The Ant and The Angel

The ant trap by my window contains a poisonous liquid which the ants misinterpret as food. When I look to the left can I see ants marching confidently out to their death. What does that feel like? Does the ant suffer? Does he feel agony in his throat as he suffocates? Or he is a machine - devoid of feeling like a car or a microwave. Most people hope that it’s that latter, but I doubt it. I assume that his suffering feels similar to my own. But he really does act like a machine, doesn’t he? Procedurally walking towards the poison because of some inscrutable policy function which maps the liquid-smell to the eating-behavior. He’s just like a river, or an avalanche - the movement of nature based on its underlying laws. In fact, one can view Nature, herself, as a superorganism, of which we are all micro-organs. The river, the avalanche, and the ant are subsumed by Nature’s “body” in the same way that three arbitrary skin cells on my arm are subsumed by my body. But now the ant’s suffering is quite odd, because we assume the river and the avalanche do not suffer. The ant is somehow enchanted with a divine substance called “experience”. Why exactly? Simply because the particles which constitute the ant’s body are arranged in a special pattern called a “brain”? It is as if an Angel gazes out over all of nature, selects certain subregions that have a beautiful enough pattern, and blesses them with a soul.

Nature then becomes a very strange kind of machine. Let’s visualize this. Consider a color spectrum going from red to blue with black in the middle. Red represents suffering, blue represents pleasure. We will create a utilitarian-coloring of Nature. The subregions of matter which are associated with suffering (the dying ants for example) will be colored red - a deeper color for deeper suffering. Likewise, the pleasurable subregions of nature (sex, eating etc) will be colored blue. All the “dead” regions (the rivers and avalanches) will be colored black. Nature now becomes a terrifying artform. Imagine the dance of colors as a bear hunts a deer.

The hope of mankind is that one day everything will turn blue. And our greatest fear is that some horrible mistake will permanently paint everything deep red. Let us hope that the Angel has a plan. And let us pray that She is not secretly a devil.