Being aware of consciousness

Anyone working with animals could have told them aeons ago. And did. But today, finally, the massed wisdom of science has acknowledged that animals have consciousness, just like man. Cross-species there always was a communication issue. But, people who have looked into the eye of the whale say that their lives somehow are changed. Indeed, anyone who has looked into the eye of a crocodile has felt a shift in the status quo. They have felt contact. I certainly did. To my amazement, meeting eyes with an old croc in the Northern Territory was a beautiful experience. It was a focused connection, a real hello. I was not expecting it. But I have changed my tune with those ancient reptiles.

Our relationship with cats and dogs, sheep and goats is based on mutual awareness and co-operation. It has been had to accept that the animals we kill for food have that astute conscious understanding of their fates. The smell of fear in the abattoirs. We shut off our knowledge to cope with the guilt - and the hunger. I am among those who has had a pet sheep, which followed one everywhere and recognised one years later when said sheep was retired to the country. There was no doubt about his consciousness. Then the two goats I milked each day in my farming years - smart, interesting, delightful and strongly bonding animals. Now the scientists have allowed us to go a step further and accept that octopus and squid are animals also with the mystery of consciousness. Perhaps even sense of self.

The dark mystery of the cleverness of cephalopods is their short-life span. But just look at the name. Cephalo means head foot. They are mobile brains. I have looked these creatures in the eye - and felt a connection. I also have eaten them. The emotions grow complex and the denial rises to protect one from the self-interest of comfort and survival - not to mention the decadent luxury and artistry of cuisine. I've witnessed hens dealing with threat. They are deemed pretty stupid animals against the Einstens of the parrot world. But they are intelligent and, damn it, clearly conscious. They establish relationships of love. Interspecies love. The scientists have put it down formally. Thank heavens. Here's the official edict.

Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in articular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition.

What difference these "findings" will make to the top dog arrogance of humans remains to be seen.

Perhaps science will evolve a way species can speak to each other. Perhaps they will move on to other things - for just imagine if the slaughterhouse sheep could speak forth.

Scientists with time and money to spare

Scientists have created a Hebrew bible the size of a grain of sugar.
Why?
Not only have they created this nano bible, they are now working on applications by which they may magnify it 10,000 times so people can look at it displayed on a wall.
Why?

Why shrink it just to enlarge it? Why not leave it the way it was?

Do scientists have nothing better to do?
Are the worlds ills all cured? Is peace achieved? Is the environment healthy?

And what if someone sneezes on the nano bible?

Downer with schools

"Why this interest in history? Why this wish to reawaken the past?"

This question was asked on Fox News this morning. Now, of all people, I of course know that journalists fare well to ask the seemingly stupid question. It forces subjects to explain and articulate and it avoids presumptions.

But this question is revelatory.
It explains something of the contemporary attitude towards history - of closing doors on it and moving relentlessly, mindlessly forward. History is barely taught in schools these days. Somewhere along the line it was decided the history was hard, it was dry, and students could be alienated if they had to remember dates.

It was one of the victims of the dumbing down of education.

There was a spelling test recently which was spectacularly failed by Australian teachers. Why? Because they don't read.

That is ironic in this time when text has been given vigorous rebirth on this medium.

One may blame the spoon-feeding of television for the declines in basic education.

But the real culprit is, of all things, education and gender equality.
Teaching no longer the only career for many intelligent women. They can do whatever they want - and they do. Given the choices, however, the brilliant women who once dominated school education now take careers in the subjects they once taught. They are historians rather than history teachers, mathematicians rather than maths teachers...

Cultural progress has resulted in cultural decline.

The evolution of creationism

Tara-Tara! Drumroll! Applause, applause.

A $27 million Creation Museum is opening in Kentucky - triumphantly demonising Darwinism with the "science of Genesis".
Recently we saw three Republican presidential candidates raise their hands to admit that they did not believe in evolution. Three out of ten. But, according to the Boston Sunday Globe, that is not representative of the country. The Globe asserts that fifty per cent of Americans believe that God created Adam and Eve just 6000 years ago - and the entire study of paleontology, geology, physics, biology and astronomy is meaningless to them.
This statistic chills my blood.
And, my mind reels at the leaps of logic that the creationist concept encompasses.
It's all about "faith". I recall my first husband urging me to join his religion by making "the leap in the dark" - which was faith. Blind belief.
I have never managed to make that "leap in the dark". I like the light. I am happy being illuminated by education.
This is not to say that I don't have a spiritual streak - for I have a deep sense of my place as a grain of sand in the vast organism which is our universe. I have profound love for life, nature and humanity - and believe passionately in the Dalai Lama's ethos of "compassion" as the core value for this life. Wonderment is no stranger to me. And yet, I cannot countenance the existence of a supreme being. If I were to do so, it would be with immense sorrow that any supreme being, intelligent designer, if you will, would, in fact, create so much cruelty and suffering. Why would an intelligent designer create disease and starvation, children in pain..?
Why would he/she give us an appendix or make the ageing process so degrading? Why would he/she make many religions and then make them divisive? And why would he/she create a complex paleontological record - just to test us?

It defies logic. To believe in all of this is not just a leap in the dark, it is a leap into a morass of denial. Which, of course, is the rub of religion - a prop humanity has required to cope with the concept of our transient existence in the chain of life.
Until the rise and rise of the combative creationists, I've been happy to respect the religions of others, seeing religion and ritual as an innate need.
But when we find a belief which seeks to crush science and human understanding, I recoil.
If they were to have their way, no more diseases would be cured and the earth would warm to environmental implosion. They would call it "God's Will".
They seem to have a pretty strong handle on God's Will. God wills whatever they choose. For some reason, enlightenment is not what they choose.

They have made the leap in the dark - and they are staying in the dark.