We used to have trouble with ants when we lived in the tropics
Not big, fierce, scary poisonous, dangerous or damaging ants. Just red ants, very like the ones common in England, though perhaps a little bit bigger
The house was built on what are often called stilts - in fact breeze block pillars. A first floor bungalow
Nevertheless the smallest drop of water left on the draining board after doing the washing up would attract an army from the garden. They climbed up inside the wastepipe & up the side of the sink to drink before doing a smart about turn to return to earth
How did they know the water was there?
The simplest way to get rid of them was simply to mop up the water. But if I was feeling vicious I would take a kettle of boiling water & pour it over the head of the column. Boy, did they retreat quickly
What did they think was happening? Did they have any awareness of my presence or my agency as some kind of living being?
One person I discussed this with said Oh no. Ants have no consciousness
Well, suppose there is something we do not have. Call it pansciousness
We are pretty used to the idea that life on Mars, if it now or ever existed, is microscopic or bacterial
Our search for life in the wider universe presupposes, literally, something on our wavelength
Suppose life forms exist with dimensions literally beyond our comprehension, our ability to conceive or perceive
Then even phenomena we think we understand, governed by laws comprehensible in our own dimensions, might have another real but unimaginable cause
Perhaps the old childish reassurance might be a truer metaphor than we think
A thunderstorm is just God moving the furniture about
I see no reason to suppose that the air about us & the heavenly spaces over us may not be peopled by intelligences, or entities, or forms of life, as unintelligible to us as we are to the insects - Alfred North Whitehead
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