God is in the dice

Escher-NatureWe are part of nature, an animal like other animals, and our minds preserve that heritage.

I’m conscious of this every time that I’m startled by a grouse shaking the bush along my path when it erupts and I take an involuntary step backward, preparing to fight or run, once I determine what threat is coming my way. My rational mind knows it’s ridiculous, but I’m the product of thousands of ancestors who decided that sometimes it really is a lion, and it’s better to treat it that way, and laugh about it afterward. The ones who didn’t, after all, were sometimes wrong enough that they left no trace.

What do animals do? They observe. They watch the behavior of their mother and siblings, the way their herd, or pack, or flock treats its members. They watch their prey, if they are predators. And vice versa.

Humans, well, we watch everything. We’re fascinated by animals from our very earliest age. Not just our own family and tribe, but all animals. We can spend hours and days just watching them.

What do we learn when we watch animals? We learn, species by species and circumstance by circumstance, just what they are likely to do — depending on the season, the environment, the weather, their state of health, or lust, or maternity. We know they make their own choices, within circumscribed limits. We might not know why, exactly, but we know what — they’re like us, or they seem to be, even the alien ones like bugs. We learn how to predict what they will do. We are wired, I would say, to pay attention to animals this way, just as they pay attention to each other. They have agency, and we want to understand how they work.

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