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| from chicken to egg & back again |
Intel - whether intelligent or not - is only one aspect of life: sure, it's crucial to our architecture & an example of what survival takes; like a defence membrane or the digestive tract. And even intelligent intel can be synthesized. Moog wasn't half a clever bastard, right? But it’s only logic, not magic. Life percolates into something more dynamic & ephemeral than boring owl data collection, storage & processing. The wizard ingredient, separating the quick from the dead, fact from fiction, is consciousness - or lack of it. Consciousness: your one-way ticket to the cosmos & pass for oblivion’s gate. Now, you synthesize true consciousness, Herr Doktor Musk, that would be something.
Maybe one day,
more progressive forms than ours will exist without combustion engines. God
knows what they’ll sport – half-rods of plutonium stuck up their fusion chambers,
or solar skin-jobs to recharge batteries,
frisking about in the daylight hours then cogitating all night. But whatever &
however smart the propulsion system, without consciousness - no matter the size
or beauty of them – without true consciousness, they’ll make less sense than a
shower of amoebas clubbing it in the primeval soup kitchen.
Yep, intelligence – in
the common sense - is a great collection or stored information. Intelligent intel can even select what’s worth garnering & what ain’t worth the candle. In most
circumstances, decision making’s only a matter of taking the most logical path.
Foresight, then, comes into play. And then again, it’s just a question of
processing information. You can’t base consciousness purely on reason.
Take chickens,
which anyone who’s kept will tell you are some of the dumbest creatures that
ever lived. They evolved in the backwoods of a large island on the edge of the
Indian Ocean, thriving without a significant predator, till humanity showed. After
which - apart from serving us with food - there was no reason for their
continued existence. Yet somehow the jungle they grew up in so completely matches
ours, they would be around for as long as eggs is eggs. And never mind
trying to puzzle out which came first, chickens keep springing back; no matter how
harsh the environment we, in our stupid, selfish cruelty, devise for them. Or
the efforts of the vegan police to abolish their existence. The birds go on fitting
in, that’s all. We’ll probably take them to Mars & beyond, eventually introducing
Andromedans to the magic of the egg.
For some
creatures, consciousness is there from Day One. Newborn ruminants, for inst, get
to their feet & within the hour are ready to move off with the herd. That’s
what it takes to make it as a lamb or a foal. And knowing who Mum is, of
course. Thinking outside the brain, parents & young stick together for
months or years in an emotional bond.
Imagine a couple
of bright robotic sparks attempting to scale the Matterhorn. When the going
gets tough, & sheer physical power no longer works - when they’re running
low on options for reaching the summit, logic tells them to call the whole
thing off & go back down. Or, at a pinch, one might cannibalize the other. Which?
Depends how they’re programmed. But those crazy lifeforms – us in this case –
take strength from each other’s company. We rally round & somehow find a
way to climb up. Or fall in the attempt. Is buddiness just another thing for
the so-called intelligent robots to learn? Who we gonna trust on that?
Or take kittens. They
won’t open their eyes for a week, during which their hungry owl Dad, or a
jealous female with young of her own to feed, would simply gobble them up. No
conscience, see. Consciousness takes many creatures no time to develop, unlike
humans. It’s years with us. In fact, we can say revelations occur right up till
the end - though the final years may see a dimming of awareness that mirrors
the growing curve. If the true end is so-called brain death, that locates
consciousness somewhere behind the eyes, ears or whichever organs of perception
haven’t caved. The corpse, meanwhile, still perfectly capable of life in all
other respects, is only rendered non-viable when consciousness has left the
building. Call it the spark of life, if you will. Sleep
tight.
And is there an
afterlife? Of course not. There’s just the pool of human consciousness to which
you contribute, be you a socially minded genius, a bored bore, or a demented axe murderer. And
to which the spark may return, if you want to think of it like that. The light
goes out, but its image may linger on for a greater or a lesser time. To some
extent, the Julius Caesars & Cleo Ptolemys of this life remain with us. Though
their perceptions ceased long ago, what we keep alive of them is a shared vision
of beauty or justice, courage, outrage or defiance, whatever turns us on (or
switches us off).
Consciousness springs - maybe subconsciously - from one generation to the next, across the centuries, even from one myth to another, like from Dido & Aeneas to Anthony & Cleopatra. Here we readmit the humble chicken back to the fold. Plain dumb ain’t all it seems.
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| Nobody's Bot! |
