Thursday 26 May 2011

I'm going to be more like an ant

Last night, I decided it would be a pretty good idea to sit down and watch some BBC documentaries. I chose Life in the Underbrush, a series of five or so episodes detailing the lives of insects featuring David Attenborough (not as an insect, unfortunately). While watching, I began to realize the pure, streamlined functionality that ant societies (in particular) are graced with in their day-to-day routine. Collecting food, guarding eggs and larvae, expanding their empire - it seems so complex to an individual who understands complexity, but for an ant; it's literally all in a day's work.

For such a small creature with such a tiny brain to work so efficiently in a socially hierarchical system without ever knowing kindness or the definition of cooperation is quite fascinating, and while I hold a fairly pessimistic (yet agnostic) view of the universe and it's creator, these supersocieties stink with the notion of intelligent design. While these notions may be easily thrown aside by evolutionary theory, the idea that the hive-mind of ant communities happened by chance still seems (to me) to be a tough pill to swallow. Frankly, it's fascinating.

So, why not be more like ants? Working in tandem with one another never experiencing the need for camaraderie to get shit done. Not being held back from cooperation by dislikes or preference. It's all such a simple concept that an astoundingly complex mind can never seem to fully grasp.


4 comments:

  1. but then you wouldn`t be human wouldn`t you? It`s the drive for superiority not survival and blind obedience got stuff moving forward for our species

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  2. you would just be a mindless drone it wouldnt be a good life at all

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  3. Ants really are incredible. I don't like hearing people saying they are like drones, wouldn't our behaviour look the same if you looked down on us from the scale that we look at ants from?
    I had a HUGE one in my house the other day, I'm sure it must have been a queen because it was enormous. I'm going to post a picture of it on my blog in the next few days/next week if you want to see it.

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  4. Yeah. Being a queen ant would be better than a worker ant.

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