Ants, Humans, Delusion
Unlike some, ants are not delusional.
Flies — they really annoy me. Because of the warmth, there are a LOT of them. So I decided to declare ‘jihad’ on the little sh*ts. Each day since we have been living in this house I am swatting and killing a lot of flies.
When I kill them I put them outside the open french doors onto the wooden slatted deck. A little while ago, I noticed that they had disappeared within a short period of time.
Further investigation uncovered that within a couple of minutes of putting them down a sizeable clearly organised work party of ants would appear, surround the corpse(s), lift them up and take them off to their nest. The entire process takes less than 2-minutes (yes I am one of those, I timed it).
So now I am providing them with at least 10 ‘meals’ a day and clearly, they are very happy.
So yesterday when I was watching them remove the latest ‘offerings’ it struck me that if ants were as stupid as humans they would have formed a church and each morning at dawn they would gather in a solemn circle and say prayers to some mystical being that, out of no-where, has had this profound positive influence on their food supply. Each day the “bountiful offerings” were increasing, so ergo, let's pray harder because it clearly works.
Fortunately, ants are not delusional. It hasn’t crossed their minds that forming a church and praying influences any specific outcome. They don’t feel the need to pray to ‘God’. They have simply understood that by being well organised, collaborative and each of them taking their individual responsibility for doing what needs to be done, they are far better off as a group.
Humans have a lot to learn!