Time to Think of Summer

It's time to think of summer and the day lily blossoms that will be in their glory. Click to enlarge.

No More Migration?

Why do birds migrate? In a word, food. For many species of bird, especially those in temperate climes, their food supply will dwindle, as cold weather sets in. Birds in northern climates, for example, may gorge themselves on insects during the summer, but must head south when cold weather arrives and the insect population plummets. They fly to the tropics, where their insect diet may continue through the winter.

So why not just stay south all year long, where bugs are plentiful? Why migrate back north all that way? For many birds, it's a good idea to exit the tropics for the summer, for at least three reasons: (1) there is more competition for food in the crowded tropical forests, (2) they themselves may become food for predators and parasites whose population will increase, with all those birdy meals flying around, and (3) if they head north for all those plentiful, juicy insects coming out of hibernation, they will find lots of food to make them healthy and give them a netter chance at reproduction.

Birds have migrated for millennia, because the rewards are worth it; despite the fact that it's a risky adventure. Many threats await them en route, such as predators, high winds, cold snaps, habitat degradation by humans, storms, wind turbines, etc.

Recent German studies using tiny GPS tracking transmitters attached to white storks, followed their migration flights south from Europe to wintering grounds in Africa and Asia. The researchers discovered a new development: some of the storks have dramatically altered their migration routes in recent years. Why? In a word, food. What some of these long-range migrating storks have discovered is that they no longer have to endure several-thousand-mile risky flights to find tropical food, because they've located new and plentiful sources of meals along the way. Why fly another thousand miles or so, when they've come upon a plentiful supply, halfway there?

And what are these modern sources of abundant food for the storks? Human-provided massive rubbish dumps and sprawling landfills. These dumps contain oodles of food waste. To add icing on the garbage cake, oodles of insects that thrive on the piles of rotting, discarded food are fine prey. It takes a lot of energy to get a big stork in the air and then to fly several thousand miles. These birds have a wingspan of about five feet (1.5 m) and can weigh about eight pounds (3-4 kg). If, on the way south to its winter feeding grounds, a bird can cut short the exhausting flight and spend the winter on a huge smorgasbord of food waste, why not?

This discovery is a very recent one. It may appear to be a bonanza to the storks, but is this a healthy and sustainable practice? Much of the food is rotting and can contain some pretty nasty microorganisms. Worse, the dumps contain lots of inedible and even toxic wastes—plastics being a major concern. The truncation of their migration flight can have knock-on consequences in the tropical locales the storks no longer reach, when insect pests down south are no longer preyed upon by the storks. Bug numbers might explode, which would negatively impact farms in tropical regions.

These disruptive migration flights of storks are just one of many examples of how humans are altering the environmental balance achieved over millions of years by Mother Nature. When that balance and the tight, interconnected web all these animals are a part of, gets corrupted by humans, the downstream ramifications can be severe. We are messing with ecosystems—complex systems that we hardly understand. It took millions of years to achieve that exquisite balance. We are irreparably disturbing it. How long before it gets back in balance? Can we back off and wait another few million years?

Ice Nymph

Winter has delivered us far too much cold and snow. As a result of this weather, we have been invaded by ice nymphs. I caught this one sneaking across the yard, just after dawn.

Pleasure or Pain?—Part 2

To return to Bentham's insistence that it is our very nature to seek pleasure (happiness) and avoid pain, it is interesting that he reached his conclusion over half a century before Darwin had the insight that evolution was the cause of our innate drives. While Bentham grasped the fact that this behavior for all creatures was “natural,” Darwin described for us how it came to be. That is, those critters who were good at finding pleasure and avoiding pain were more likely to survive, because their lives were more robust and fit, and they succeeded in passing on this capability to their offspring. In contrast, animals who did not succeed were more likely to perish—if only because their quality of life was poor—and not have offspring.

One of the challenges of those who subscribe to Bentham's ideas of utilitarianism is to know when we've acquired enough pleasure or happiness. Can we control ourselves, so that life does not become one extended obsession of seeking pleasure? Humans have not been very good at reining in their greed. In fact, too many of those who get a taste of pleasure go overboard with it. A prime example is today's ultra-rich who seize all they can get and create overwhelming economic inequality. Bentham and others saw that it must be the job of government to check inequality and ensure justice for the populace. It's not working very well in the US, today, however, largely due to the fact that the super rich pretty much control government through their corporate power.

On the other side of the coin, we can ask: Should we go to extremes to avoid pain? Is all pain bad? It may be natural for us to shun pain, but are there occasions when we might need to face it? Unlike animals, our cognitive abilities can help us examine the need to avoid pain all the time, and do something about it. Doesn't it make sense to visit the dentist and endure the discomforting prick of the novocaine needle and have a cavity filled, so I won't have to endure much greater pain later, when the tooth becomes abscessed? As another example, I attribute a good deal of the enduring relationship I have with my wife to the discomfort we endured during several conflict resolution sessions we have had over the years. It was downright painful to have to admit a few times that I was wrong in something I did or said.

Volumes of philosophical tomes and many psychological studies have pondered the struggle to balance pleasure and pain. Like most issues of philosophy, there never is a clear and final truth to be discovered. Life is too complex for that.

Maybe the best we can do is to make ourselves as aware of the inherent nature of pleasure and pain as we can, and then move through life, constantly seeking the appropriate balance at each step along the way. Seek happiness, but don't go overboard with it. Control yourself. Similarly, the avoidance of pain is natural, but it seems to me that it's more a case of taking a close look and having the courage to face pain when it makes sense to—especially when it brings the opportunity to learn. It doesn't make sense, however, to invite unnecessary pain into our lives. That just causes damage.

Pleasure or Pain?—Part 1

Every creature—from gigantic blue whales down to microscopic bacteria—shares a common tendency: to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This seeking-versus-avoidance behavior is so deeply ingrained in us that we almost never think about it. In fact, it's instinctual... we don't have to think about it, because evolution has made it innate in us. We do it naturally. We humans grab for pleasure—sex, food, warmth, comfort—just as an insect does. Similarly, we back off from pain much like a worm or a bear does.

Many philosophers have pondered this pleasure-or-pain phenomenon, and have come up with a wide range of theories and explanations for this behavior. One of the early Enlightenment philosophers to delve into this topic was an oddball Englishman named Jeremy Bentham. He was both a philosopher and a social reformer who founded the school of utilitarianism in the early 1800s. Utilitarianism seeks the “greatest happiness” in the populace—defining happiness as a predominance of pleasure over pain. Bentham was convinced that it is our nature to have the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain literally drive our behavior—that they “govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think...”

A couple of millennia before Bentham, the Greek philosopher Epicurus had some of the same ideas. Both he and Bentham felt that a lot of human behavior is driven by our desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. In fact, Epicurus decided that the very basis of human fulfillment is dependent on our success at finding pleasure.

Unfortunately, the use of the word “pleasure” can be problematic, because it too often carries the connotation of shallow amusement or sensual gratification. Thus Epicureanism came to be associated with hedonism—a misinterpretation that has caused many people to shy away from Epicurus' ideas—especially the more straight-laced Protestants. Neither Bentham nor Epicurus advocated hedonism. So in order to avoid some of the controversy, I think a more appropriate word is happiness, rather than pleasure. We all seek happiness, in the sense that we wish for peace, health, safety, and spiritual fulfillment.

More on Pleasure or Pain next time...

Big Snow of January 2016

Struggling to clear the bird feeder and path to the firewood. We got 40.5 inches (just over one meter).

Philosophy for Kids—Part 2

What is exciting about these experiments in philosophy is that educators have noted definitive benefits that kids derive from philosophical discussions. For example, students' reading and communication skills improve. Their critical thinking skills improve, as they learn to develop reasoning and sound arguments. The value in these kinds of open-ended questions is that—like most all questions in philosophy—they have no right/wrong answers. This is valuable for kids, because it encourages them to break free of the limited mental framework of multiple-choice standardized tests.

When kids become exposed to philosophy in this manner, they begin to change their way of thinking and expressing themselves. They learn what it means to become a little skeptical and begin to question things, without it causing them to feel either cynical or helpless. They develop confidence without hubris. They begin to exercise independent judgment and self-correction, and even develop a respect for diversity and exhibit empathy for others. Are those not advantageous qualities for anyone to acquire?

Consider these two comments from 5^th graders who became exposed to philosophical discussions: “I've started to actually solve arguments and problems with philosophy. And it works better than violence or anything else.” And another 5^th grader who participated in a discussion of the possibility of time travel: “Time is different for us than it is for the universe, because 100 years passes in a flash for the universe, but seems like a long time to us... so time is a bit like a feeling.” Talk about an insightful comment!

Reading these articles about encouraging grade schoolers to explore the true nature of things via philosophical discussions gave me lots of encouragement... on at least two fronts. First, it paints a very optimistic picture of what can happen when kids are introduced to open-ended thinking. I believe this can be a very effective antidote to an atmosphere in our schools that stresses standardized tests, which encourage narrow thinking and a viewpoint that emphasizes right/wrong responses which quickly are forgotten, shortly after the test is over. Valuable skills such as critical thinking, forming valid arguments, exercising discernment, and respecting diversity are too rare in our classrooms—let alone in the wider society.

Second, this news encourages this old hermit to keep plugging away at studying philosophy. If a 10-year-old kid can get into it, I should be able to. It's also nice to have it pointed out that I don't need to master the inscrutable prose and thick thinking of Descartes or Hegel. Yes, they have challenging and probing ideas and questions that tax my brain and it's worth doing so, but it's nice to be reminded that some of the same learning experience can be had by asking an elementary question such as: “Can you be a good person if you've done bad things?”