There’s a fantastic article in National Geographic this month about animal intelligence, which apparently is a pretty recent concept. Alex, an African Gray Parrot, knows that what’s the same between a green cup and a green key is their color and he knows that what’s different is their shape. Betsy, a Border Collie, knows 15 people by name and can link photographs with objects they represent. The male African Cichlid, a fish with a brain the size of a pea, will disguise itself as a female to steal food from another male’s territory. The Asian Elephant sees itself in a mirror and will touch a part of its head with its trunk when it sees a spot painted on it that doesn’t belong. The Ring-tailed Lemur can repeat arbitrary sequences and gets better each time, learning how to learn.
Does anyone else find it astoundingly arrogant that humans came up with the idea of intelligence, defined its characteristics and then proceeded to assign an abundance of it to ourselves and claim that other animals are merely responding to a series of instincts, not really thinking? Our brains are the biggest so we must be the smartest! We also decided that many of these dumb beasts also don’t experience fear and pain; a tragic miscalculation for most animals we come into contact with.
We’ve spent even less time wondering if plants have intelligence even though they literally transformed a ball of lava and toxic gas into a lush paradise, making it possible for all of us to live here. In fact, I’d say we’ve spent far more time and money looking for intelligence in outer space, on the desolate moon and the red hot Mars, than we have on our own planet.
I blame the Bible and its story of Eden that teaches people we are God’s special creatures and everything else is here for our exploitation. Again, isn’t it unbelievably arrogant to assert a single creation myth? Every civilization that’s ever lived has boasted one just as glorious and awe-inspiring, many not resembling the one in the Bible at all!
In a discussion with a friend yesterday about our religious upbringing – he’s Irish Catholic, I was raised an atheist – I told him that after years of exploration and experimentation, I decided that I believe in nature. Every living thing on this planet is made of DNA, a blueprint to create all living matter. We still know so little (and yet claim to know so much!) that we’ve deemed 80-90% of our own DNA as “junk.” Which means, in yet another arrogant move, that we don’t know what it does so it must not do anything. Also interesting is that some creatures that we consider far simpler are made up of a lot more DNA. (In their universe, they must think they’re smarter than us because they have more DNA).
That we all share this incredibly complex code is proof enough for me that we are all part of the same thing. There is overwhelming evidence that each living being’s presence and activity on this planet affects every other living being’s experience. We are not living ON this planet, we ARE this planet and this planet is all of us; it changes constantly and always has.
If we really are the most intelligent creatures, shouldn’t we be able to figure out a way to stop global warming? In fact, we should be able to at least agree that a) we have a considerable impact on this planet and everything on it and b) we have choices as to what that impact is. I don’t think the majority of people have accepted those things yet. If they believed in nature instead of God, maybe they would.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in one of my PopTech! lectures talks about what he calls "epistemic arrogance," which describes how we focus only on what we know and what we think we know and ignore everything else, which as it turns out, is most things. It's the reason that we are lousy as forecasting everything. Our world, our brains, even our own bodies are far too complex for us to fully comprehend.
In another really good PopTech! lecture by Dan Gilbert, he says we aren’t equipped mentally to deal with global warming. He says we have an enormous capacity for change and can mobilize against a common enemy with swift force. The problem in this situation is defining the common enemy.
These are his four reasons that we will fail to do so:
1) It doesn’t have a human face. We’re obsessed with humans; we see their faces in clouds and other abstract objects. Global warming isn’t human enough.
2) We aren’t morally repulsed by it. It’s bad, it’s yucky but it doesn’t literally make us sick the way abortion, torture, the death penalty, child abuse and gay marriage do to some. Those are hot issues for a reason.
3) We tend to think about the future but live in the present. We can't react to that is going to happen in the same way as what is happening now, like ducking when someone throws a baseball your head. We have the capacity to recognize future threats but still lack the brainpower to react to them.
4) We react to relative change and, ironically, environmental changes aren't happening fast enough. We have enough time to adjust and think that drying coral, trees, and animals are the way things are.
President Bush had all of those things on his side when he took us to war:
1) A human face – Osama bin Laden
2) Moral revulsion – “freedom haters,” people who oppress women, blow themselves up and train kids to be killers
3) Present threat – 9/11
4) Relative change – laws passed to tap our phones, get our library records, detain people without cause, long lines at the airport
This ties back into my earlier post about how we just need better marketing and PR for global warming. But first, I might have to start the church of nature and start proselytizing!
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