ARMY ANT PHILOSOPHY

One morning this week when the dogs and I returned from our dawn jog, the shed where the dogs' food was kept was swarming with army ants. Outside, the dogs were dancing and laughing in anticipation of being fed, but all I could do was let them watch in amazement as I returned to the hut without filling their bowls. They followed me, and as I ate my own meal, exhibited every expression that confused, disappointed dogs are capable of.

About an hour later the vast majority of the ants had marched on, but still a few stragglers remained. Either I could go for the dogfood and get some ant bites, or come back later. I went for the dogfood, unwilling to endure more dirty looks from the dogs.

Later, in the garden as I worked up soil for planting Cilantro, I thought about the army-ant strategy for living.

For one thing, since I've been reading a lot of history lately, it struck me that humans throughout our history, like army ants, have regularly joined together and gone about killing and destroying with little or no consideration for the rights, character or innocence of individual victims.

It's easy to see why such destructive behavior has been so popular with roving bands of humans throughout history: It's completely "natural" to do so. Everything evolves, including humanity, and all forms of evolution are a matter of certain things being replaced by other things. Sometimes things don't want to be replaced, so violence, even extermination, results. Among humans, sometimes it's one person replacing another, sometimes its a tribe or community, and sometimes vast civilizations. In every case, the army-ant strategy proves to be an efficient, effective way for one entity to replace another and, in Nature, efficient use of resources, and results count.

To me, the more interesting question about humanity's occasional army-ant behavior is, "Why would Nature on the one hand condone and consistently employ army-ant-like behavior, yet, on the other hand, evolve humans, many of whom, once they reflect on the matter, are repelled by the whole idea?

The only answer I can come up with that feels right is this: Nature, by which I mean the Universe with all its creations, is evolving from a purely physical, mechanistic, unfeeling state, toward a higher state of mentality and feelings.

In that context, here on Earth we humans manifest an early transitional stage, in which most of the time our behavior, thinking and feeling is controlled by genes evolved in the unfeeling physical world, yet some of us, some of the time, are capable of thoughts and feelings transcending the mandates of our genes. Humanity's priorities slowly are evolving away from the old snake-brain obsessions of sex, status and territory/ material wealth, toward something higher.

Of course, this whole question of the Universe evolving in a certain direction -- "end-directedness evolution of the Universe," as some call it -- makes most scientists queasy. End-directedness evolution is hard or impossible to prove. How do you design an experiment to confirm or deny it, an experiment that peers can conduct to see if they get the same results? If you can't do these things, then you're not scientific, I was taught.

Still, nowadays some well established scientists are thinking there may be something to the notion. Friend Eric in Mérida sent us a link to an article surveying the matter in The New Atlantis entitled "Evolution and the Purposes of Life." It's long, but worth reading, and free.