ANTS (and other dimensions)

”But they are ants!” was my son’s parting goodbye. I think we had been discussing semiotics. I had
been explaining how ants, being almost blind, converse by chemical puffs and sprays which they pick
up on receptors covering their bodies. Perfumed signals and seductive pheromones is all they can
know. A simplification, of course, but everything is. I was making a comparison to the human world of
impressions which we weave into the fabric of the reality that we wrap around ourselves. Its tempting
to conceive our sensory world as packages of information processed by our intelligence to initiate
action. A very airy thing, really, depending on language and consensus about meaning. (paragraph)
“But they are ants!” It had a ring of conviction that made me suspect a truth. I pondered the
implications through the week. Was he pointing to a flaw in the analogy? True, ants can’t see
themselves whereas we do. But that doesn’t invalidate the comparison for if an ant had the eyesight
of a human it would have to process what it saw through an ant brain. Similarly a blind person finds
his world only qualitatively different from the rest of us, if we are to believe what he says. So it wasn’t
that and I waited anxiously for the next Sunday B.B.Q. When I put it to him he agreed. What he had
meant was simply : (paragraph)) “But they are ants : they’re magnificent.” (paragraph) It’s true. Ants
have a contraptional beauty. They are jointed marvels with a mechanical elegance second to none.
Their beauty stands up well to close inspection through an electron microscope. They are solid as grit
and utterly ferocious in the defence of their tribal home. Their soldiers are peerless warriors who can
snap an enemy in half with a massive pincer. They carry their dead to ceremonial burial grounds and
are gentle in the care of underground creches of nursing young. They work tirelessly on prodigious
excavations and are good at building levee banks against flood. They carry monstrous loads that
should crush them. They send out raiding parties to plunder neighbouring cities. But they cannot
protect themselves against the pale parasitic ants, however feeble and spindly legged, which infiltrate
their underground metropolises simply by imitating the chemical markers of the host. (paragraph)
However alluring the pungent mists that go to make up its world the solid, segmented ant itself is
much more marvellous. Let’s pursue the analogy for an insight into our own nature. The reality that
we clothe ourselves in is woven from language, signs, value systems, media projections and the like.
It is as intangible as the ants’ though much more complex. By comparison then how much more
extraordinary and substantial must we be than them. But we cannot even imagine it. (paragraph) We
are able to see the beauty of the ant because we observe it from a godlike perspective of another, I
assume greater, reality. Sadly even the smartest ant is incapable of penetrating the aerosol vapours
to see itself as we see it. Likewise we cannot see ourselves. The beachcomber who gazing at the
imprint of the foot of Man Friday could deduce from it his weight and height, the colour of his eyes,
the hang of his loincloth, the worried crease across the brow of his wife on another island as she
waits for his return, cant deduce the source of his own intelligence. The magician who putting his ear
to the ground can distinguish from all the footsteps he can hear in the orient those of his apprentice
returning with the charmed amulet cannot divine the source of his own power. (paragraph) We
cannot infer our true form because being weavers of the cloth of our reality we are trapped by the
senses we use to thread it. (paragraph) **** (paragraph) Now here on the shore of Lake Gairdner,
whose dry salt surface stretches away northwards for a hundred kilometres I marvel at its expanse.
The crust looks like white ice and is up to fifty centimetres thick. It lays over a bed of viscous black
mud which never dries out. Suspended through the mud are perfect cubes of salt crystal. Where the
crust is thinner you can see through it enough to discern myriad dark patches stretching away to the
horizon. Each is a colony of ants. At the centre of every patch is a tiny hole in the crust either to let
the ants out or more probably to let air in. The ants live permanently in the ooze. What happens to
them when the lake floods is a mystery.”)