Last night while waiting to fall asleep, my mind was wandering again, and this time I was thinking about those ants I saw in a video:
I still marvel at the fact that the ants seem to have a common purpose in mind, an ultimate goal of colony survival that seems so much like... The most ideal and workable form of communism. Their way of life seems very similiar to us on some levels, but the fundamental difference is that they do not know the concept of self-gain.
If they did understand it, then perhaps decades of evolution has taught them that it simply isn't the way to survive, and the thought has abandoned itself. If they did fathom self-gain, then a whole new system would arise such as the ones we have; market systems, trading, personal posessions and the like. There would still be giant collective colonies, just like we have Londons, Washington DC's and Beijings. But the element of a seemingly combined and collective mind would perhaps be lost.
Thing is, when I was wondering this, it was interesting to note that to the ants, this absense of such a concept of self-gain to them was so commonly bound to us. If we weren't the smartest lifeforms in the universe, then very possibly, the smartest lifeforms have an even more diverse set of traits and characteristics that make their way of living much more different than ours too.
Simply the concept of self-gain brings to bear a whole new economic dependence system on everyone, changing the way we live and showing how communism simply does not work for us. (showing in comparison that it works very well for ants) But what if these higher beings I mentioned also were even more aware, and that their more diverse traits leads them to a whole new level of lifestyle? Perhaps even democracy does not work for them.
Being a whole lot smarter means that a person is much more aware of his surroundings. Ants don't ponder about their existence, about whether they feel the need to believe in an almighty, or about things like love or anger. Then what sort of things would a higher being go through on an everyday level compared to us?
No answer there, I tried thinking, but seeing where my theory leadsgoing by my theory of ants compared to humans, I shouldn't be able to figure such things out. That's probably about when I fell to sleep.
I don't get the opportunity to think up such things during the school term. Lack of sleep makes me slip into slumber much, much faster.
posted by joseph at 8:24 AM