Your Dog May Be a Genius, But You're Just a Loser

People have strong reactions to those "My Kid is an Honor Student" bumper stickers-- to the point that there must be a fair market in retaliatory stickers. The most common of these is probably "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student," which is rude enough to be funny.

Wait a sec, though. What does this sticker really say about the people who use it-- or even those who laugh at it? It doesn't take much analysis-- the message is simply that its better to be able to pound the daylights out of someone than to even appear to do well in school, and that, by extension, the people who appear to do well in school deserve to be pounded.

Bill Cosby needs to give these people a lecture, no matter what colour they are.

I admit that those "Honor Student" stickers are kind of a joke, given what little it takes to be an honor student in a lot of schools. Even allowing for that, the very fact that the parents put these stickers on their cars suggests that they take some pride and interest in their child's education. Given the current state of education in the US, these people should be applauded.

Okay, this issue is old news, and all of these stickers have been around for more than a decade. I'm rehashing this because I saw a new variation on the anti-honor student theme on Friday that really, really got to me.

"My Golden Retriever is Smarter than Your Honor Student."

No, Rover is not. Even Rico the Border Collie is no match for an honor student deserving of the title, unless they're handing out bumper stickers at Tiny Tots these days. Your Golden Retriever may have a superb vocabulary, and possess a range of expression and emotion that makes him seem like a furry human, but your dog is a dog, and the intellectual whomp packed by a child of ten, or even five, outclasses your doggie easily.

Your dog can't write. Your dog can't read. Your dog can't use language as defined by Chomsky (he may he a jerk politically, but as a linguist he can't be laughed off). Your dog can't use formal logic, or even concrete logic. Your dog has no system of ethics, for that matter, and check your dog against the Kohlberg scale some time. A well-brought up ten year old should already be past the reward-punishment motivation for behaviour.

Speaking in relative terms, your dog is a moron. The average dog is arguably less intelligent than the average ape, dolphin, monkey, elephant, parrot/cockatoo, pig, and even octopus, in roughly descending order.

[Cats are intellectually below all of these, and also below corvids and squirrels, but that's a rant for another day].

I think dogs are a good deal more sophisticated than humans have historically given credit for, as are many animals, but claiming your dog is 'smarter' than somebody's school-aged kid isn't just rude, it's absurd.

[I would hazard some hypotheses about this individual being childfree and possibly despising children, but that would be an ad hominem. I am generally suspicious of people who worship Golden Retrievers, though. The breed tends to attract a particularly obnoxious strain of yuppie.]

The pig that died to make the pork I'm eating for my lunch was probably smarter than your dog. The molluscs that die to make tasty calamari, takoyaki, and camarone con pulpo are all as smart or smarter than your dog. How'd you like that on a bumper sticker?

"My lunch was smarter than your dog."

Maybe your dog is crackerjack mentally, sir/ma'am, but you're a sad, arrogant, ignorant loser.