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No, these rules exist so that everyone can have a safe space. Go find an off-leash area for your dog.

• mjburgess 3y ago
  I'd imagine the person walking his dog was making the area no less safe for anyone else. Maybe people might feel safer. The rule, in the abstract, can be given some plausible 'social good' defense -- many rules can, even the most insidious. No doubt, on extreme averages, dogs being on leashes marginally improves the on-average saftey. But this 'on-average' is a radical abstraction. What it says is that the dog's freedom, enjoyment, and that of their owner must be Brought Into Order to fit with a system of values which discounts that entirely. The sign is a symptom of this system of disciplining people; it conscripts them into a value system which may routinely be against their benefit and that of many others. The sign doesnt tell you this; the sign gives you no critical autonomy to engage with its system of values --- in the way a conversation would. That is how I diagnose this commenter's issue: his critical faculties are not being triggered. Rather the sign is seen transparently as a command to be followed. There are no Commands to be Followed. There are only people commanding, and following them is advised only if it is advised.
  • Podgajski 3y ago
    For some reason you don’t think of the sign as conversation. Why not? Our community has put up the sign and when I read that sign I engage in that conversation. Rules that are agreed on are not authoritarian unless we have no choice in changing them. Since we vote, we have a say on changing them. What you’re saying is, we should have no laws and do whatever we want. We should have no rules and do whatever we want. I’m an anarchist and I don’t even agree with that. I would feel the same about the dog off the lease whether the sign was there or not. Dogs can be dangerous animals and if I don’t know them, I should be afraid.
    • mjburgess 3y ago
      We can have signs and rules, and the rest of it. But we're talking about you wanting to go to the police to enforce one of them. If a sign is seen as a 'strong suggestion', as 'advisable' or a 'please do this' then there's no issue -- that's what signs are. But you didnt see the sign that way; and that's what i'm responding to. Your impulse was to bring the disciplinary arm of the state to bare to enforce someone's opinion of how a park should be run. This is quite the opposite of being critically engaged with the nature of signs
      • Podgajski 3y ago
        If the laws are not enforced, then people don’t obey the laws. That’s how you get both dog bites and white collar crime. Your assumption is that my “wanting to bring the disciplinary arm of the state“ is based on the rules, and not on my compassion. That’s where you’re wrong. I was using the rules of the state to enforce my compassion, not to enforce the rules. in this case, the rules aligned with my compassion. And in fact, I would not call police if I saw someone shoplifting. And that’s what people don’t understand about those of us with Asperger‘s. It is a sense of right and wrong not based on rules, but based on right and wrong.
        • mjburgess 3y ago
          My claim is that your compassion is being hijacked, not that you're blinding following an instruction. Compassion is one of the main emotional mechanisms of social discipline: it is the overbearing mother. Compassion is often the most vicious way of policing people, as its users takes themselves to be moral. The sign couldve been a poster of a dog off a leach running around with another dog, having a good time. That, I imagine, would likewise trigger a positive emotion in you. What i'm advocating for is more of a gap between the sign and the emotion. I dont think the sign would be as effective if it were a command read out by 'some average looking person' the sign here has a special quality in triggering an emotional response, because the usual moderating triggers are absent: those of the falibility of a person
          • Podgajski 3y ago