While walking to the station the other day, I passed the small farm on the corner where free-range chickens roam. I was in a hurry, brisk pace, so the chickens moved away from the road, clucking as they fled. But the rooster didn't. The rooster continued to watched me and started advancing in my direction. The rooster was protecting his hens and demonstrating to them his bravery in this situation. I was looking at him, his gaze was fixed upon mine – and then his foot slipped on a clod of freshly ploughed earth. All of a sudden, he felt somewhat foolish. I could sense the shame in his galine face. The proud defender of his brood made to appear clumsy by a misstep. I stopped for a moment. He turned away, the literal picture of 'crestfallen'.
But am I merely imposing human ideas of emotion upon a creature that's a mere automaton, devoid of soul, lacking in what we would call consciousness? This, in literature and art, is the notion of pathetic fallacy – conferring human attributes to non-human entities.
Yet I certainly would confer personhood upon creatures. When a pet-owner makes eye contact with their cat or dog, they feel certain that their pet is sentient, that it subjectively experiences existence, that their pet is for itself (just as you are to yourself) the centre of the world. Eyes are indeed windows to the soul, and just a fleeting moment of eye-to-eye contact lets you intuit the state of an animal's consciousness; anger or irritation, fright or anxiety, contentment or bliss. In the case of this rooster, I sensed annoyance and embarrassment; a small misfortune that made the ruler of the roost appear uncoordinated and maladroit; no longer was he a challenger but an unsteady bumbler.
The rooster may not make much sense of his surroundings; there are the people that feed it, the barnyard, the henhouse, the strangers that walk past where it lives, there are boxy objects moving around like little metal huts, there's ample food, many hens to tread, no natural predators (foxes are a rarity round these parts) – existence is good. Intellectual attainment, however, is not what chickens have evolved for; humans have bred them for food for the past 8,000 years.
I ponder for a while about the nature of consciousness; I deeply believe that it is something far more than a mere emergent property of neural matter, the product of evolution. The leap from non-life to life has yet to be explained or replicated artificially. Moments such as this make me suddenly realise that consciousness exists in other living beings too. The fact that they are bereft of human-level intelligence does not mean that they are unaware of their own existence, although they are probably not aware of being aware.
Science and spirituality continue to develop along separate pathways, but ultimately I feel they will converge, though the road be infinitely long and the setbacks will be many.
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The prospect of Trump returning to the White House fills me with dread and existential anxiety for the future of mankind. Another four years on a knife-edge. I cannot bear to switch on the news. Kiss goodbye to Net Zero. The zloty has lost 2% of its value to the dollar in a few hours. The market senses that this part of Europe is likely to be thrown to the wolves; the dangers of an authoritarian turn are clear to all people of goodwill and reason. I had been fearing this moment. Hopes are dashed. Evil triumphs, as it did in 1933.
This time two years ago:
Sunny Sunday meditations
To Dawidy Bankowe, Łady, Zamienie and back
Town planning and the Sublime Aesthetic
This time 14 years ago:
On the long road from Zero to One
This time 15 years ago:
Łódź Rising
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