I WANT TO LIVE!
I WANT TO LIVE!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html
I have for many years loved the writing of Natalie Angier, and this article is no exception. But aside from her ferociously delicious vocabulary and the slightly bent perspective she brings to her subject (bent in the sexual sense!), both of which i savour in this story, I post this because it demonstrates how the grand pronouncements intellectuals make about nature are conditioned by their ignorance of science, that the less you know about something the more certain your judgment is, particularly about language and intelligence. The chemistry of complex behaviour is more interesting to me than Freud or Lacan.
People who don’t have pets or don’t spend time among animals are often certain that they are reactive brutes ruled by their bellies, automatons of behaviour. Human perceptions of animal intelligence are mere projections and say more about human desires and even politics than they do about ‘nature’. Animals are nothing like humans after all. We may be despicable, but we have intellects and language and a sense of both time and mortality, and this sets us apart. Well, then it must be admitted, as the evidence filters through TV and wherever people go to fill their heads with crap, that perhaps apes can learn to use symbolic language (though many, including Daniel Dennett, the last I heard anyway, regard these simian lingonauts as mere Clever Hanses), that parrots can count, that snails can pass on information. There are the macaques of Japan, the snow-monkey Einstein. Elephants who paint. Komodo Dragons who are numerate and recognize individual zoo keepers. Dogs who mourn the dead. Cuttlefish who score high on animal IQ tests. Homeric whales and dolphin rapists. The fact is, the more scientists learn about animals and animal behaviour, the less difference they can discern between them and us. Consciousness is a continuum. Humans are more animal than we thought, and animals are more human than we thought. Humans have mating behaviours, animals think and plan and communicate. They are conscious. Yet there are people, of many and disparate persuasions (philosophers, linguists, literary theorists, englische majors, priests, engineers and god knows who all), who fundamentally reject the notion that there is anything animal about being a human. It lies at the heart of anti-evolutionary thinking, but also at the extreme edge of social constructivism.
But even if we admit animals to the continuum of consciousness, surely we can exclude plants? Surely plants are dumb brutes rooted in the earth living off the free sunshine? The last merry primitive communists, a few steps above inert matter? The vegetative soul has the quality of growth and response but not of animal sentience. Well, only if you know nothing about plants. As the article says, the brussel sprout, like Susan Hayward, wants to live!
Have a merry fucking christmas! Or holy fucking holiday!
