A Full, Rich, and Complex Life

I recently heard a researcher interviewed on the radio about her team's amazing discovery regarding a certain species of animal. At one point, she qualified her enthusiasm by saying that, of course, humans are much more "complex" than this particular animal, but that her team's discovery indicated that it was nevertheless "more complex than previously thought."

I can't recall the specifics of her research, but this knee-jerk need to rank species (more complex, less complex) with humans at the top, struck me a startlingly unscientific, if understandable, mindset.

I mean, my own life is definitely full and complex, it fills up every moment of every day, and I feel I can assume that this is true of you as well. I might not know the specifics of the rich fullness of your material-social-intellectual-emotional life, but I imagine, as a fellow human, it's there, like mine, all the time. So what makes us think the same complexity isn't true for, say, our pets? The prejudice is that other animals are simpler than us in that they are primarily motivated by baser instincts: food, procreation, and fight-or-flight survival type things. If we imagine that our dogs experience humanlike emotions, however, scientists caution us about anthropomorphizing, which is to attribute human characteristics to non-human things. 

But we know our dogs love us. I know that my dog experiences a full range of emotions, from joy and excitement to depression and despair. I know this, even as scientists might mock me for claiming to know it.

Dogs "see" the world through scent and sound in ways I cannot comprehend. There are spiders whose entire experience of the world is vibration; in fact, it could be said that they think with their web. Bats echolocate. Songbirds orient themselves according to the earth's electromagnetic fields. If any human possessed these abilities we would call them superhuman. I'm sure the radio scientist knows all of this, yet she still casually ranks humans ahead of other species, in part because it's an aspect of the scientific tradition to assume that humans are the apex of evolution and any effort to suggest that another species -- animal, plant, bacteria, or fungi -- is equally complex, is a kind of sacrilege. What's lost in this urge to rank is that every species that exists is the apex of evolution . . . so far. 

Indeed, animals, and especially humans, are new kids on the block. Plants, bacteria and fungi are our elders by billions of years. They haven't merely adapted to the environment, they've in many ways created the environment in which we, for a brief time, have been enabled to thrive.  The more you know, the more you see our species as no more or less complex than any other, it just feels more complex because we're inescapably inside of it, just as my dog, or that grapefruit tree outside my window, is inescapably inside inside its own rich, complex life.

The same goes for young children, even newborns. Our adult-centric world tempts us to view them as "simpler" humans, driven by random urges, and irrational responses. In our most light-hearted moods we find them cute, even precocious, but like that scientist, we often rank our own intelligence, our own sensibilities, our own concerns and consciousness as somehow above theirs. In our less charitable moments, we become frustrated by their "ignorance" or "immaturity." We dismiss their concerns as childish and their passions as simplistic, yet every child, every day, at every moment is living a life that is as full, rich, and complex as our own adult lives. 

When a child cries over something, or demands something, or eagerly anticipates something that we find simple or silly, rest assured, that the child doesn't find it simple or silly at all. As important adults in the lives of young children, we may know things they don't, but we ought not confuse that with superiority.

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Hi, I'm Teacher Tom and this is my podcast! If you're an early childhood educator, parent of preschoolers, or otherwise have young children in your life, I think you'll find my conversations with early childhood experts and thought-leaders useful, inspiring, and eye-opening. You might even come away transformed by the ideas and perspectives we share. Please give us a listen. You can find Teacher Tom's Podcast on the Mirasee FM Podcast Network or anywhere you download your podcasts.

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