Experiment Earth?

So many millions of eyes opening as dawn sweeps like a tsunami of light around the planet. Billions of eyes, trillions of eyes. Bird eyes, human eyes, cat eyes, dog eyes, fish eyes, crab eyes, lizard eyes, insect eyes. Blue eyes, green eyes, dark eyes, yellow eyes. Eyes that are round, that are slits, that are multiple, that are on the front of the head, on the sides of the head, on stalks. All opening and turning to welcome the light.

Flights of white ibises above the Everglades, the beauty of great blue herons against the glowing sky. Night creatures become still and silent and close their eyes to the sun as alligator eyes sense the new warmth and long tails slowly stir.

A small plane drones above my bedroom -- a flying man, eyes turned toward the brightening Atlantic twenty miles to the east. Porpoise eyes roll above the water’s surface near the beaches, pelicans glide in long formations above the snowy sand, sandpipers dance to and fro with the rhythm of the waves. Barnacles cling to pilings, oysters cling to rocks. A human delivers newspapers along my street. A mole tunnels just beneath the soil, raising a long mound in the grass, while a possum waddles back into the woods after its nocturnal rounds.

As I evoke the diversity of life, I’ve hardly begun. I’ve covered the first inch of a thousand miles. I haven’t even mentioned the plants. The insects alone are a universe of ingenious designs. Undersea life, from whales to microscopic, includes marvels that can hardly be imagined – fins, tentacles, pincers, claws, poisons, smokescreens, lights,camouflage, mimicry and more and more and more.

Life is everywhere, even in the most unlikely places -- icy or steaming or eternally dark – and everywhere it presents itself in fabulous variations. And each life is a point of view different from all the others.

Some time ago I asked myself questions: “Why are there so many different forms of life?” “And why are the forms so radically different that many seem to have nothing at all in common?” “Wouldn’t fish have sufficed?” “Wouldn’t just one kind of fish have sufficed?” “Why the multiplicity?”

One theory was that the Earth is a kind of spaceship whose purpose is to preserve life during a very long time, and the best insurance is to develop as many varied forms of life as possible in the hope that at least one will prove itself able to pull through.

But the answer that appealed to me the most is that life on Earth is an experiment. I even pictured cosmic-sized scientists in white coats looking down into a glass box, like an aquarium, to observe how their experiment was progressing. The experiment is a kind of game to make the maximum number of different life forms evolve from simple beginnings with the greatest possible variation -- the end goal being to see which form will be most successful in mastering or outlasting the others.

Of course I don’t know what the end goal is, if there is one, and it probably has higher aspects than what I’ve mentioned here, but the irony of the evolutionary process is that if there is a “last species standing” aspect to the experiment, a “who will be the survivor?” quest, then the winner is likely to be a simple creature of the kind which began the process, because all the life forms depend on those below for survival. Humans would like to think they will win because they are the smartest, but not only are they the most likely to make themselves extinct through war, but also they are so dependent on so many other life forms that they could not possibly end up the sole survivor on Earth. Sorry, intelligence, you lose.

I don’t know who will survive or for how long, but I hear the betting is heavy on the roaches.

(Photo, snail on gerbera, by Julia Lee)

Prison

This is one of those times when I can’t get away from the feeling that the earth is a prison, a place of torment. Even in my own nice American town the widespread anxiety, fear, sickness, pain and discomfort cry out for notice. One can’t avoid the sadness of loss. One can't avoid seeing the hospitals and animal shelters and funeral homes, the cemeteries, the blind and the hobbling people, the dead animals on the roads, the shoppers on electric carts breathing with tubes up their noses, the horribly twisted man on the oversized tricycle with his pitiful hoard of aluminum cans.

Because you are reading this on a computer you probably exist on one of the relatively few comfortable spots among the many more uncomfortable spots on the planet, but you are nevertheless aware of the hunger and deprivation, misery and torture and oppression which, though they may have become numb clichés to us, nevertheless dominate the lives of millions at this very moment.

Worse, nobody knows why this has happened or what is really going on. As if we’d been dragged out of our sleep in the middle of the night and dumped into a prison camp on unknown charges, we wonder why. What have we done to deserve this? What’s going to happen next? Is there any life beyond this prison? Who’s behind it all? Is there even anybody in charge?

We humans on Earth speculate and speculate and speculate about our state and fate, and we know no more now than the philosophers of ancient Greece and those before them who speculated about the same things. Well, we do seem to know more about the nature of matter and the Sun and Moon and stars, but that’s about it. Essentially, we know nothing. We go about in a daze, hoping we will wake up someday.

Now I hear someone who, advocating a more cheerful attitude, is pointing to the pretty flowers and the birth of babies -- but Devil’s Island had beautiful views, and a baby’s first day on Earth is its first day on death row. I don't like to sound negative, but I am beginning to experience the psychological advantages of facing the facts.

William Butler Yeats described himself as a soul attached to a dying animal. As I get older my body reminds me more and more of that even though I am thankfully in much better shape than many people my age. At least I and Yeats developed a sense of soul, of “a real me”. You may put it down to wishful thinking, but I am glad that I see myself in the almost humorous position of sailing a small boat while bits and pieces break off and fall into the water. . . rather than seeing myself as the boat.


An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress. . .

Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”