So, I live on the east end of Olympia in this house which happens to have a swamp in the back yard. Every now and again I get the urge to sit around the swamp and play "Darwin". For those of you who have yet to have the pleasure of playing a round of "Darwin"here's how it works: step1-you sit, step 2-you watch, and thats how you play. When you're done with your round I find it best to take some time to think about what you've seen and how you can learn from it. This afternoon I decided to get crazy, grab a chair, and play some "Darwin." I noticed something today I had yet to pick up on in all my previous "game time"... here's what I got:
Two squirrels were working as a team to gather as many nuts as they could. I say "team" because they apperd to communicate with eachother when the time came to take the nuts off to where ever it is they were taking them. Now I know watching squirrels gather nuts doesn't sound like anthing special (its not) but the question that this observation led me to ask I feel is special... the question is, what is it that keeps one squirrel from killing the other squirrle so it can have all the nuts for its self? I was told as a child that one of the most important things to development is a good sence of morality. Religion tells us that we are inherently evil and that we must spend our lives trying to overcome our natural urge to kill, fuck, rape, steal, ect. Religion also says this sence of morality we develop is one of the things that seperates us from other animals. I find it interesting that two squirrels that never sat through a day of sunday school, never had a teacher read them the golden rule, and hopefully aren't expecting Jesus to save them from their little squirrel sins can manage to work togther (as so many other animals do) without distroying eachother... hummmmmm??? sounds like morality on the squirrels part to me. If other animals were void of morality then they could not coexist. They would destroy eachother in anatempt to serve their own means. Thus, maybe people aern't as bad as the bible, koran, and the Bush White house would have us think.
Thats my talke on this observation what do you guys think???
