Big Things Living Within Small Places

If you have ever watched ants working to carry food away, you might have noticed that the colony seems to move as a single organism rather than just a bunch of arbitrary ants. You could argue that they are just working together for the same cause and that each member has its own volition, but just like with bees and other insects, it’s uncanny how they seem to move as one. Researchers have named these sorts of relationships within large colonies, “superorganisms.” The question I ask you is this: Is it reasonable to say that the colony, itself is sentient? Some may find this an appalling question, but I want you to consider this for a moment. A human being is very much a superorganism just as much as a colony of ants and we like to consider ourselves as sentient. We are composed of countless bacteria, cells, and other matter that we could consider living, but we don’t attribute any of them as having consciousness, let alone, their own volition. My argument is that if we don’t want to consider a colony of ants that all act in unison, as conscious, why should we consider ourselves as being exceptional? We are just a bunch of little things that make up a bigger thing, much like the ants making up the colony. What’s to say that each ant, or every bee, isn’t just one out of many moving parts of a greater being? What if we are just one out of several parts of an even greater being? Sure, it’s a shot in the dark, but what an interesting idea that would be.

Ants probably don’t know that they are a superorganism when they are united any more than the bacteria in our body is aware that they are a functional part of our human experience, because these are ideas that are larger than they are. The fact that these larger colonies are even identifiable is due to the fact that something larger than them are making that observation. From where we stand, we can clearly see that they are moving in synchrony and acting as if one, but from their perspectives, they are just following the order of the colony. Whether they have any self-awareness is beside the point. What’s important is the fact that our observations about them is beyond their comprehension. The way they are acting on a larger scale is literally too broad for them to be able to recognize it. They exist day to day completely oblivious to their individual contribution. Imagine for a moment what this could mean for us. What things are out there that are too broad for us to witness firsthand? What world is out there that we can’t see because of how small we are to it? Perhaps we are just in the center of something greater than ourselves and if we could step back and look at it, it might make sense, but just like the ants, we can’t, so it goes unnoticed.

We can’t know everything and we can’t base our understanding about our world solely around what we can observe, because as we just discussed, we can only see things on our own level and lower. We can’t see things that we are a part of, because that would require that we could observe them from a perspective greater than ours. Does such an observation exist? Perhaps, but even if there isn’t an observer, that isn’t to say the there isn’t anything to be observed. If an atom creates a cell, creates an organelle, creates an organism, creates a colony, what’s to say that’s where is ceases? If the perspective of an animal is greater that the components that makes it, what make us so certain that we hold the highest plane of understanding? What’s out there past our own eyes?

As we conclude this chapter, I want you to bear in mind something. Out of all the things out there that you think you know, there will always be something more that is beyond your current comprehension. To me, this means that even if something seems like an impossibility or an unavoidable pending disaster, don’t lose hope. There is a great possibility that you can’t see the solution simply because you are standing too close to the problem. We may never be able to stand back and observe humanity like we could an ant colony, but that’s not to say that we can’t take a couple steps backwards to gain a new perspective when the world around us appears as if it’s going awry. When there is a will, there is a way. Remember from the last post, nobody thought Manjhi could mow through a mountain, but that didn’t stop him from doing it.

Thanks for stopping by and take care!