I haven’t been able to write the blog for a good while now,
research and other things keep getting in the way even when I think about topics
I’d like to discuss and write about. But, I have something I don’t really think
needs a lot of up-front writing or analysis from me, just maybe some prompting
to muse and think.
I have been listening (for the 3rd time or so) to
the audiobook of Terry Pratchett’s book A
Hat Full of Sky, the second book in the Tiffany Aching series. These may be
my favorite books that he’s written and I love them every time I hear/read
them. I have been thinking about the excerpt below quite a bit lately. I’ve
been teaching a vertebrate zoology lab this semester, so I have been thinking
about phylogeny and evolution more than usual, so I’m sure that’s one reason.
But also I was just thinking about how beautifully this section describes what
is means to be human in a greater biological context, considering the
remarkable history of life on earth and the ways that humans are different from
other animals. And while we are always being reminded about how much trouble
and damage humans cause the world and the other organisms we share the earth
with (as being something that really does set humans apart from other living
things), this is one of those passages that reminds me of the why humans are
special, in spite of how extremely similar we are to other living things, there
are some vastly important differences that have led to us being who we are.
So, take a minute to read this passage and see what it makes
you think about. After Douglas Adams in Dirk
Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, writing about Bach being the music of
the world and the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things,” this is one
of my favorite excerpts about the wonder of the natural world. Let me know what
your thoughts are, I would love to hear them! And pick up one, or I would recommend
many, of Terry Pratchett’s books if you haven’t already done so!
(a bit of context: Tiffany is talking to a “hiver,” which is
an entity that takes over the bodies of animals or people, and then “becomes”
everything its ever taken over, and almost always kills whatever it is
embodying. So, the hiver has all the memories and experiences of every animal
or person it has ever been. It cannot think of itself as “I” or one living
thing, because it is everything all at once. It cannot figure out how to die,
to stop killing things, because it doesn’t know what it is.)
“Here is a story to believe,” she said. “Once we were blobs
in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats, and then monkeys, and hundreds
of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my
human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit
and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to
live in! When we’re frightened, the hair on our skins stands up, just like when
we had fur. We are history!
Everything we’ve ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are…I’m made up
of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They’re in
the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever
met who’s chanced the way I think. So who is ‘me’?”
“The piece that just told us that story,” said the hiver. “The
piece that’s truly you.”
“Well…yes. But you must have that too. You know you say you’re
‘us’—who is saying that? Who is saying you’re not you? You’re not different
from us, we’re just much better at forgetting. And we know when not to listen
to the monkey.”
“You just puzzled us,” said the hiver.
“The old bit of our brains that wants to be head monkey, and
attacks when its surprised,” said Tiffany. “It reacts. It doesn’t think. Being
human is know when not to be the monkey or the lizard or any of those other old
echoes. But when you take people
over, you silence the human part. You listen to the monkey. The monkey doesn’t
know what it needs, only what it wants.”
-Terry Pratchett, A
Hat Full of Sky, p. 240-241
(http://books.google.com/books/about/A_hat_full_of_sky.html?id=dmc3CVG-aqgC)
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