that interested in the mind," she said. And the people in charge thought this was too vague.

Now, from the perspective of those dealing with autism, it is really funny to have a whole school of psychology that does not believe we should act as if anybody had a mind. Autism is characterize by not having a theory of mind! You are said to be autistic to the extent that you do not realize that anybody other than yourself has a mind. And yet ABA therapists, who are behaviorists, do exactly this to their patients  -- they treat them as if they had no minds! ABA therapy is operant conditioning a la Skinner!

I never treat anybody like that. I always give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I don't know if anybody has a mind or not, but I start out by acting as if they do, even if they are just a butterfly. The way I raised Bow was by honoring his mind and not by trying to condition him to do anything.

What if deep down inside, it's the behaviorists who are autistic and not the autistics under their care?

This is all very confusing, and I will have to think about it some more. Meanwhile, I have butterflies to chase!

What if the Butterfly is a Behaviorist?

In the backyard this morning, all was calm and green and beautiful.

Bow was chewing his cud in his favorite pose, lying on the very edge of the top of the bench. The dogs were pursuing canine interests. For Brownie, this meant digging up and re-burying stones. Then along came the red-spotted purple butterfly. I dropped everything I was doing -- mowing the lawn -- in order to follow it.

I wanted to get a really good picture, but this was the  best I could manage.

Brownie kept coming too close, and the butterfly flew off.

If this had been an isolated incident, why then I would have thought nothing about it. But the butterfly and its mate have been toying with me for days. They keep flying in and out of the yard, as if the eight foot tall fence meant nothing at all to them as a marker of boundaries!

It lies in wait for me, resting on the wall of the house, but when I approach it flies away, leading me on a merry chase.

It rests for a moment on the grass, but as I approach, off it flies.

And there isn't just one -- there are two of them cavorting and plotting together. One acts as a decoy and flies to the roof, while the other remains on the day flowers, just long enough for me to spot it.

It makes itself known not only to me, but also to the dogs and to Bow.

One red-spotted purple stays perched up on the roof as a lookout, while the other leads me on a merry chase.

And the result? The result is that I keep assiduously mowing the lawn every single day, while leaving the day flowers to grow unharmed. My muscles ache with all that mowing. Not because I want to mow the grass so much, but because I long to catch a glimpse of the butterfly.

This is one way to motivate someone to exercise. The other is Pokemon Go. Or maybe it is all exactly the same thing. Does it matter whether there is a real butterfly outside or it's all in the mind of the beholder in a rigged game set up to motivate people to exercise, or go where you lead them, or become targets of ad-men and assassins? The theorizing about this has gone wild on the web the last couple of days.

What if the butterfly is a behaviorist, and my yard is his Skinner box?

When my own recent guest was here, she admired my two cockatiels.

 "Are you studying the birds?" she asked me.

"No," I said. "The birds are studying me." It's true. They love to watch me eat. They have free access to the food all day, but they take the time to eat with me, when I am eating, as if I provide them with a very amusing show. And so my guest was eating, and the birds congregated as close to her as possible, and ate when she ate, and spoke when she spoke.

Just then, one of the birds threw a spent seed, and it landed right in front of my guest.

"What's this?" she asked.

"A gift."

The birds were mimicking our speech, but not well enough to be understood. I do nothing whatever to encourage it. It's just their natural behavior.

 I do know of someone who seriously studies birds. That is Irene Pepperberg. And just recently she published a very short review of the field of animal language research. Here is a link

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304710994_Animal_language_studies_What_happened

I requested and got the full paper. And reading it, I realized something that somehow never occurred to me before. My guest was a behaviorist. And I'm not. And this could account for a mountain of misunderstandings between us.

Skinner, I was taught, didn't believe that any of us had minds. Now I don't know if that's actually true, but that's what we had to say in order to pass the qualifying exam at the Rice Linguistics Department. One person could not quite bring herself to say that, and she did not pass the exam. She hedged. She tried to be nice about it. "He wasn't that interested in the mind," she said. And the people in charge thought this was too vague.

Now, from the perspective of those dealing with autism, it is really funny to have a whole school of psychology that does not believe we should act as if anybody had a mind. Autism is characterized by not having a theory of mind! You are said to be autistic to the extent that you do not realize that anybody other than yourself has a mind. And yet ABA therapists, who are behaviorists, do exactly this to their patients  -- they treat them as if they had no minds! ABA therapy is operant conditioning a la Skinner!

I never treat anybody like that. I always give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I don't know if anybody has a mind or not, but I start out by acting as if they do, even if they are just a butterfly. The way I raised Bow was by honoring his mind and not by trying to condition him to do anything.

What if deep down inside, it's the behaviorists who are autistic and not the autistics under their care?

This is all very confusing, and I will have to think about it some more. Meanwhile, I have butterflies to chase!

Where Did that Butterfly go?

I am almost never alone now. When not with Bow, I am either accompanied by the kitten or surrounded by the dogs. This makes chasing butterflies a little difficult.

Bow oversees all backyard activities

When in the backyard, I am supervised by Bow in all my activities.  For Bow,  it's not always what he can touch -- sometimes just seeing is good enough. While Brownie and Leo can come in close and physically interfere in what I am doing, Bow can make vocal commentary, which can sometimes have a similar effect.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a red-spotted purple butterfly in the backyard.

 But coming in closer for a better look was a challenge.

First the dogs had to come in closer, and later Bow had his say, which was distracting, so that I lost sight of the butterfly.


Eventually I found it again, but the situation was less than ideal. It isn't much better on the other side of that eight foot fence, though. In the front yard, after a rain, the butterflies like to warm themselves on the outer road. That's where Nala the kitten comes in.

Nala looks innocent while a Pearl Crescent flies right over her

Nala will innocently plop down on the warm gravel road and start rolling around, placing herself right in the path of an oncoming pearl crescent.

The butterfly flies right over her and she hardly notices.

Sometimes Nala does seem to be interested in the butterflies, but the method that works best is not when she chases them, but when she lies still.

Can you see the butterfly hovering right over Nala's right eye?

Only rarely can I capture a picture of a Pearl Crescent sans kitten.

It is easier to get closer to the butterflies if there is not also a cat or dog or chimpanzees in the vicinity directing all activities.

And the obeservation of a Monarch that chooses our side of the fence over the neighbors is much easier without the presence of a cat critic.

Bow's outings are important.

But so are mine.

And sometimes the views that give us the greatest peace of mind are not those closest to hand.  It's not always what you can touch -- sometimes just seeing is good enough.

The wide open spaces that I don't own can give me the most perspective.

The Simple Things in Life

Happiness comes from the simple things. Like deciding to go outside on a foggy morning and lying on the bench in your own special way.

It is  nice to have loyal friends like Leo and Brownie, and to be able to ignore them when you feel like it, and to engage them on your own terms when the spirit moves you.

Happiness, for a dog like Brownie, is being able to spend hours on end digging up rocks.

They say that the best things in life are free. Brownie agrees. He prefers playing with a rock he has dug up from the ground to doing almost anything else.

Of course, the rock isn't really free. We have to pay property taxes to the county and the state in order to be able to hold onto the land we own so we can keep digging up rocks. But Brownie does not know this.

I get a real jolt of joy every time I spot a butterfly and can observe it close up.

I enjoy the sunsets, with their special sights and sounds.

You would think that a sunset, at least, would be free, but even that is not strictly true. To have an unobstructed view of the horizon line and to be able to listen to the crickets and the cicadas and the birds without engine noises costs money. It's the money that it takes to live far, far away from other people.

These are flowers growing by the side of the road, just on the other side of the fence that delimits my property. Aren't they pretty? A couple of days ago the county mowers came and plowed them under. They are no more. But I enjoy the memory.

 Limenitis Arthemis Astyanax.

Yesterday, I was finally able to film the red-spotted purple butterfly that can be found on my property. I have been seeing a lot of them everywhere, in the backyard or flying past the front porch or in the poison ivy that lines the lagoon, but up till now, none of them would sit still long enough for me to take a picture.

 Limenitis Arthemis Astyanax. taking off

This one would not sit still very long, either. As I approached for a better look, it took off and then flew very close to my face, before disappearing into the pasture.

 Limenitis Arthemis Astyanax.close to my face

Still, being able to get this close to the the red-spotted purple (aka Limentitis Arthemis Astyanax) makes me very happy.

I also enjoy observing those much tinier butterflies who turn from white to blue to white again.

They amaze me!

The rabbits on my property are so blasé about seeing me, they actually stop to scratch before they hop off.

I saw this little guy through my kitchen window as I was doing the dishes last night. Then when I went out to feed the kitten in the barn, he was still there.

That rabbit was so comfortable with my presence, that it stopped to scratch before taking evasive maneuvers. And guess what? The kitten was just around the corner of the house. It wondered what was taking me so long to get to the barn.

The best things in life are free, they say. Sure, they are free, after you finish paying for that freedom. Brownie, Leo and the kitten did not cost anything to acquire, but they cost a lot to keep. I often see these memes with a man, a woman and a child romping around on a beach. "The Best Things in Life Are Free" it says. "Oh, yeah?" I want to ask: "How much did that pretty wife (or sexy husband) set you back? How much money is that child costing you? How did you get to go to the beach?"

People have to save up before they can start a family. They need to put aside money for time to look at butterflies or talk with apes, too. Anytime you go after someone else's savings, you are attacking the simple things in life and making them definitely not free. If the price is too steep, all those things have to go.

Nothing that is worth having is free. It's a fact of life. But it should not cost you more than what it took to acquire and feed it. So the next time you go to the polls, vote for lower taxes, so that we don't have to pay for those free things over and over again, once we have gotten them. Real freedom is when you can stop paying for the right to keep what you already have.