While listening to Colin Cowherd on my way to work this morning, he began to discuss this time that he was mugged in Fresno. One of the listeners that called to comment about this story was a “criminal justice major”, who proceeded to launch into a “There are three kinds of people” monologue.
For those of you unfamiliar with the “three kinds of people”, the basic gist is that there are “sheep”, “sheepdogs”, and “wolves”. Wolves are the bad guys - they want to eat the sheep. Sheepdogs, meanwhile, protect the sheep from the wolves. Trouble is, sheepdogs look a lot, and behave a lot, like wolves - they’re both dogs, they’re both aggressive, and, to a sheep, they’re both scary. The result is that sheepdogs are never really appreciated by sheep - in fact, more often than not, the sheep will try to control the sheepdogs by putting limits on them to make them less scary. Unfortunately, this has the side-effect of making it more difficult for the sheepdogs to protect the sheep from the wolves. Following this analogy, the “wolves” are criminals, terrorists, and the like; “sheepdogs” are cops, the military, and others that put their lives on the line for us; “sheep”, meanwhile, is everybody else.
This analogy is one that I have seen and heard numerous times, usually uttered by Internet tough guys and mall ninjas. There is some truth to it, of course - there are many people that really can’t tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. People experiencing such confusion will say things like “insulting the mothers and sisters of prisoners is torture“, or that, if we just send all of our troops home and adopt an isolationist foreign policy, nobody will ever want to bother us again, despite years of evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, like most things in life, if we look too deeply at the methods involved to protect us, many people will take offense. In much the same way that letting food grow in cow dung is surprisingly healthy but a little gross if you think about it long enough, killing bad guys is a surprisingly effective, if morally “questionable”, way of dealing with people that would just as soon kill you.
Even so, the troubles with this metaphor are numerous and manifold, most of which being directly related with the conclusions that people that throw this metaphor around try to draw from it. By and large, someone coming up with this metaphor wants you to believe the following:
- Being a “sheep”, “sheepdog”, or “wolf” is innate and not something that can be conditioned.
- “Sheep” should listen to “sheepdogs” and let them do whatever they feel they need to do to protect the “flock” from the “wolves”.
The first conclusion is absolutely ridiculous. A person’s response to crisis is largely determined by their experience and training regarding that crisis. If somebody points a gun at me, for example, since I have no training or experience in such manners, it’s absolutely true that I will undoubtedly behave very “sheeplike”. Conversely, if somebody points a gun at, say, a Marine, they will respond differently. Those that overuse this metaphor will claim that’s because the Marine is a “sheepdog”. What they don’t realize is that the entire reason the Marine could behave like a “sheepdog” in the first place is because the Marine was trained in how to respond to the situation. The Marine actually has some familiarity and experience with having weapons pointed at him, whereas I do not. Conversely, if a Marine was faceed with a crisis that I actually have training and experience with (say, a broken server), the Marine may behave very “sheeplike”, whereas I’ll be able to calmly and cooly deal with the situation. Why? Because, unlike the Marine, I actually have training and experience with this situation.
Ah - now, I know what you’re thinking. A broken server is nothing compared to the risks that much of our military and our police forces (i.e. our “sheepdogs”) deal with on a daily basis. This is absolutely correct, so let’s try another unfamiliar situation for our Marine - we’ll make him a fighter pilot. If we take a Marine, one that is trained in ground combat and has received no pilot training, and throw him into, say, an F/A-18 or something similar and say, “Okay, defend our skies from the wolves!”, what is the Marine going to do? Chances are, our hypothetical Marine will behave very “sheeplike”, as well he should - he has no training or familiarity with the situation. If he’s able to start the plane - much less actually get it off the ground - before the enemy blows him up, it will be a small but pyrrhic victory. Conversely, if we take a fighter pilot and throw him into, say, a serious firefight on the ground, he probably won’t exhibit much “sheepdog-like” bravery himself, which is probably for the best. Frankly, if he tries to be “brave”, he’ll probably just end up putting himself and his unit in serious jeopardy since he lacks the training and experience necessary to know which risks are acceptable and which ones aren’t. Keep in mind that neither the fighter pilot nor the Marine are shying away from putting their lives on the line - they’re just going to be more willing to do so in situations that they have training and experience in because, in those situations, they’ll have enough familiarity to work past the initial panicky flight-or-fight emotions that any of us would experience in their place.
The second conclusion, however, is the most dangerous one. Another way of saying it is, “The ends justify the means,” which is one of the most dangerous philosophies to ever haunt man. “The ends justify the means” is how we ended up with the PATRIOT Act, the Drug War, and countless other assaults against our civil liberties, all because somebody said that they were a “sheepdog” and, if we just listened to them and gave them just a little bit of our freedom, they’d protect us from the big, bad “wolves”. Communism was an attempt by a group of so-called “sheepdogs” to protect the worker-”sheep” from the bourgeois “wolves” - all they had to do was simply do whatever the “sheepdogs” told them to do. That worked well for everyone involved, now didn’t it?
With appropriate training and familiarity, people can and will act with bravery, decency and competency. We do not need some self-appointed “sheepdog” on an ego trip telling us what to do, nor should we suffer fools who believe otherwise.