https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynzcUw9wv0E
When Tiffany, Bonnie, and I were younger we were watching "A Bug's Life" one day, saw this scene, and nearly died laughing. We still quote it to this day.
Today in class, when we were talking about insects, it popped into my head. Insects have a lack of individuality and an inability to make conscious choices. When the leaf falls in front of the ant's path, he does not know how to go around or over the leaf. He is unable to make a decision because he is programmed to walk in a straight line and bring the food he is carrying to the food pile.
Although the Underground Man argues that being overly conscious is a disease, I think that not being able to make conscious decisions is worse. If we were just programmed to act one way and weren't able to respond to problems or make choices for ourself, like the ant in "A Bug's Life", life would be pretty boring and horrible. One of the things that make people great is our individuality, and if we were all programmed at birth to act the same, stay in a line, and bring our food to the food pile, we would loose all of what makes human-kind great.
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6 comments:
Yes Isabel. The ability to make a choice is something that gives us the ability to survive. If we were like the ant, and all had the same mind set, we would not be able to survive when the "leaf" falls into our path. If we were all the same we wouldn't have created and invented great things because we could not all possibly think a million good ideas. Individuality is what made the world we know today.
That awkward moment when you already did a blog post on ants and their communistic workplace... but I'm going to actually refute what you said now because I like to argue. Ants when confronting obstacles will oftentimes get baffled at first, sure. This is because as they travel to the nearest food source to procure food for their ant hill they follow a chemical path laid down by other ants. Imagine that you were in the work place and told explicitly to take an item, walk down the corridor, and place it in a red box. One day that hallway is completely blocked by something. What would you do? At first you would be a little baffled, then you'd start to look for an alternate route to get to your destination. This is exactly what ants do as well. They will probably be confused because hey, a giant being just placed this item that's approximately 20 times larger than I am in front of me. But then they will kinda stop and try to find a way around. In defense of the ant, they do have some individuality to an extent in that they have at least some problem solving capabilities. They simply don't have differing political viewpoints on how hive life should necessarily be structured, which has ultimately created a fairly communistic utilitarian society THAT WORKS. So to conclude, ants are much more efficient than people and hopefully one day we will learn to be as efficient as they are for the good of society as a whole - for as a society progresses, so too does the average person's life.
The whole ant conversation reminds me of Tereza's dream in Unbearable Lightness. Her greatest fear is the total loss of individuality. When Tomas claims to love her but continues to have affairs, she feels like he is lumping her together with the rest of his conquests.
It also reminds me of communist kitsch and the idea of universal emotion. I feel like the underground man rages just to rage and assert his individuality while at the same time wanting to be a part of the same world he rejects.
But then again, would insect societies be considered a Utopia? The idea of having a queen doesn't mean anything because El Dorado had a king and was still considered a Utopia. Ant societies really don't have any crimes or poverty or anything like that. However, do they have fun while doing their work? Do they enjoy themselves? Are they making a choice to do work or are they following instinct? In that case, aren't they just robots. Human's have free will. We aren't the only animals with free will, but bugs for sure do not. They don't choose to become butterflies it just happens. This poses the question, if we really wanted to eliminate crime, poverty, war, ect... would we give up free will? Is it worth it?
Taking Alex's comment into account, I would also like to defend the ants, or rather a specific ant. Like Alex said, the ants will be confused at first but then try to find away around an obstacle, however, the ants do not begin to follow this new path until one pioneer ant, lets call him George, takes the path first. You see, ants do not have the mental capability to remember a specific trail, but the can recognize the chemical trail left by other ants in their colony. So George, the OG ant, who first leaves this chemical trail, is who I am praising, not the other, follower ants. Furthermore, this idea directly relates to the general view of philosophers and thinkers, who will propose something new for the rest of the people in their community to follow and further think upon. To sum everything up, George rocks and the other ants do not.
I think that definitely an ant or insect is not able to make decisions, and I believe that their inability to make decisions and to have free will is because of their lack of emotion. I think emotional responses to an obstacle prohibits an ant or an emotionless human from being able to overcome a problem and therefore survive. I think that this is the underground man's problem that we observed through his human interactions; he is unable to emotionally connect with anyone. For this reason, he can be considered an ant or a piano key, an object that functions but cannot make choices to overcome obstacles because of a lack of emotion.
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