Large Fierce Mammal

“The rash assertion that ‘God made man in His own image’ is ticking like a time bomb at the foundations of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.” ~ The Light of Other Days, by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, 2000

Something I was taught as a child was that living things that aren’t human are “simpler” than we are. Less smart, less capable. Less deserving of life itself. Naturally, as a child, I lacked the understanding to know the true measure of this conceit, but I knew it didn’t make sense. You see, I spent many an hour lurking in a bit of pond and swamp land a 20 minute walk or 5 minute bike ride from my home where a multitude of creatures of wondrous variety lived, died, found mates and mated, were born, and either shared or competed for the available resources. I watched Dragon Flies intercept and catch other airborne insects with unerring accuracy even as their aquatic brethren voraciously shredded and devoured Sticklebacks and Green Frog tadpoles in flagrant disregard that the hunter was “simpler” than the prey.

On the bank, Frogs sniped high speed flying things from the air with incredible reflexive wing shots. Sure, they didn’t score every time, but for the most part they were as perfect in the success of their efforts as even the most lauded Human Hunter might be in his. Every bit as pure as the “Craftsman’s eye”, and grew sleek and fat from the profits of it.

On summer nights, Little Brown Bats strafed the Mosquitoes from around my head in high speed passes that disturbed my hair with nought but the briefest wind of their passing.

So I thought, how are they “simpler” than me? It seemed they had their jobs to do, and did those jobs far better and with less fuss among their colleagues and contemporaries than the people who worked with my parents and other adults in my circle. The ones who I often heard complained about as being shit at their jobs, notwithstanding that they somehow remained employed.

By the time I was in high school, I knew, and understood the worth of, a handful of exceptional people who lived by their skills and accumulated wisdom. I knew some REAL Working Dogs in the same way, and a Cat or three who were exceptional Mousers transcending others of their kind that also dwelt within my ken. I came to understand that the closer one got to being a part of the Human world, the less being “fit for purpose” mattered to survival, with predictable results.

The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke once postulated three “laws”, in the spirit of, if three were enough for Isaac Newton, that was good enough for him. Of the three, this is the third:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Now, while in the ways he applied it, this “law” was not originally postulated for my purposes today, I am going to beg the late Sir Arthur’s indulgence by applying it with a broader brush and offering this interpretation of my own:

Life, as perceived by “modern” Man, exists in a no man’s land between magics.

Consider:

The “magic” of the Internet, with all its potential as a reservoir of knowledge, and pinnacle of information exchange and communications technology, is almost exclusively the realm of the consumer instead of the creator, and where creativity is brought to bear, it’s usually for the purpose of selling something. In interpersonal communications and creation of “community”, it’s more often than not the province of the mean rather than the noble. And in all of this, the majority of participants have no idea how their gleaming oracles of connectivity work, or even why, beyond that there exists a contract with their chosen wizards that comfortingly assures “they’ll” keep the whole system running with minimal upset, as long as you keep paying their bill.

On the opposite extreme, while the Judeo-Christian concept of the Universe places Man at the top of all things second only to God, into “modern” society now creeps an inconvenient fact – that there is only one boat, everything is in it, and each morsel of Life, however “simple”, is there for a vital reason. Sure, Nature has some built in redundancies by way of intersecting evolutionary paths of disparate species crafted to serve a common purpose within their environment, and by that means, the removal of one can be filled by at least one of the others, but when circumstances converge to remove all servants of a niche, no matter how seemingly insignificant, the boat in its entirety is in jeopardy. All because “simple” things that it’s somebody else’s job to understand have stopped working, and there’s no melodically accented tech support voice we can call to talk us out of it.

Joan of Arcadia was a CBS television series that aired in Canada on CTV from September 2003 to April 2005. The primary character is a teenage girl named Joan Girardi who speaks with God and undertakes tasks He assigns, all in exchange for a boon. For brevity, you can read the details of the plot here. My point in mentioning the series is a scene in it where God, in the form of a teenage boy, is asked by Joan to prove who He is by performing a miracle. He immediately points to a Tree and says, “OK, there!”

Joan rolls her eyes and says, “That’s a Tree.”

God replies, “You make one.”

You make one indeed, and the lesson is to go forth and start creating, in however small a way you may find possible. Consumption is necessary, but move toward consuming with a purpose. Seek understanding of your environment free from the conceit of trivialization and dependence on “them” to keep the magic working. Belong to Life, because contrary to political hyperbole, NO individual lives matter. Nature is all about the Big Picture and the Long Haul, and Her extinct experiments are legion.

You’re much, MUCH simpler than Her.