You’ve heard the phrase: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world.” People say it to normalize cruelty, to justify competition over compassion, but that line was twisted from the beginning.
The original Latin—Canis caninam non est—means:
“A dog does not eat the flesh of another dog.”
Even nature knew better. Even dogs, in their rawest instinct, don’t turn on their own. So why did humans distort that phrase into something brutal? This spoken word poem is a reclamation—a better metaphor for a better world. If we stopped rewarding domination and started listening to the rhythms of nature, the wisdom of balance, the truth of kindness, we might begin to build something different. The future doesn’t have to be a fight. It can be a dog-playing-with-other-dogs kind of world.
Dog-Eat-Dog Was a Lie
Let’s Build a Dog-Playing-With-Other-Dogs Kind of World
Imagine for a moment
if a “dog-eat-dog world”
might be outdated
and in need of a rebrand.
The dogs I know are pampered pooches,
dearly-loved fur-babies
eating human-grade food
and sleeping beside their humans
like high-level telepathic therapists—
mini-angels loving us, despite our inadequacies.
They don’t process us
like the machine does.
They don’t ask, “How can you be more productive?”
They remind us how to sit on a porch and do nothing—
how to let the trees and the birds calling out
remind us that even cities
are built on sacred lands.
The ghost of a wolf
might run full speed
through a busy intersection
if you open your eyes—
and stop calling visions crazy.
Call it trans-temporal vision—
the soul-oracle’s gift,
the sight of a clairvoyant beyond time.
All of time exists
right now, anyway.
So, if you heal the well of grief and pain right now…
could you heal all of time?
Can even one of us do it—
create peace inside ourselves?
Forgive everyone—
ourselves included—
from here to eternity and back?
To the moon,
around the stars.
and through a million galaxies?
Forgive like tornadoes,
tsunamis,
volcanoes?
Forget like floods,
like fire,
like sinkholes swallowing old unsolved crimes,
like avalanches erasing names?
Forgive like we are
the most powerful gods
we can imagine?
And the most loving?
Breathing a new way of being
into everyone!
And if we’re redesigning the world—
this time, you, as God,
could tell every man, woman, and child of all races
and nations that they are equally divine.
Tell everyone,
You are human,
spiritual,
and sacred.
Respect and boundaries—
are the new golden rules.
Every soul journey
deserves reverence.
But every soul must respect
the space of another… and do no harm.
This time, we know how to heal
mental illness and physical illness—
or at least love people
through the experience.
This time, we celebrate quiet kindness,
acts of service,
and wild joy that needs no reason.
We send love to the collective.
We insist on truth.
On abundance for all.
On liberty. On the experience of oneness.
On unshakable integrity.
Imagine, like John Lennon,
a world with no abuse.
No neglect.
No rape.
No torture.
No trafficking.
All that cruelty?
Banished. Over.
Kicked to the curb
by the evolution of love.
The human race is well-fed.
Everyone has a porch where they sit
and watch the sunrise, again and again
until merging with it peacefully
when their consciousness slips out of their bodies.
Even the stray dogs
aren’t on the streets eating each other.
They’re looking for scraps.
For kindness.
Even in forced fights,
dogs don’t eat each other.
That metaphor?
It is a horrible descriptor,
and it’s time we replace it.
Let’s turn the human race
into a race pointed in the direction
of greater evolution—
creativity, beauty, safety, peace, and prosperity.
A race rooted in harmony.
In wonder.
In beauty.
A dog-playing-with-other-dogs
kind of world.
Let every pup
and every person
have clean water.
Shelter.
A community that holds space for them.
Let us remember—
that we are all one.
That even “dog-eat-dog” was a lie.
The phrase came from Latin:
Canis caninam non est—
a dog does not eat
the flesh of another dog.
Nature isn’t cruel.
It’s precise.
An ecosystem without shame,
without blame,
without manipulation.
Let’s return
to the roots of kinship,
connection, honor,
and respect for both living and dying.
Tricia Barker 