An apocryphal story has it that Confucius once became separated from his students in a strange city. They were searching for him when a local informed them that he’d seen a man who appeared ‘crestfallen, like a homeless wandering dog’. This clue led them to their master. When they told Confucius how the man had described him, he agreed it was fitting.
This much-recited anecdote prompted the cultural-critic-turned-democracy-activist (and later Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) Liú Xiǎobō (1955–2017) to remark cynically: ‘Had he found a ruler to take him in, the stray dog would have become a guard dog.’
This excerpt from Linda Jaivin’s ‘The Shortest History of China‘ led me to Liu Xiaobo’s essay on the topic which in turn gave me this mental model to categorize society’s intellectuals:
- Stray Dogs: intellectuals who are independent, marginalized, or dissident.
- Guard Dogs: intellectuals who serve the state by defending its interests and policies.
- Lap Dogs: intellectuals who seek comfort, privilege, and favor by aligning themselves closely with those in power.
- Whipping Dogs: intellectuals who are punished or scapegoated by the state, specially when they become inconvenient or no longer useful.
- Running Dogs: intellectuals who are seen as collaborators with imperialists or foreign powers, acting against the interests of their own country.
For Xiaobo, “A stray dog that finds favor with no one and a guard dog prized by its master both are dogs.”
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