Sunday March 27, 2022
Some magpies in Australia proved themselves smarter than a group of scientists. Magpies are known for their intelligence; they belong the corvid family which also includes crows and ravens.
A month ago, Australian ornithologists hoped to learn more about how wild magpies socialize. So they devised miniature backpack transmitters, weighing less than a gram, that they could strap onto individual magpies.
They designed the backpack so that the magpie carrying it couldn’t possibly remove it.
They reckoned without the intervention of other magpies.
The first five backpackin’ magpies flew off into the trees.
Within minutes, another magpie showed up and started pecking at the harness for one of those backpacks. After a bit of experimentation, the pecking magpie found a weak spot and freed its partner.
Within three hours, all five of the magpies had been freed. By other magpies.
Success within failure
In one sense, the scientists’ experiment failed. They learned nothing about the social dynamics they had hoped to document.
In another sense, the experiment was a stunning success.
The magpies knocked holes in a fundamental myth of human societies -- competitiveness.
This was a totally new situation for magpies. In our planet’s history, no magpie has ever carried a backpack. But the magpies were able to adapt to this brand new context within minutes.
Which puts humans to shame, doesn’t it?
The magpies showed that they could do more than squawk. Somehow, the backpacker magpies were able to inform another magpie that they were experiencing discomfort.
But perhaps most significant, the helper magpie had absolutely nothing to gain from helping its feathered friend get rid of its backpack. In fact, the non-backpack bird probably stood to benefit from the burdened bird’s disabilities.
If life is, in traditional terms, a competition for the survival of the fittest, the birds without the burden of a transmitter should have a clear advantage.
Helping another bird was an act of pure altruism.
For 50 years, the Dalai Lama has preached altruism as the noblest of virtues -- to give, to help others, to share, with no expectation of return.
Yet our most common response, when asked for a donation, a service, a sacrifice, is often something like “What’s in it for me? How will I benefit?”
Rotary’s “Four Way Test” asks, “Will this be beneficial to all concerned?”
When Rotary member Herbert Taylor (no relation) first articulated the Four Way Test in 1932, “all” meant his own staff and customers in Chicago. Today, “all” is increasingly understood to mean all humans. All living things. All the planet.
Misinterpreted concepts
When Charles Darwin first floated the concept of evolution, churches condemned it because it contradicted with their holy scriptures. But for other groups, evolution confirmed their competitive mindsets. Life was a battle. Dog eat dog. Only the strongest and fittest deserved to survive.
Their view of evolution, in other words, validated the robber barons, the conquering generals, the dictators and tyrants.
Since then, the “survival of the fittest” mindset has been challenged, over and over. The evolutionary advantage, it now seems, lies not with the most competitive but with the most cooperative.
The wolf pack hunts more successfully than the lone wolf. Horses form herds for mutual protection. Caribou and bison roamed the prairies in their thousands. Birds migrate in flocks. Lions hunt in prides. Fish swim in schools. Orcas and whales form pods.
Granted, there are examples of solitary predators. Also of solitary survivors. But the overwhelming evidence supports collective solidarity.
Even in forests, as Suzanne Simard has proved, trees nurture other trees. Including other species of trees.
Ever since the first living cells emerged from whatever preceded them, individual cells have clustered together to share the load.
A primitive sea sponge is not itself an organism. Rather, millions of individual cells have blobbed together to offer each other specialized functions . Put that sponge through a blender, and the individual cells will once again recombine to share the load.
Indeed, we humans are living evidence of the collective principle. If the earliest living cells, floating free, had not found living together more productive than living alone, they would never have formed multi-celled beings from which we could eventually evolve.
We got it wrong, when we turned competition into an idol. We blinded ourselves to what nature kept telling us. That cooperation works better than competition.
Putin is wrong. The arms trade is wrong. Mexico’s drug cartels are wrong.
The magpies got it right.
Just don’t call them birdbrains.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
I’m grateful for the variety and range of viewpoints that my reader feed back to me. So when I mention that people of Russian ancestry may be facing prejudice here in Canada, Coral Cogs Smith responds, “Often what seems to be forgotten in times such as these is that the person from Russia (or wherever) is rarely in Australia or Canada or wherever because they love their home country's government.
“They usually move because life [there] is threatened or unsafe or unmaintainable in some way. They are moving away from everything they know and love often because of unacceptable government decisions. These are not the people who should be treated as aliens at all.
“I don't know of any cases like you mention in Australia yet, but give us time to do something stupid. We're human too.”
Fran Ota noted that we consider some refugees more acceptable than others: “Perhaps it’s time to focus on the prejudice and hypocrisy about refugees. One of my colleagues talked about ‘war’ in Ukraine and ‘conflict’ in Palestine. To me there is a huge semantic difference.
“A Black friend told me of a young couple -- African student in Ukraine, married to a Ukrainian, with a child. As they attempted to leave the country, she and the child were allowed through. He was not. He did eventually find his way out, but by a much more circuitous and dangerous route.
“I don’t for a moment dump on Ukrainian refugees -- I have Ukrainian family, and I know they’re worried about family back there. But in my lifetime I have worked with YMCA Refugee Services in Viêt Nam, and seen the abysmal conditions of most refugees everywhere. What is *wrong* is how Black refugees, or Asians, are being pushed aside. I know that Blacks, Asians and Middle Easterners in Canada and in the United Church are getting more and more angry at the attention to refugees who ‘look just like us’, who have ‘blonde hair and blue eyes’, and the amount of media time and fundraising. Have we *ever* seen this kind of coverage for Somalia? Palestine has been in ‘conflict’ over 65 years. Have we censured or sanctioned US, or Israel?
“In my book, a refugee is a refugee is a refugee. Period. Whether or not they have black hair and brown eyes, or blonde hair and blue eyes. Yet one look and listen to the media shows that it apparently makes a huge difference to white westerners.”
Indeed there does. And yet, as last week's St. Patrick's Day also showed, there's a drive in that same psyche to participate, to belong, to affiliate. How many of those who wore green have any connection with Ireland?
“We are weird creatures indeed,” Isabel Gibson wrote. Building on my line,” There seems to be a tumour in the human psyche that needs to create an enemy to blame,” Isabel went on, “Indeed there does. And yet, as last week's St. Patrick's Day also showed, there's a drive in that same psyche to participate, to belong, to affiliate. How many of those who wore green had any connection with Ireland?”
Bob Rollwagen recommended “The Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. It quickly teaches you about the human condition and yes, Canadians are a collection of tribal groups that are not much different than all the other national tribes. Fate has provided us with great resources and the wealth of land and water, a relatively calm history, and a Democratic focus. We are a result of people leaving the countries to our East across the Atlantic for some good reasons but their memories were short and they brought their prejudices. Certain tribes are seen to be entrepreneurs, industrious, socially advanced while others are not. These traits build over time. Some tribes improve while other decline. Most countries are a mix. It is which group gets power that is the puzzle and it is the power group that sets the direction. The rest is just human nature!”
Vera Gottlieb is not a fan of U.S. foreign policies: “It occurred to me that the colours ‘blue and yellow’ are Sweden’s colours too, not just Ukraine’s.
“During Hitler’s time pogroms were carried out wherever the Nazis invaded, not just in Germany. And ‘pogroms’ is what this mass hysterical Russophobia reminds me of.
“What is going on in Ukraine should never have even started but…leave it to the US to provoke mercilessly and meddle where it has no business - and now that Russia is (finally) reacting…’oh, those bad Russians.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns