Freedom within robust constraints
This is an entry from my journal.
The past ~2 months I have not written as many journal entries as usual. The time I would normally dedicate to journaling has been taken up by my two new puppies, Meelon and Oreeon. They are almost three months old now. At this age, they require a lot of attention. Their energy levels are high, as is their curiosity. Yet they lack the experience to do the right thing in most situations. It is why I must be around to guide them accordingly.
My style of upbringing is best described as āfreedom within robust constraintsā or āintervention as the last resortā. I let the puppies experiment with the world, including the option to learn about their limits the hard way. For example, Atlas is the top dog here: if they annoy him he will growl and bark back at them, but will otherwise be friendly towards them. I shall only intervene if there is danger, which has not happened yet. If it does happen though, I will be forceful and decisive.
Same principle for what happened last night. My goal was to incentivise the puppies to follow me in the dark a few metres away from the house. They were reluctant at first, until they figured the low-light environment is still the same place they already know and traverse each day. It took them a few minutes of hesitation until they found the courage to follow in my footsteps. This was their āaha!ā moment, of realising they have the capacity to just walk around during the night. I was patient the whole time and at no point did I force things to happen. Had they not followed me, I would simply return home with the intent of retrying some other time. This is the āfreedomā part of my method. The ārobust constraintsā is what they do not see, which is the fact that I have accounted for the safety of the place beforehand: I was only exposing them to a spot which I know is clear of vegetation, thus minimising the risks.
I am their guardian and have the requisite situational awareness. I set up for success and then remain in the background. Central to my leadership is the view that nobody is expendable. Actions are guided by foresight, such that threats are known and exposure to danger is kept at a minimum. This is about understanding the prevailing conditions and taking thoughtful decisions. The opposite is recklessness and its underlying irresponsibility. A common example with dogs is how they guard their food. The human must understand the inter-canine dynamics. If I make the mistake of giving Atlasā meal to the puppies, for example, then I am effectively asking Atlas to attack the small dogs, thus creating a major source of danger and unrest. This an entirely avoidable situation, when we act with foresight.
My role is not to teach the puppies outright, but to frame the learning which occurs naturally through experimentation. I have done the framework and let them operate therein. This is how I have understood life in general and my life in particular as a process of discovering what is latent in each form of life, without violating reasonable limits.
What applies to dogs holds true for humans as well. We too need leadership, in the form of understated and prescient guidance; of structures that increase the likelihood of our initiatives being benign and sustainable. In the absence of constraints, our capacity for action can become self-destructive and unreliable, for we have no warning signs of when to stop and thus of when we are operating at the margin of the untenable extreme.
In essence, boundaries are those snippets of knowledge that tell us something about the given state of affairs which allows us to estimate where the viable space is. We can think of it like my house, with its surrounding nature, at night: the puppies going beyond what they can see entails greater risk for them, given their inexperience, so the horizon of light delimits their boundary of the expected and the controllable. Knowledge has the same effect of delineating a notional space. Whatever possible deeds are then subject to a risk assessment.
In this regard, āimposing boundariesā is not about being authoritarian. To point out where the limits are does not require force. It can be done gently through instruction. I think of the resort to coercion as a sign of failure to act with foresight: it is a last-ditch attempt at salvaging the situation. If, in the case of my young dogs, I need to use force to protect them, then it means that I have already done mistakes in not anticipating the trouble: I was not thoughtful enough to account for the possible risks and to factor in all the data points pertinent to my resources. I thus expect that the person who relies on violence to manage their affairs and get a point across is one who lacks the wherewithal to commit to the long-term method of careful guidance through foresight.
A person will find out what their potential is through a continuous process of experimentation. Not to become the replica of another, but to produce an outcome that is at one level recognisable as a pattern in the given milieu and at another level remains specific to the case at hand. My knowledge of training dogs, for example, is not based on the experience of all possible dogs. I have simply discerned patterns in some dogs (and not only), which allow me to foresee the scenaria that might unfold. All I have is a starting point. The end result remains open-ended, for I cannot know the particularities of events that cumulatively form the dog in tandem with their own capacities and the feedback loops those engender.
The starting point is the given, as are the abstract features of some of the cases to be constituted. The specifics remain to be determined. When it comes to our lives, to how we organise our social experience, and how we estimate worthiness, we place too much importance on prefigured outcomes rather than appreciate the subtleties of the unexpected, the unfamiliar, and, perhaps, the unpopular or unconventional. Social expectations are a factor, where we try to guess what others will like and only try to deliver as much. Though we also do it to ourselves, through force of habit. Think back to each time you refused to try something new or even slightly different than what you are used to. Is it because you know the outcome is genuinely detrimental to your being? Or you have effectively developed tunnel vision by only seeing one result as benign and desirable?
Freedom within robust constraints means that we have a starting point, a general idea of what we wish to achieve, a comprehensive appreciation of the risks and of the sustainable pathways, and an understanding of the possible ways to go from what we have to what we want. The details will take shape through the process as it unfolds. Such is how I conduct myself and manage my affairs, with care and with a gentle touch that nevertheless retains the option of exerting force as a matter of last resort.