Thursday, August 05, 2004

I was watching the german sparrows spar over scraps today outside Kaldi's, with one bird typically grabbing a large chunk of roll or a piece of bread from the bus tray. I didn't observe long enough to determine if there was some established "pecking" order, if the bird was perhaps just the designated hunter. But it dawned on me that regardless of whether or not there were assigned roles within an established pecking order, or sheer survival of the fittest (although I'll bet the really, really smart birds allow the posturing birds to fly out and bring the bread back, where they will be a weakened opponent, each and every time - I'd bet thought that every fortnight or so, a Conan level bird evolves, capable of bringing home the bread AND battling all of the rest of the birds for it.), the birds would do so much better long term as a species if they cooperatively hunted bread. You get four of those little sparrows together, well coordinated, and they could probably lift a panini of the plate of some unsuspecting diner. Pretty soon, they'd start making away with theological texts and med and law school books (probably some bad poetry journals as well) and form their own society of sentient sparrows. Soon being relative, of course. But I wonder how long it would take a species conciously motivated by the maxim of working for community good to evolve into a truly sentient class. That's probably some of what we collectively identify as what our ultimate commonality is - the one that does, despite our general genetic propensity for individual survival, move us towards seeing the whole of humanity as our organism, and eventually understands that as the universe. I wonder how long it will take for us. 8:40:44 PM