Follow the movement of ants

Duration: about 30 minutes

Props: an anthill

Effect: reflective  

 

We've all done it, but it still works. To spend a bit of time observing a column of ants is thought-provoking. Attend to their dogged regularity. And note, even if you've done so a hundred times before, how they follow each other, pass each other, construct the regularly moving tread of their passage. Grasp the general design of their journeys, with their tiny individual variations and momentary turning back. Spot the weary heroisms and the implausible ferryings.

And then take up those banal reflections everyone has already made. Ask yourself how such a life is to be conceived. Ponder the idea of a biological community, of a society without language. Perplex yourself with imagining an unhuman city. Gulp in front of the depiction of an organism made up of a multiplicity of individuals.

Finally, try and imagine yourself as an ant. Pushing a breadcrumb, crossing a pebble, moving around a piece of broken glass. How do you know where you are going? What task you're meant to be accomplishing? Are you hungry? What does that mean? What are you thinking about? And what does that mean? What's it like - being an ant?

You know these questions have no answers. There do exist parallel worlds, opaque to each other, non-communicating, and we are really in error when we speak of a single universe. Planet Ant is not Human Earth. It's not included within it, hardly situated within it. You will conclude that the plurality of worlds exists under our nose, is always there, and we still don't really understand the first thing about it, the why and wherefore.

In short you will find that the ants provoke in us no new ideas, and certainly no interesting ones.

 

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This blog page finally got its 1st comment!! It's by .(fullstop) and it says 'You sucks', directed to my last entry.

Sometime I'm really amazed by the plurality of worlds that exist, even among us humans.

I've no need of comments by a punctuation mark, so I've deleted the comment. But I'm happy that at least something is reading my blog. Keep it up!