‘Tainment

A

Koloa stepped out from the trees.  The plaza before her was lighted by dozens of flickering torches.  Several small groups of people stood engaged in conversation in the late summer air, while a few individuals and couples ambled leisurely away towards darkened streets beyond.  She walked briskly across the plaza and headed for the wide stairs to her left.  Torchlight glistened off her long, dark pony tail, and several people glanced casually as she passed them.  At the base of the stairs she paused and stared for a moment at the facing wall of the fortress.  Torchlight created a flickering effect on the wall’s surface.  She blinked, and, in her mind’s eye saw a mound of broken rubble.  One day, she mused, these walls will be no more.

B

Nisha reached down and lifted the steak from where it had landed in the dirt, ignoring Paul’s apology.  He whacked it a couple of times against the side of his pants, and brought it to his mouth.  Keeping his eyes on Paul, Nisha pulled off a mouthful of the meat, chewed it noisily, and swallowed.

“That’s the problem with your kind,” he said in an even voice before pulling off his next bite.  He chewed, swallowed again.  “You base your lives on fear.  You think that protection from germs is going to make you live longer.  You take only the safe risks.”

He brought his gaze to the fire, and continued to chew the meat from the bone.

Paul, too, continued to eat.  He had a camping plate, fork and knife, and he cut the steak into bite-size pieces.  Flustered, he couldn’t decide what to say in response to Nisha’s criticism. 

Nisha finished off his steak first, pulling the last bits of meat from the bone with his teeth.  Then he threw his bone into the fire.

Nisha wiped his hands on his pants legs.  Then he stood, keeping his gaze fixed on the fire, where the bone crackled and smoked.

“Know this, Paul.  All risks are the same.  All lives are the same.”

He turned away from the campfire and climbed into his tent, leaving Paul to finish his meal alone.

C

When Andy got home he kicked off his shoes and padded into the kitchen.  He knew the cupboards were bare, so he opened the door to the broom closet.  Aside from two brooms, a sponge mop and a dustpan, the floor of the closet was cluttered with an array of cleansers in various bottles and jars.  It was dark in there.

Andy got down on one knee and reached inside with his right hand.  It should still be there.  Finally, his fingers made contact with the old jar in the back right corner.  He jiggled it.  It was filled with money.

D

Romina announced to the assembled crowd, “Next in our Open Mic, Tom will speak to us.”

Tom looked out at the faces.  “We often forget that we share—”

“—MIC CHECK!” somebody called out.  Tom took a breath.  He would have to raise his voice over the din of the traffic driving past the park.  He started over with greater vigor.

“We often forget that we share this world with a zillion other species. It's not just about the welfare of humans. We're on our way to 9 billion individuals, and it's the well-being of the biosphere that is at stake.”

He stopped and swept his arm about him, indicating the trees in the park.

“Nature speaks, but not in a human voice. We must learn nature's language and speak for nature. This goes far beyond appreciating nature's beauty. It's science and ecology, folks. It's limits to growth. It's computer models to anticipate the future effects of what we've been doing for the last 100 years.

“Ultimately, it's knowing ourselves, not just as ‘cultured humans’, but as a pieces of a complex, coexisting wholeness.”

Concluding, he shook his head sadly, then remembered to raise his volume.  “People aren't dumb. They just don't know. Learn now, or learn later.”

E

Floyd’s power pack was half-full of charge.  Using a thought-command he diverted all of the power to the toroidal energy lifters and leaned forward slightly.  Immediately he felt the familiar rush of air against his face as he skimmed along at 30 meters per second, half a meter off the ground.  He breathed a sigh of relief.  He would be back in the city in less than a quarter of an hour.

F

Butterfly fluttered among the garden plants.  Her antennae sought a particular chemical marker, and presently the signal was detected.  Since she had two antennae, she could locate the source by angling her body back and forth and tracing out a complicated three-dimensional path through the air.  Her muscles responded automatically to the different strengths of the chemical signal reported by each antenna.  Now she was headed straight toward it.  Only by landing would she know for sure.

She braked with her wings, and the stickers at the ends of her six legs wrapped around the twig-like branch.  She unfurled her proboscis and whipped it through the leafy tendrils.  Now she was sure.  Milkweed.

Her body sagged with exhaustion.  Her abdomen was full with semen.  Very soon she would begin to deposit her eggs.  Then would come her final sleep…

Nature’s Brains, Part 1

July 8, 2012

Bob Fiske

Nature’s Brains, Part 1

 "But the old crow comforted me, saying, 'If you only had brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them.  Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.'  After the crows had gone I thought this over and decided I would try hard to get some brains."
     -- The Scarecrow in: L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900

I have a little story to tell.  I went on a walk in the neighborhood I grew up in on a sunny morning in July, 2012.  This is a section of Los Angeles that is a little hilly.  Most of the houses have foundations that are above street level.  All of the streets curve both up and down and to the side.

I came around a curve and caught sight of a clear plastic bird feeder mounted on the outside of one house’s large living room window.  It was shaped like a little house with an opening in front and a sunken floor for holding the bird seed.  Its unusual position—in the middle of a large plate glass window—was what probably attracted my attention initially, but it took only a fraction of a second to notice the little, brown sparrow inside of it.  Standing sideways to my vantage point it leaned forward and down to peck at the supply of seeds.

I stopped, and so did the sparrow.  I did not want to disturb the bird, I wanted to watch it eat.  But the sparrow stood (sideways to my view) and waited.  It waited for me to walk by and away.  I did not.

This little bird stopped its eating because a large animal—a human being—came into view.  The large animal was close enough to pose a potential threat, and so the bird shifted to defensive behavior.

"Close enough".  That is noteworthy.  The house sat on a rise behind a retaining wall.  I was perhaps 15 feet from the front of the house.  Moreover, the base of the house was at least five feet above my eye level.  And the plastic bird feeder in the middle of the window was an additional eight feet above that.  So that little bird sat on a perch 18 feet above the ground on which I stood and 15 feet away.  Or (thanks to the Pythagorean theorem) there were a good 23 feet between my perch and the bird’s.

And, yet, that sparrow registered me as a threat.

Of greater interest to me was how the bird reacted to this threat.  It watched me.  Remember, a sparrow’s eyes are on the sides of its head.  This is generally true for prey animals.  So, standing sideways, it had a direct view of me.  It made tiny little movements up, down and side-to-side with its head.  This is an understandable response to threat.  Not only was it watching me, but it was scanning the environment, the better to assess if there might be other threats.  The better to assess possible escape routes.

I imagine that this sequence of behaviors—feed, detect, assess, and prepare for lifesaving flight—is a normal affair for a foraging, prey animal such as a sparrow.  Its brain is wired with strategies for preserving its existence.  More about that later.  Yet, I wanted to see if I could maintain a non-threatening status long enough that the bird would relax its threat response and return to eating.  So, I stopped.  I stood still.

I stood motionless, and the sparrow scanned with its little head movements.  I am a patient person.  I waited.  After nearly a minute the bird made a little forward-bobbing movement with its beak.  Just a little movement.  It wanted to return to eating.  But the parts of its brain responsible for the defensive scanning and preparation for flight overrode that impulse.

These impulses, feed, detect, assess and prepare for flight, seem to have independent existences in the brain.  Like a committee formed of department managers, they must come together and negotiate.  Who is going to dominate?  Who will take control of the bird’s behavior?  That all depends on the current conditions, of course.  If a potential threat appears, then the defensive managers win the negotiation.  If the threat fails to materialize, then the feeding manager garners more power in the negotiation.

I could see these internal negotiations taking place—from something as insignificant as a tiny forward-bobbing motion of the head.  I knew that I could affect the outcome of the negotiation simply by continuing to wait without moving.

Another 15 or 20 seconds.  Did I see another forward head movement?  Perhaps.  Now it was well over a minute since our encounter had begun.  There, definitely.  A forward head movement, followed by more scanning.  Another quarter of a minute.  A forward movement, this time more pronounced.  Not the actual eating of the bird seed on the feeder’s floor, but a clear indication that the impulse to feed had not been completely suppressed.

And so it went.  I believe that it was coming up on two minutes.  Finally I saw a deep bowing of the head.  The bird’s beak appeared to make contact with the seed.  Nervously the sparrow resumed its eye-scanning.  Then it tapped its beak back to the bird seed.  After a short pause it did that again.  And again.

I was rewarded by my frozen stance.  As I expected, I could outwait the nervous behavior produced by the little sparrow’s marvelous little brain.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 2

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environMENTAL 1

This morning, because the rain clouds seemed to be clearing, Nils took a squeegee to his car’s windows, carefully scraping away the drops of water.  He felt self-conscious as he did this, and he wondered if others would think him silly.  If someone were to remark that his behavior was pointless, that more rain was in the forecast, he decided that he would say proudly, “This is an optimistic act!”

Truth be told, Nils doesn’t feel much optimism these days.  He looks around and notices how woefully unaware most people are of the human impact on the earth.  There appears to be tremendous impetus to keep the current unsustainable lifestyle going.  Indeed, judging from our purchasing and transportation choices, the vast majority of people are voting for more, not less, of the rich lifestyle.

How can we do this?  Nils thinks it’s because of an unhealthy optimism that pervades our psyches.  We tell ourselves that everything will work out fine.  Everything will be OK.  We do the wrong thing and hold onto an irrational hope that nothing bad will happen.  And, when we look around and see everybody behaving the same way, that becomes—reasonable behavior.

Nils sees this as a form of storytelling.  Stories are a vital part of our mental landscape.  We consume them voraciously, in books, television, cinema, newspapers, blogs and magazines.  We have a need for stories that is so powerful that great industries have grown up that provide them for us, around the clock and at a moment’s notice.  People like stories for their drama, for the emotional rush, and especially for their happy endings.

There’s nothing really bad about picturing your life as a story.  Nils realizes that it’s more than a useful metaphor.  It’s an organizing scheme the brain uses to make sense of events and attach meaning to them.  It’s a built-in human need, and pursuing that need creates within us a sense of satisfaction.

If we use that need inappropriately, then our stories become fairy tales: sweet imaginings that charm and reassure children.  An addiction to stories that portray a false picture of the world is an expression of denial, a refusal to grow up, and a failure to take responsibility for our collective behavior.

If we continue to believe in the happy ending, then we will not avert the consequences of our actions.