Collective Seekers and Degrees of Freedom

For about a week every spring the sugar ants and I have a stand off. With the house going on the market next week, my heart sank to see a few of them wandering around on the counter. While a nuisance, I can see we are cut from the same cloth – foragers, lone seekers. I pulled out the Terro ant bait and laid a couple of packs with gooey gel out on the counter where they would be sure to find it. This season their preferred gateway seems to be around the back of the stove. Most years it’s around the sink.

I finished putting together this video around 2am. The house was chilly. As I trundled in my navy polar fleece robe to put my insulated tea mug in the dishwasher, I saw a thick line of teeny, tiny black bodies huddled around the bait. Stigmeric pheromones were at work. A few scout ants had blazed the trail, and now a miniature highway of busy bodies were doing what they do best. Thanks to Stephers’ work I’ve been talking about pheromones and swarm behavior for several years. Still, it’s fascinating to see it in action. Each ant an agent, participating in a complex dance to achieve a group goal in the most efficient way.

The ants don’t realize in their bustling collectivity, they are laying the groundwork for the end of their colony, one of many hidden civilizations that exist among the Lenten Rose and Hostas and under the brick pavers in the back garden. Their behavior is innate and reinforced by the culture into which they were born. The pest control industry knows these ants well and uses their instinct against them. I keep saying we don’t understand the weapons. Heck, I don’t think we even understand the nature of the engagement.

I am a humanities person who chafes at the imposition of the primacy of STEM that has ramped up over the past few decades. I love stories. I love culture. I love the amazing ways humans mold themselves to their environment and one another. When I was in middle school I had a big map on the wall of my bedroom with marks on the many places I wanted to see around the world. I imagined I was going to be an international correspondent. I chuckle now looking back. I have a few cross-border trips under my belt, and with the way passports are going, I expect to spend this final phase of my life not far from a new home. I’ll trade busy airports for quiet mountain streams and a garden and a pile of books. I’ll travel in my mind, perhaps get acquainted with my astral body equipment… It actually seems like a pretty good outcome all told.

In this video I am struggling with ideas of free will, conformity to groups, civilization, faith, and complex systems. It’s certainly not an original question, how many degrees of freedom do we actually have? Ants have an instinct to seek out sources of food for the colony, and yes there are times when after a very rainy week they will be washed out of their regular stomping grounds and end up in my kitchen. And, I am equipped to use their instinct against them. We see it playing out time and time again on the feed. People seeking camaraderie among the organized bits, but how often are they excitedly bringing back poison?

I spent much of my adult life researching civilization as a historic preservationist, a cultural geographer. Was I studying an insidious domestication of the spirit? Or an intricate unfolding of our divine purpose within a collective framework crystallized over countless soul journeys? I’m going to have to get comfortable with the not knowing; at least until I get to the other side.