Ignored by Dogs, Laughed at by a Baby: Why Do Humans Close Themselves Off?

The other day, I made eye contact with a dog out for a walk.

It was staring straight at me, so without thinking, I smiled at it.

It completely ignored me.

On another day, I passed someone walking two dogs. One of them was staring at me, so this time I even waved.

Again, no reaction.

From the dog’s point of view, a strange middle-aged man had suddenly started grinning and waving at it, so perhaps its response was perfectly understandable.

Still, I found it a little disheartening.

I Can’t Help Making Funny Faces at Babies

Something similar happens with people.

At a shopping mall or on an escalator, a small child being held by a parent will sometimes stare straight at my face.

When that happens, I occasionally pull a funny face.

Sometimes the child bursts out laughing.

That makes me strangely happy.

But when you think about it, it is rather odd.

If the other person were an adult, I would never make a funny face just because our eyes met.

At worst, they might think I was some kind of creep.

Yet when the other party is a baby or a dog, I naturally let my guard down.

Why is that?

Perhaps Humans Are Wary of Malice

The answer that occurred to me was the question of whether the other party might bear us ill will.

Babies and dogs have feelings and intentions of their own. But at the very least, they do not judge others through the same complex calculations of personal gain and loss as adult humans do, nor do they deliberately deceive people in the same way.

That is why we can interact with them without feeling threatened.

Adult humans, on the other hand, are different.

Even if someone is smiling, it does not necessarily mean they genuinely like us. They may be plotting something, or they may be making fun of us.

I do not consciously think through all of that every time it happens, but when I make eye contact with an unfamiliar adult, I instinctively look away.

That is because I know the other person has the same kind of troublesome ego that I do.

As humans grow up, we learn to be wary of others—and at the same time, we ourselves become people others are wary of.

The seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes left us the phrase “the war of all against all.” The idea is that because we cannot know whether another person harbors malicious intent, we become wary of one another, and conflict arises.

Of course, when I make funny faces at babies, I am not trying to put such grand philosophy into practice. I can probably act silly without fear simply because I believe there is no malice on the other side.

And Somehow, This Turns into a Discussion About Poop

At this point, the subject suddenly becomes vulgar.

I feel that poop from babies or animals is not as disgusting as poop from an adult human.

Dog owners pick up their dogs’ poop during walks, and parents change their babies’ diapers every day.

But if someone told me to clean up after an adult stranger, I would want to run away as fast as I could.

If it were a baby’s poop, however, I think I would clean it up if asked, even while grumbling the whole time.

It is still human poop, so why is there such an enormous difference in how strongly we resist it?

From a hygiene standpoint, both are dirty. And yet when it comes from a baby, we can somehow forgive it.

Perhaps the limits of what we are willing to tolerate really do change depending on what kind of being we believe we are dealing with.

We see innocence in babies and approach adults with caution.

Apparently, that difference affects not only whether we smile at someone, but even whether we are willing to clean up their poop.

And that brings me back to the beginning.

Those dogs did not respond at all to either my smile or my wave.

I believed dogs had no malicious intent and opened myself up to them entirely on my own. But perhaps the dogs were the ones being wary of an unfamiliar human.

It seems Hobbes’s “war of all against all” may not be limited to relations among humans after all.

Then again, the dogs did not even seem interested in fighting. They simply ignored me.