It can't be an original joke, but I just found the idea of a neurotic ant to be funny.
This coming after an evening at The Montshire Museum of Science (Norwich, VT) afforded an opportunity to watch ants in a perspex enclosure deftly mimicking the human condition. I guess what I find funny is the disparity between my interpretation of an ant as a relatively simple expression of a handful of impulses versus that of the complexity of human behavior. To imagine an organism guided by five directives being plagued by insecurity seems out of place - how can you get five directives wrong? Of course I know that ants are far more complex than that, but our cognitive dissonance allows us to dismiss that understanding so we can eradicate colonies without a second thought. They were in the bathroom, for crying out loud.
Title is from the Wallace Stevens poem, The Latest Freed Man, 1942, which has made an appearance before. The opening line: "Tired of the old descriptions of the world, / The latest freed man rose at six and sat / on the edge of his bed."
The sentiment ('everybody hates me') being an old description - certainly for myself, if not elemental among all beings, and one that is most definitely tiring.
The ant reminding me of the poem's 'ant of the self' which is transformed into an Ox, a metamorphosis I have yet to realize.
It can't be an original joke, but I just found the idea of a neurotic ant to be funny.
ReplyDeleteThis coming after an evening at The Montshire Museum of Science (Norwich, VT) afforded an opportunity to watch ants in a perspex enclosure deftly mimicking the human condition. I guess what I find funny is the disparity between my interpretation of an ant as a relatively simple expression of a handful of impulses versus that of the complexity of human behavior. To imagine an organism guided by five directives being plagued by insecurity seems out of place - how can you get five directives wrong? Of course I know that ants are far more complex than that, but our cognitive dissonance allows us to dismiss that understanding so we can eradicate colonies without a second thought. They were in the bathroom, for crying out loud.
Title is from the Wallace Stevens poem, The Latest Freed Man, 1942, which has made an appearance before. The opening line: "Tired of the old descriptions of the world, / The latest freed man rose at six and sat / on the edge of his bed."
The sentiment ('everybody hates me') being an old description - certainly for myself, if not elemental among all beings, and one that is most definitely tiring.
The ant reminding me of the poem's 'ant of the self' which is transformed into an Ox, a metamorphosis I have yet to realize.