NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
We walk out across Miletus Marsh Park on a boardwalk, in the last moments of brilliant evening sunlight. We can hear redwing blackbirds call as they fly past and settle among the cattails. Further along we see a pool through an opening in the reeds. A snapping turtle surfaces to catch its breath in a sudden splashing sound.
“Look at that pile of logs and twigs up ahead, Bel.”
“Yes it seems like a random collection of detritus, yet the beavers have deliberately placed each one.”
“Millions of years of evolution have brought us engineers …”
“… and Fred, it’s hard to see how the thing works! I mean why should all that mud and those sticks and logs hold together?”
“Why indeed. It is nothing like a human structure where the logic is often obvious.”
“Look, for instance, at those screws or fasteners in these boards … what are they Fred?”
“Look like screws to me Bel.”
“Anyway, you see what I mean … neat rows holding the boards to the cross beams underneath.”
“You know beaver have returned to the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, and they are recreating the old marshes.”
“There was something on PBS about that. We missed it taking Lambert out in the dark.”
“Yes, that’s where I found out, a good deal of the Marsh around the Pripyat River was drained.”
A group has gathered up ahead, looking over the other side of the boardwalk, and we join them. There’s an open channel through the cattails about a yard wide, leading to a large expanse of mudflats beyond.
“See those weeds moving towards us there, Fred?”
Bel speaks quietly, as if we are in a library. It is quiet immediately around us, even though the air is full of sound, most of it seems to be distant.
“It’s one of the ‘engineers’!”
“Engineers of Eden.”
“Or is it a muskrat?”
“No Fred, look at the broad tail and here’s the dam. Look, it extends up onto the boardwalk.”
Bel pushes one of the branches in our path to one side with the sole of her Snaz ‘Wing Foot’ walking shoe. The logo on the side of her shoe, shows the dark brown silhouette of a swallow in flight against an orange disk.
“Extraordinary how they seem to understand the lie of the land and build their dam accordingly.”
“Instinct Bel”
“Imagine trying to write them a manual!”
“A sort of Dams for Dummies you mean?”
“These are no dummies.”
“What do beavers know anyway, Bel?”
“The philosopher Wittgenstein insists that you don’t know something unless you can say it.”
“These critters aren’t about to discuss it with us!”
“No Fred, how could any one speak with that much fibrous weed in his mouth?”
“What more concrete evidence of knowledge at work could there be than that dam?”
“As you said Fred, they work out of instinct.”
“Well, isn’t that a kind of knowledge?”
“Instinct is something they are born with, knowledge is acquired.”
“Suppose beavers learn their engineering by imitation Bel, I mean from their parents?”
“I don’t know if they do or not, but even if they do they can’t tell Wittgenstein about it.”
“No he’s dead, but I would like them to explain a thing or two!”
“So would I Fred.”
“Learning by doing. That’s the most practical kind of knowledge … quite natural to hard workers like these.”
“Even if they learn by imitation I still don’t think it’s knowledge Fred.”
“Hard wired for dam building you mean. While we, with claims to knowledge, seem to have little instinct.
“Fred, we have to bear the burden of working everything out … ”
“Once Eve took a bite out of the apple Bel, we were lumbered!”
“Many of the fruits of knowledge have proven to be indigestible!”
“What do you have in mind Bell? … the difficulties of self reflection and conscience?”
“Yes, and most of all, the difficulties of growing up without instinct. That is to say out of Eden”
“You know that’s Otto Rank’s point, Bel.”
“Is it? I don’t know Otto.”
“Yes he thinks we all suffer a deep fear of death and of life.”
“Fear of life?”
“That’s it Bel … he is saying that there is too much for us ‘to work out’, so to speak.”
“Too true Fred, there’s more knowledge available now, well more data at least, than any one person can ever get to.”
“Otto’s point is different. He’s talking about childhood Bel, saying we are emotionally overwhelmed by life early on …”
“… and that accounts for our fear of life?”
“Yes as I understand him Bel … he thinks that’s when people build up their defenses as it were, delude themselves, fail to see important implications … avoid difficult questions and so on.”
“In other words Fred, the deep stuff gets buried deeper.”
“What ever the ‘deep stuff ‘ is!”
“I am thinking of all the ‘fall out’ so to speak, of one’s childhood weaknesses … the ‘questions avoided’ etc. you just mentioned.”
“So we are swamped by everyday life because the boat’s not built right!”
“That’s it … we kids are such poor boat-rights!”
“So much energy goes into storms”
“Emotional reaction you mean?”
“Yes, I think one gets swamped by that at times, and then one loses perspective …”
“ … and Bel that energy is needed for boat building!”
“ … AND, perspective gets scary!”
“Fred, one doesn’t meet many people interested in discussions like this … ”
“ … trying to ‘work something out’ you mean?”
“ … and we take a big risk Fred.”
“What risk? You mean of getting it wrong?”
“Well, yes, but also risk getting into trouble with each other!”
“… Oh the risk of getting carried away … of words giving way to violence you mean Bel!”
“Yes, have you ever been in conversation with some one who suddenly gets angry or upset, and there’s no obvious reason for it?”
“Bel that happens … and I never know what to say.”
“There you are.”
“There what is?”
“You hit on something they haven’t ‘worked out’, which leaves them sort of, ‘spring loaded’ with emotional reaction.”
“Well, the risk you pointed out also applies to one’s self doesn’t it?”
“But of course …”
“So much of history seems to be a violent story of killing and conquest. The Greeks were in it for glory and the Romans for empire.”
“Not unlike like us Fred.”
“We do seem to have followed the classical model.”
“Conquest is a pre-classical model really!”
“Yes, too true.”
“The victors like to write about their victories.”
“There’s glory to be had there too … ”
“ … and writing it down preserves it, embroidered, for you and me Bel.”
“Don’t you find it ironic Fred, that Christian tradition which preserved the teachings of Jesus, in spite of the Romans, has over time divided into warring denominations?”
“The very thing that preserved the teachings betrayed them.”
“Like the very thing that preserves us, as Otto has it.”
“Bel, we can’t work it out …”
“No, not as the children of our parents or of God.”
“We continue to fight it out though …”
“Think of the Crusader holding up his sword like a cross. Isn’t there something wrong with that Fred?”
“It might be the symbol of Christian ideology as opposed to faith.”
“Go on Fred.”
“The prophet’s words which led his followers away from Rome, now turned around and lead back to Rome.”
“Exactly, Christ didn’t advance with an army. That was the Roman way. He was deeper.”
“You mean Christ was working on another plane Bel?”
“Yes, not a battlefield … not literal one anyway. He did it all with words!”
“… and also through actions Fred.”
“Rather puzzling words too, in many cases.”
“… ‘Actions speak louder than words’.”
“That’s always the way with oracles and prophets Fred. They are trying to communicate from the depths.”
“Why should that lead to such ambiguity?”
“Fred I think this takes us back to Otto. What you were saying about our building defenses, as it were.”
“How does ambiguity help with that?”
“I am thinking of the oracle’s problem, if you like. That is to get past our defenses with her message.”
“Are you thinking of Delphi now?”
“Yes, she was always ambiguous.”
“I see, she couldn’t speak in plain or literal terms because people would not reflect deeply enough to get her message that way.”
“That’s it, Fred. Look at the power, the influence, of her words in the ancient world.”
“Reminds me of the old saying about the pen being mightier than the sword.”
“There’s a lot to be said for the printing press too.”
“The Reformation for instance?”
“What about radio? Where would Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini or Roosevelt have been without it?”
“Yes they were all famous for oratory, and now television Bel, think what TV has brought us.”
“I don’t want to.”
Swallows are intercepting insects, weaving acrobatic displays through the last evening sunbeams.
“I saw those birds flying around the Snaz store garage.”
“Were they trapped down there?”
“No there were plenty of openings on the first level. They were nesting.”
“Oh, I can imagine they would have to be agile to dodge all the pillars supporting the ceiling.”
“They were noisy too. Found a nest built on a thin pipe running along the wall near the ceiling.”
People nearby get into a dispute over whether they are looking at barn swallows or bank swallows, then someone suggests they are chimney swifts. We walk on into a low sound, which seems to be coming from everywhere at once.
“How can any one tell now?”
“Some people can identify birds from those fleeting silhouettes Fred.”
It’s dusk. The sun will be gone in a minute. The bullfrogs are getting louder as it gets darker.
