Insects that form complex biosocial systems (ants, bees, wasps, termites) are a special object of scientific analysis. With them, there are practices on an instinctive level that man has "uploaded" to a social level, made them part of his way of life, and these practices (together, of course, with some others) have helped him become the King of planet Earth – among all the tens of thousands, why not hundreds of thousands, but perhaps millions of species that once and – or now inhabited the Earth.
I watched a science film about ants the other day. It featured a fire at one point – not far from the ant communities studied in the film.
These communities did not show much interest in what happened to the other communities of their own kind in the focus of the fire. They continued as bewitched, hypnotized, zombified, programmed to do what they were meant to do or simply turned into their own unstoppable and seemingly eternal movement.
In other words, they continued to live as if there was no fire nearby.
First, the fire destroyed the other communities of their kind. A little later they themselves died.
...
And I thought how much people in the West today resemble these ants...
05/08/2024
