© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 01
School is character building, just like rugby, chess and other contact sports. I still have certain scars to prove it. My teachers spent a lot of time attempting to build my character, and some of it managed to rub off on me. I particularly remember the sermon built around Proverbs chapter 6, verse 6. It felt as if they were looking directly at me. Quite probably, they were.
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways,” whoever delivered the sermon would thunder. And then a long litany of social evils would follow: tardiness, laziness, sloppiness, haircuts, painting the hostel matron, whatever else could be tagged on.
Personally, I never had a problem with the specific complaints; someone else painted the matron, and I always ignored the bit about haircuts. My problem lay in the idea of the ant as a role model. It still does.
Ants are great at being industrious, but being industrious is a foregone conclusion. Even if you don’t have the means or energy to support yourself, you will industriously seek ways to get someone to help you. Charity and deserving cases aside, I have noticed people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid work, myself included. Forget the filing, I’ll carry those bags of cement any day.
Ants are also great if you are into civic virtues. They all look the same, move purposefully in neat, orderly lines and industriously regurgitate whatever they have gathered at some convenient point. And if an ant offends, you can stomp it into oblivion. But I’ve never been a great follower.
The real problem in the comparison with ants is that they respond to chemical signals known as pheromones. So, for instance, if an ant stumbles on a nice juicy picnic, that ant leaves a trail of pheromones all the way back to the nest. Soon all the other ants follow the trail and the picnic is history. If an intruder arrives, the ant emits a pheromone that shouts ‘danger’ and, like the picnic, the intruder is also lunch.
If you watch a swarm of ants on the march into unknown territory, you will observe that the front rank advances only a short distance ahead of the horde, before noticing that there is no pheromone trail ahead. At this point the leading ants panic and backtrack to the safety of the swarm. The swarm then proceeds along the pheromone trail believing that it knows where it is going. Then the process repeats itself. Sounds familiar doesn’t it…
Of course you, as a human, have an element of self-determination in your personal life, depending on your bank manager, your job, your kids, the TV guide, etc. But in the greater scheme of things, you will no doubt follow paths laid down by people who don’t have a clue where they are heading: leaders, visionaries, innovators, the odd lunatic and irritating neighbours with revolving credit, to name a few. And don’t they just lead us into the most interesting situations.
On the other hand, going with the flow is comfortable and easy. Billions of people do it every day, without a second thought. Leaders have a tougher time of it. They work longer hours and the trouble they get into is infinitely more spectacular and messy. Tune into the news for ongoing proof.
Bowing out can be just as perilous as leadership. Take the case of the man who foresaw World War 2 and decided to settle on a small island far away from anywhere. The haven he selected, Midway, went on to become the site of one of the most destructive battles of the war.
Humans should be somewhat more complex, visionary and thoughtful than ants, but unfortunately we aren’t. History, current affairs and the fact that we still make the same mistakes proves this theorem. Then again, where would we be if we didn’t have mistakes and blunders from which to learn? The news would be a pretty dull affair, for starters.
If there is a lesson to be had from ants it must be cautionary, probably along the lines of ‘watch where the crowd is going, and use your common sense’.
