Many persons, upon seeing the above title of this post, will instantly think of Eleanor Roosevelt or Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir or Madame Curie, all of whom are among many legitimate contenders for the title. However, for me, the honor goes to Ruth Benedict, the anthropologist, who did more than anyone else to propagate the notions that (1) each of us is entitled to his own opinion and (2) the values of cultures are “relative,” and it is futile, silly and wrong to criticize alien societies.

Benedict’s book, “The Patterns of Culture” is actually a sophisticated study of different cultures but it has become best known for promoting the cliché “Everything is relative.” I don’t recall whether she ever said precisely that since it is at least 57 years ago that I read it, but something like that is not too distant from whatever it is she did say. Her book has been translated into 14 languages and has influenced – one might almost say, “mesmerized” -generations of high school teachers and college professors through whom millions of students have swallowed her ideas hook, line and sinker.

I cannot begin to estimate the number of students I have had who, after going on for a minute or so on politics, ethics, or art, finished up with “Well, that’s just my opinion,” intending to leave the impression that stating one’s opinion is all anyone can do. Often, too, they announced “Everything is relative,” and, in my wiseguy style, I too often responded, “Especially your aunts and uncles.”

The fact is that opinions and facts do not occupy separate realms of discourse because opinions are not expressions of tastes or values but are statements about what one takes to be facts. Thus, if I say, “In my opinion, Nixon was the worst president we ever had,” I am not expressing my hostility for the man but stating what I think is a fact, admitting it is not a settled one but controversial. Nevertheless, it is either true or false, however hard to determine. In other words, opinions are about facts, and if there was no fact to be resolved, there would be no opinion to state.

Despite the efforts of philosophy teachers who, almost to a man, are united in believing Benedict was wrong, generations of people swear allegiance to the idea that we cannot rationally criticize other cultures and, by extension, we cannot criticize the opinions of those within our own society who have opinions different from our own. In a word, they hold that all ethical and aesthetic ideas are SUBJECTIVE. Fighting against this belief is a losing battle, even a lost cause. It is rather like trying to persuade people there is no God. With regard to the latter, I am told by too many people that rational arguments are pointless and ineffectual because one’s view about God’s existence is entirely formed on the basis of personal experiences shaped either by dramatic epiphanies (i.e. the result of moments of revelation) or the consequence of one’s upbringing and environment. (It appears that one’s teachers do not form a part of that upbringing.) I find this sad and I hope it is untrue. With respect to our ideas about values, I think it is untrue. I do believe Ruth Benedict has more than a fair share of the blame. When my students arrive on campus, they are already spouting the doctrines that all values are relative to the culture one lives in and all opinions about morals are expressions of personal feelings. I do not think these twin ideas can be the result of epiphanies or of childhood rearing. Indeed, as for the latter, students begin life by being clones of their parents and like to say they learned right from wrong from their parents and their wise old grammas. It is only after they reach highschool that they are introduced to notions of relativism and subjectivity. Curiously, they fall in love with these ideas while still hanging fast to the idea that their parents were infallible guides to right and wrong. They don’t usually feel the dissonance.

Benedict’s book was published in 1934 and was, I think, an instant cause célebre but for the past 60 years, its ideas seem too obvious to dispute. I can only bemoan this state of affairs. As with God’s existence, to disagree is to spit into the wind.

Movie buffs will know that I borrowed the above title from a book by Pauline Kael, the late and wonderful movie reviewer about whom even John Simon, America’s most caustic critic, has only praise. I am not, however, concerned with movies but with guns. After 20 years, during which I did exhaustive and exhausting research, I concluded that guns belong in every American household. I went through the massive, learned literature with a fine tooth-comb and came away with the belief that Gary Kleck and his colleagues had won the gun control debate. Today, as I write this, I am not so sure. Some background.

Who is Gary Kleck? Gary is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. He was the winner of the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology, for the book which made “the most outstanding contribution to criminology” in the preceding three years (for Point Blank). Gary is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Independent Action, Democrats 2000, and Common Cause, among other politically liberal organizations He is a lifelong registered Democrat, as well as a contributor to liberal Democratic candidates. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of, or contributor to, the National Rifle Association, Handgun Control, Inc. nor any other advocacy organization, nor has he received funding for research from any such organization.

Gary writes, “When I began my research on guns in 1976, like most academics, I was a believer in the “anti-gun” thesis, i.e. the idea that gun availability has a net positive effect on the frequency and/or seriousness of violent acts. It seemed then like self-evident common sense which hardly needed to be empirically tested. However, as a modest body of reliable evidence (and an enormous body of not-so-reliable evidence) accumulated, many of the most able specialists in this area shifted from the “anti-gun” position to a more skeptical stance, in which it was negatively argued that the best available evidence does not convincingly or consistently support the anti-gun position.” A bit later, he adds, “[Subsequent research] has caused me to move beyond even the skeptic position. I now believe that the best currently available evidence, imperfect though it is (and must always be), indicates that general gun availability has no measurable net positive effect on rates of homicide, suicide, robbery, assault, rape, or burglary in the U[nited] S[tates]. This is not the same as saying gun availability has no effects on violence–it has many effects on the likelihood of attack, injury, death, and crime completion, but these effects work in both violence-increasing and violence-decreasing directions, with the effects largely canceling out.” All that being said, Gary eventually plumps for the view that it is a good thing for ordinary citizens to have guns in their homes. Believe me, he is well aware – more than you are – of the anecdotes concerning horrible accidents and risks to children. Gary’s studies led him to conclude gun ownership does not affect total rates of violence (total homicide rate, total suicide rate, total robbery rate, etc.). Defensive gun use greatly exceeds the use of guns by criminals and is a major deterrent to violent crime.

About two years ago, I became acquainted with the work of David Hemenway. David is Gary’s most severe critic. David is a formidable foe. He is Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has a B.A. (1966) and Ph.D.(1974) from Harvard University in economics. He is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. He is also currently a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont. David has written over 130 articles and five books in the fields of economics and public health.

I wrote to David Hemenway and engaged him in a discussion of the gun issues. A genial chap, he was prepared to continue for as long as I wanted but I decided it would be best if I simply asked him for a good selection of his writings. He argues that Kleck has badly mangled the data and badly did statistical analysis. Maybe so. I am not qualified to express an opinion about research methodology and statistical analysis. You can write to David: David Hemenway, Ph.D. Department of Health Policy and Management,Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 and he will gladly send you several articles explaining his view and what is wrong with Kleck’s. I imagine he will be happy to e-mail back and forth with you, too. Alternatively, you can try the internet and look for something like “Hemenway on Kleck” or something like that.

In turn, you should read lots of Kleck but, at the very least, his slam bang reply to Hemenway. I hope this stuff fascinates you as it does me. Once you have read a good piece of the exchange, you will be at least as well-informed as I am, and I will welcome any communications from you. But, until then, I don’t want to hear from you. I hate things like, “Well, there was this kid down the block from where I live…” or “I read in the Ann Arbor News all about…”

About all anecdotes, I have this to say. “There is a simple way to state a negative with a double affirmative: Yeah, yeah.” And I happily take refuge in that.

Not many of us are good at managing our time. In thinking about this, I took a look at some internet articles on “wasting time” and the authors mainly listed trivial games that people play on their computers. I think they miss the point. The authors found most of the games trite, and so they downgraded time spent on those things. Granted that the games are trite, what of it? Supposed they played chess, GO, and other games demanding intelligence and great concentration. Would that mean they weren’t wasting their time? Games are not the stuff of life despite the brilliant defense of games as the only thing in life that has intrinsic value. [See Bernard Suits' ingenious defense of that view in his The Grasshopper, Games, Life and Utopia]. Suits argued that everything else we do in life other than playing is valuable only as a means to an end; games, alone, are an end in themselves. For example, what’s the point in being a physician? Presumably to make people well. And then what? What would you do if you were well? You’d probably play games. I am trivializing Suits’ very subtle analysis but that is pretty much the fundamental idea. I don’t want to take on Suits because I rather think that in an ideal world in which there were no problems, we might actually just sit around and do not much else but play games. Still, in the world as we find it, [what my students liked to call "the real world"], games are low in the scheme of worthwhile activities.

Although internet technology is loaded with tens of thousands of game programs, those frivolities exist for the sake of taking breathers from the real business of life As time has gone by, technological innovations have become less significant even as they have grown to be more wondrous.

I taught a course called “Philosophy and Technology” and asked my students to list the five greatest technological achievements. To my amazement, the most common item was cold fusion! I am still down for the count after that body blow. Everything else that appeared on their lists were developments of the last 70 years. For example, they like rocketry and antiballistic missiles. They were keen on “state-of-the-art” technology.

I suggested such items as the wheel, the hollowed-out log converted to a canoe, the move from gathering fruits that fall from tree to planting crops, turning stones into tools, and learning how to build fires ranked above cold fusion but to that they said, “Oh,that sort of thing.” I was not a “with it” sort of guy but an old fogey. In my annoyance, I went so far as to say modern medical technology wasn’t important. In fact, this is not terribly far from the truth since modern medical technology is driven largely by the thirst for profits. Incredibly expensive machinery is enlisted in the search for a new way to deal with exotic diseases or physical handicaps that have impact on no more than tens of thousands of people. Billions of dollars are poured into that enterprise whereas physicians would be more useful if they went into the public health fields. Handkerchiefs, malaria nets, sterile eating utensils and washed clothing could save the lives of many tens of millions of people. Clearly, the handkerchief and the facial tissue beat the piston-driven gadget that allows paraplegics to compete in their own special Olympics. The technology of the medical industry is largely a waste of time and money.

Once upon a time, people relied on their own resources for entertainment. Families gathered around a piano and one person played and the others sang songs. The victrola put an end to that and CDs ended the phonograph and have become a “necessity” in every home. TV sets without remote controls are as outmoded and unthinkable as fighting wars with bows and arrows. We are bathed in luxuries and we suppose that doing without them would be a waste of our precious time. “Let your fingers do the walking” applies to every facet of life, not just to telephone directories.

I am not preaching that technology is a bad thing. Even the Luddites did not think that. Much technology is deserving of praise. However, our ever-increasing reliance on the slightest advances of technology are making us less and less self-reliant and downright slothful. It is time , in fact, over-time, to stop worshipping the introduction of innovations that are consuming us and destroying our minds. Good heavens, kids can’t even play baseball today without aluminum bats.

Surveys show that people can’t imagine life without washing machines and air-conditioning. But these same surveys show that people don’t believe they are happier than people who lived prior to these contraptions. Technologies make us dependent on them but they don’t increase our happiness. In one important sense, nearly all technologies not directly involved in saving lives or making life bearable are time-wasters.

I used to read books; now, I “surf” the internet. This is definitely a retrograde move on my part. Who needs the Encyclopedia Britannica? In fact, the whole of that great work of erudition is contained on the internet. The funny thing is that, while I have downloaded it, I never consult it. I am too impatient. If I want to look up “Leo Durocher vs. Mel Ott as managers”, I have to go to the internet. It doesn’t even occur to me any longer that looking that up is stupid and a damned silly waste of my time. The distinction between good technology and time-wasting technology is so blurred that even to write about it has me wondering. Which side of the line does this post fall on? Time is valuable or, as those who make gobs of cash like to put it, “Time is money.” Now, I have to get on with it, whatever the “it” is, and have to end this post.

Al of us hear, from time to time, of extraordinary events that are certainly not true. We hear of them either from purported witnesses, people who have read about them or seen such events on TV shows or, worst of all, from people who perform them. We may, without further ado, immediately dismiss those who claim to perform them as liars. I will say no more about them. Those who know of such things only through TV shows dedicated to the supernatural may also be dismissed as gullible. What of the witnesses? They are a tougher breed to deal with.

My late friend, Marcello Truzzi and I spent hours, weeks and, finally, years discussing these matters. He was a co-founder along with the philosopher, Paul Kurtz, of a group called PSICOP that publishes a magazine named Skeptical Inquirer. He broke his alliance with Paul because PSICOP was, in his opinion, intellectually dishonest. It was formed, he thought, to investigate claims of the paranormal but eventually he realized that its sole mission was to debunk all claims of the paranormal. Marcello believed that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof but that they should not be thrown out prior to examination. As it happens, I am totally sympathetic with PSICOP. None of them deserve examination. For me, the issue is whether witnesses are liars or mistaken.

As I see it, the more extraordinary the claim, the stronger the evidence is that we are dealing with a liar. You can try to save these people by saying they are delusional, but I find that as extraordinary as the claims themselves. Suppose someone says he has witnessed the landing of an alien spaceship and saw little men come out and do various things, such as take humans aboard their ship. Nothing can better explain this than that he is a liar. Suppose someone says he went to the Loch Ness and saw a monster rise from the deep. He is a liar. You may say he suffers from a delusion but that is implausible.

Suppose a person witnessed a performance by Yuri Geller bending keys just by the power of his mind. If he believes Yuri did that, there is no reason to think he is lying. He has simply been tricked. Other cases are hard for me to get a grip on. People claim to have seen an abominable snowman, flying saucers five times larger than a full moon, or have attended seances with improbable visits from ghosts. They have seen religious icons crying. What should we make of these poor souls? I am of a generous disposition and give them the benefit of the doubt – they are mistaken but not liars.

This is a great intellectual quandary and I know many people who think I am mushy-headed. I resolve the matter to my own satisfaction by thinking, in the quasi-fashion of David Hume, that it is more extraordinary for most of them to be liars than to be mistaken. Is it a greater miracle that they are all liars or that they are all mistaken? For me, that they are all liars is more extraordinary and, to that end, I want proof that they are all liars. Of course, there is a halfway house. Some are liars and some are mistaken. But it is tough to recognize a liar and so I think we should dismiss that explanation unless we can establish for each case that the person is a liar.

CDC (Centers for Disease Control) reports that 40% of girls aged 15 through 19 have had sex at least once.

Hello? What’s that? 40%? It must be that 15, 16, and 17 year old girls are far more prevalent than 18 and 19 year olds. It must be that the researchers included too many girls who had not yet reached 15 years and 3 months of age. It must be that the researchers are not well trained in overcoming the reluctance of young girls to reveal their secrets. It must be that the researchers must have neglected to survey the more crowded, dangerous inner city residents.

Gendin’s informal but more accurate survey of college girls at Stony Brook where he once taught gave him a different estimate. How about 97%.? A Stony Brook girl once told him she knew somebody who was not a virgin. She told him this as something that amazed her. She probably didn’t know every 19-year old girl on campus so I am guessing there were others besides this amazing creature.

I told a hard-core empiricist that girls who were heavy smokers and drinkers at age 13 were very unlikely to be virgins by age 16 and he asked me how I knew. He didn’t see the connection. I told him I knew because I was alive and breathing on my own. He didn’t think that was good enough. I told him that girls who were members of street-tough gangs were unlikely to be virgins. He asked me what my evidence was. I again said I was alive and breathing. He said I am not much of a scientist. I told him that girls who were drug addicts were probably sexual active. He told me it was time for me to quit being a scientist by intuition and to stick to philosophy. So I have taken his advice and given up science. Therefore, 40% it is because CDC says so.

No one will deny, I suppose, that ants and cockroaches are much more intelligent than human beings. But I do hear from time to time anecdotes of human intelligence, none well-confirmed, that some people are pretty smart. I guess that Shakespeare, Galileo, da Vinci and about 40-50 more of that level of fame, are four times more brainy than the average Ph.D. in philosophy and even twice as smart as most street drug dealers, but exceptions like these don’t make out much of a case for the rest of the species.

 Certainly, if ants and roaches were six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, they would rule the world. What kind of existence would they allow us, if any at all? Would they examine us to see which of us knew the Nicene Creed? We wouldn’t be able to fool them, and those who turned out to have it memorized would be squashed as feeble-minded parasites on the food supply. Elephants and dolphins don’t know the Creed (I think), so they would be safe. Besides, even a six foot roach would not be comfortable in stormy ocean seas where dolphins could hide out. I don’t know about the elephants but they have never bothered roaches and would be given a reprieve for having only modest stupidity. Of course, when I say, elephants are stupid, I don’t mean human-level stupidity, and earth’s rulers might have compassion on them. Chimpanzees and other apes? A borderline case, for sure. I’m only guessing but I think the ants and roaches would take pity on these creatures, especially those who could sing the song, “I’m Chiquita banana and I come to say…” I, myself, like bananas, if I may be allowed to plead the case for survival.

 What about wild turkeys?   These have proved their mettle many times in the battle for survival. I like their chances when they go up before a review board of ants only. Ants like to feed on their carcasses and if the turkeys were all wiped out in one fell swoop, what would the ants do after that?

Now, the mighty shrew is an interesting case because it is said to have a brain quite large in relation to its mass and there is no doubt it is smarter than a human but does that fact mean the roaches and and ants would show it mercy in the Court of Infinite Justice? I hope not, because I am little envious of the shrew from whom I guess the word “shrewd” derives. I am envious because a shrew can eat as much food in terms of weight, in one day as it weighs. If I am not careful and walk past a Jewish delicatessen or Italian bakery, I gain five ounces. So, off with their heads and damn their brains.

Intelligence assessment is not an easy task, probably because we cannot find outside, impartial  judges.  Human beings, having not much better to do with their time, like to spend time figuring out which animals are smart and which aren’t. Humans always come out on top, and if ever there was a case of a stacked jury, this is it.    But, believe me, they ain’t nuttin’. Now, I am off to eat a banana.

Maybe it will make me smart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE

The difference between being addicted to something and being habituated to an activity is so clear that even psychiatrists and other addiction “experts” ought to know it.  But they don’t.  So let me pause in medias res to talk about it.  ["What res is that, Gendin?"   Well, the res of diary posting, maybe, or whatever else I have recently been running off my mouth about.]

Many years ago I wrote a long series of articles defending the use of steroids.  http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/gendin/philosophical-defense-of-steroid-use-02.htm.     In one of these articles, I explained the difference between habituation and addiction.  As I expected, it went unread except by a few juicers who did not really need my help.  [I myself was a juicer at one time and gave it up because I grew tired of the "ouch" effect.] Here is a very brief excerpt from my discussion of the dangers of steroid use. [The articles total about 70 pages.]

“A habit is a settled learned tendency to act in a certain way. “Habit” is a neutral term that does not give a clue as to whether the tendency is good or bad. Brushing one’s teeth is for most people habitual, and a good thing, too, but it is not an addiction. Whereas a habit is a settled disposition to behave a certain way, an addiction is a physical dependency to a substance. Furthermore, we never use the term “addiction” neutrally but to condemn, and this is how it should be.

“Bad habits are maintained because, although it isn’t clear to those who don’t have them, they are immensely pleasurable. In habits, unlike addictions, it is the doing, rather than some end result, that is the attraction. Cigarette smokers enjoy the inhaling, the very lighting of the cigarette, even drawing the cigarette out of the pack. All these are elements of the pleasurable habit. What is “craved” is the very doing, the smoking and not the nicotine. (Prior to 1819, nicotine was not known, so people could not have craved it yet they craved smoking.)

“Addictions are different. A person who injects heroin into his veins does this too infrequently to acquire a habit. He probably does this no more than once daily. Some addicts do it no more often than three or four times per week. The addict is not interested in the action of injection. He is after the experience the heroin delivers. If he could accomplish the same end-state by rubbing heroin into his skin that would satisfy him. If injecting were his goal he would take injections throughout the day even if he had nothing inside the syringe. I have never heard of a person who was habituated to injections. When we say heroin addicts “crave” heroin, we mean they crave the effects the heroin produces. When we say the heroin addict is addicted what we mean is that he is chemically dependent on heroin and suffers terribly if deprived of it. Physical agony is the nature of addiction, not habituation.

“Cigarette smokers rarely experience horrible withdrawal symptoms requiring hospitalization when they try to stop, but they do suffer considerable psychological distress. It is, surprising perhaps, how much harder it is to break a habit than to break from an addiction. An addict can be put into special surroundings to “dry out” and be made “clean”. This can be accomplished sometimes in only a week or two. If he is lucky, as few addicts are, and the environment to which he returns is very favorable to normal life, he will stay “off” drugs without battling cravings. The cigarette smoker who “goes clean” (say five years without a cigarette) may remain in danger of falling back and must ever be on guard. One puff and he may regress to his old ways. Alcohol use seems to be both habitual and addictive. In the early stages of withdrawal, the alcoholic suffers a great deal of physical torment. Much later – say, after five years – the addiction is gone but the habit still lurks in the background. The alcoholic faces temptation even then, and is always in danger of falling back. But the important point is that this is so because although the addiction is broken, the habit remains buried in those neural pathways.

“What the propagandists from the Department of Health and its allies tell us is that marijuana is a gateway to harder drugs. This claim is dishonest, not merely wrong. The propagandists claim that most persons who use the hard drugs begin with marijuana.  The claim may be true, but what of it? What needs to be proved for the “gateway” argument is that most persons who use marijuana recreationally end up using the hard drugs. Since everyone knows this is false, the “gateway” argument is dishonest. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration estimates that 19.4 million Americans occasionally use marijuana and perhaps 180,000 persons use heroin. One might as well say that buying an airline ticket is a gateway to death since nearly all people who die in airplane crashes bought air line tickets shortly before they died. Obviously the objection to buying airline tickets would have to depend on the “fact” (which it isn’t) that nearly all persons who buy airline tickets die in airplane crashes. Since the argument against the use of marijuana is exactly parallel to the argument against buying airline tickets we must conclude that the propagandists are dishonest, not merely wrong. They count on the fact that people will not notice the parallel. Indeed, many people do not.

“There is even less analogy between steroid use and heroin use. Steroids are not even mildly habituating. Typical steroid users “cycle” their steroids. For example, one might use one’s favorite steroid for three weeks and then “go off” for two weeks. No cigarette smoker or heroin addict can adopt such a routine. Steroid users sometimes find their source has “dried up,” in which case they simply are obliged to stop. End of story. No mad shakes, no terrible cramps, no bizarre hallucinatory episodes culminating in emergency room admissions, nothing other than some loss of muscular mass and a lot of psychological misery. If the user runs out of money he does not wait desperately in dark allies to attack rich, little old ladies  He is done. End of story.

“Typically, the steroid user may be injecting only once per week (it all depends on the particular steroid) and this can hardly qualify as a habit. There really is nothing to debate despite what “medical authorities” say to the contrary. If any “authority” says otherwise, ask him to compare the habituating or addicting properties of Deca-Durabolin with Anavar. Or how about Dianabol, Nolvadex, Equipoise, Cytomel, Anadrol®, Clomid, Halotestin, Cyclofenil, or any of another couple dozen steroids he has never heard of? Will he know which are taken orally, which via injection? Will he be able say how many times one can “abuse” this drug or that drug before acquiring a habit? In short, does he know anything? It is very unlikely he will know a fraction as much as several steroid “gurus” who willingly share their knowledge via Internet.”

So, the next time some blowhard tells you steroid use is bad news, ask him if he has read Gendin (thoroughly) and if he says, “Never heard of the guy,” tell him to blow his Virginia Slim up his Mama’s behind.  He don’t know nuttin’ about nuttin’.

I never realized it, I never gave them credit, I completely underestimated them, but I am now fully cognizant of the fact that ants have conscious lives.  (To a higher degree than my own.)   Things go bad or well for them, juat as they do for us.

About two weeks ago, I spotted a tiny black thing, perhaps an 1/8th inch long, quite motionless, on my granite countertop that surrounds my sink, that I took to be a dead ant.  I watched it for a minute or two and finally touched it lightly.   It sprung into action.  It raced off for safety and its reaction was so sudden that it frightened me and I did not rush in to deliver the coup de grace.  Today, I am glad for that lapse.   In the weeks since then I have taken to observing ants in my kitchen.  They are not plentiful – perhaps 6 or 7 – but enough for me to formulate a(n) hypothesis.  [Do you aspirate your "h" sounds? I graciously give you a choice.]

I never see them scurrying about as one might find them doing in a garden.   They are always taking a nap.  A couple of them sleep stretched out and a few of them prefer to curl up.  When they are curled up, it is hard to recognize them as ants but a feathery touch gives them away.   When ants are sleepy, they find hard surfaces on which to lay their weary heads down.   In gardens, ants like crowds but in kitchens they are loners.  Only when they are away from the madding crowd can they find the peace and quiet they love.  They are not really the hard workers we think they are.  At least, kitchen ants aren’t.

When ants sleep, they dream.  I am sure of that but I have not figured out what they dream about.  Perhaps to each his own.  Perhaps there is no such thing as the stereotypical ant dream.   Some have nightmares, I suppose.  They imagine red ants coming to devour them.  You can almost hear them wimpering the way dogs do when they dream.   Some probably have sexual fantasies in which the queen ant belongs to them and them alone.  Some wonder about the division of labor for which ants are famous.    My ants seem to be solitary fellows, banished, I think, from the community of ants.  Some live in dread of the spray that has carried off wandering chaps who, by means of too much commotion, have annoyed the giants who claim to be owners of the granite tops.

Apart from a good place to lie down and, once in awhile enjoy a small crumb, ants don’t expect or want much out of life.  They are apolitical creatures, and that is more than a bit annoying.   I may be wrong, of course.   Possibly, they run the broad spectrum of opinions just as we do.  The more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that ants who hang out in large colonies in gardens are of a different political bent than those who spend their days and nights sleeping on granite.  This is exactly what I should have always known but for some reason I was too dense to figure it out.

Of course, from Franz Kafka we all learned that cockroaches are really people, so why did we not expect as much from ants?  Has it something to do with size?   Probably not, because giraffes are very big and they are not people.   Naturally, giraffes are plenty smart but that doesn’t mean they are people.   Jelly fish can be very large but everyone knows they are not people.  Aphids have sworn enemies – little parasites that suck the life out of them and no doubt these vile brutes  are geniuses but you don’t have to be human to be a genius.  Consider Torquemada.

Now that I know ants have genuine lives – that is, they lead lives and are not merely alive like a cherry tree – I want to know how I should modify my own behavior so as to accommodate them.  Should I prepare breakfasts for them?  If so, what would they most like?  Can I knit tiny pillows for them?  I better not take on that task because an ant pillow would have to be so small it would defy mortal craftsmanship.   I have so much to learn, so much to discover, that my head is throbbing as if I am having a cluster headache.  And, good grief, what about about that cherry tree?   Is it possible that….?   Oh, no!  I must not let myself think about that.   For it was William Shakespeare, the great Notre Dame halfback whose stunning game-winning touchdown pass in the 1935 game against Ohio State  gave him immortality, who warned us that there are more things in heaven and earth than we can beer, bare, or bear.    Today, Bill is throwing rhymed couplets and touchdown passes in the sky but I owe to him my never-ending curiosity about the nature of things.

**************************

P.S. Bill died January 17, 1974 and in 1983 was posthumously named to the College Football Hall of Fame.  Later, he was inducted into the Hall of Entomology for, although he was never a practitioner, he inspired tens of thousands like me to Deep Thought.   In 1996, a statue of him was erected at Stratford-at-Avon.   Believe me when I say there is a striking lack of similarity between the Shakespeare of Notre Dame lore and the ridiculous statue.   The Shakespeare I adored knew something of entomolgy and the freak being honored at Stratford must be an imposter.

A very intriguing article in the current issue of NY Review of Books. Its title is “What babies know and we don’t” and it is a very serious, scholarly article.

Here is an excerpt: It’s possible that babies literally don’t see a difference between their own pain and the pain of others. Maybe babies want to end all suffering, no matter where it happens to be located. For them, pain is pain and joy is joy. Moral thinkers from Buddha to David Hume to Martin Buber have suggested that erasing the boundaries between yourself and others in this way can underpin morality. We know that children’s conception of a continuous separate self develops slowly in the first five years.

Worth at least skimming.  Perhaps worth a close read.

Here’s a link to the full article.

So you think aphids and cockroaches are among the scourges of the earth?   They’ve got their own reasons for despair – maybe a thousand times more than we pampered humans.

Consider the aphid that preys on our leaves. We think of it as the ultimate parasite but woe to you if in your next life you come back as one. It is about 1/4″ inch long and it is hounded day and night throughout its life cycle by aphidius matricariae. This sweetheart is half the size of the aphid. It lays its eggs inside the monster aphid and these little things proceed to consume the Big Guy from the inside out. The aphids don’t have a chance and they go down at a rate that makes a Haitian earthquake look benign.

While all this is happening, the cockroaches are running for cover. Inside their guts are single celled ciliates who are bent on showing us that the old saying that cockroaches will inherit the earth is just so much baloney. Ciliates are just stupid, brainless things but anybody who has ever lived in Brooklyn can testify to the genius of cockroaches. They know all kinds of tricks – how to hide, how to play dead, how to make good meals out of thrown-away ham and eggs. Cockroaches have courting rituals and the males battle to the death for the dubious privilege of winning the fair genitalia of a hot-looking female. Despite their Gould-given talent for survival, the ciliates get them all the time.

So next time Sid Gendin complains to you about his aches and pains just tell him he don’t know nuttin about misery and you have more important beings on which to shed compassion.
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The first of two responses is a clever take-off from the 17th century poem “Song to Celia” by Ben Jonson. It is by an anonymous author whose name I cannot retrieve.

……………To Cilia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a gene but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a code divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
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This second response is by a reader to whom I will give the pseudonym, Alphonso Goldberg.   It can be decoded if you have nothing better to do for the next four months.  [I also considered the name Alain Kimosabe, but feared that would add on two months ridiculous tracking down time or, contrarily, reduce the trackdown to 20 seconds.  ]   This destroyer of the Titanic will remain anonymous unless or until I am given permission to release his (or her) name.   For the sake of space and to spare the reader some insider observations, this response has been edited.  I call it, without permission:

Aphids and all that syncopation

I do hate aphids for their wanton destruction of my tomato plants, which I grow on my terrace. I once took a magnifying glass to one of them. He had a shaven head and was wearing a monocle. His face rang a bell. He was a dead ringer for Erich von Stroheim. I’ve tried everything to eradicate the suckers, including soapy water and ladybugs, their natural predators. No success. They even go into latency in the winter and, in the spring, they rise up like the undead, but with even more of a Prussian, authoritarian attitude. One of them said in a stage whisper, “Today the tomato plants, tomorrow the lettuce.” Once, as I left the terrace, I heard one of them mutter, “Kike!”

I picture aphidius matricariae as muscular, and wearing a teeny-weeny blue body suit with a red cape. But now I’m worried about the food chain going wild and the harmless little aphid-eating ladybugs getting slaughtered by the tiny killers they’ve inadvertently ingested……

As for cockroaches, I believe they were trained in Afghanistan and Yemen. The ciliates (CIA code) are Special Forces. Break out the magnifying glass and you’ll see that they’re wearing tiny black berets…..Here, on the liberal Upper West Side, cockroaches are not stepped on; they are read their Miranda Rights and held for trial because they’re American citizens. The German cockroaches, however, are considered enemy combatants and are sent to Gitmo, unless they are naturalized citizens or can produce a Honolulu birth certificate.