Karl Brodecker raises some interesting thoughts in yesterday's FML. I think that politicians in general do what the voters want them to, and try to avoid controversy. Those that fail at this tend not to stay in office very long, and the 'best' ones are those that can take a complex subject and draw clear distictions, or take a controversial one and draw out points to build a consensus which will please the majority of their constituants over the long term. None that I have ever known of have been willing to advance a proposal without public support for it though. Thus to get anything done, whether is legalization of domestic ferrets, or a living care center for BFFs, it first has to have the support or at least the tacit approval of a majority of the constituants. Delays are build into the system to ensure that people become aware of proposed changes in the law, how it potentially effects them, and to have a chance to respond. A law passed without this political 'process' and permission giving doesn't have nearly the same level of public support of one that has been through it. Changing public opinion is really the hardest of all to do, probably because people in general have so much to do, and so much to worry about. Many things are just seen as true, or normal, and unworthy of further consideration. "Don't touch electricity!", "Don't play in the Street", "Beware of squirrels and other small animals, which will bite you and may spread disease, (particulary rabies)." "Be especially wary if a small animal seems friendly, and approaches a human because this is not 'normal'." Mental shortcuts such as these help us all get through the day without life becoming a hopeless jumble of unrelated facts. These rules are learned for most of us before speech, and thus they are based much more on emotion than they are on logic. Thus the problem. To reach most people at this level you have to first build a little trust and reduce fear. Then you want to introduce enough contradiction into their thoughts to give them cause to re think what they have learned. Finally you need to reinforce their new thinking by an example, or testimonial of another, and them reward them for their new thoughts and leave them feeling good about this new revelation. It is hard to do. Humor helps a lot, anger none at all, and in any event it can be a slow and frustrating process. Concerning the press, it has also been said that one of the reasons for some of the disatisfaction today is that there is too much unrelated information floating around. There are too many unrelated 'factoids' out there that people don't know what to do with and are left to draw their own conclusions. Far from needing just more unbiased reporting of facts, we are in fact, in much greater need of some analysis, some way to put some perspective on all this information. We need to have it debated, and have some tentative conclusions (bias?) drawn for us so that we can follow the reasoning and offer our own thoughts. Re the BFF discussion. There is a most interesting new (6/95) book out called "When Elephants Weep" by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson & Susan McCarthy [Delacorte Press], that adds quite a bit of perspective. They explain the very strong bias against 'anthropomorphism' or the attributing of human thoughts and emotions to non human animals, and then go on to describe many many examples from elephants to spiders that can really best be described only by the use of such concepts. They also show how 'human' emotions can also be described in terms of adaptation, efficiency, survival of the species, and such. All of this won't come as much of a surprise to those of us who play with and talk to our fuzzies every day; but it's nice to know that those who are accustomed to thinking of biology in terms of classification, cells, and chemistry may be coming around to this view as well. [Posted in FML issue 1227]