Making Sense of It All

At a certain point in our lives, we'll ask those difficult questions: "What is the meaning of life?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why does living have to hurt so much?  Why was I put on this earth in this place in this time with these circumstances?"

These questions generally crop up when we're going through something difficult.  The death of a loved one.  Getting laid off or fired.  The loss of a cherished relationship.  A natural catastrophe.

We'll all searching and that's why I believe Science Fiction is such a widely read genre.  Sci-fi universes allow us to explore the themes, the what ifs, and look at ourselves as the ridiculous ants that we are.

The Tree Called Human: "You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings have actually achieved intelligence.  I think not.  I think they have found a way to fake intelligence".


Hive Queen: "Self-delusion?"


The Tree:  "Even at their best, they never as individuals never rise beyond the level of manual laborers.  Who among them has the time to become intelligent?  Not one.  They never know anything.  They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all and yet they think they understand.  From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world when really all that is going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices.  As they get older, they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo-knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were Truth, but it all amounts to the same thing--individually, human beings are all dolts".


Hive Queen: "While collectively?"


The Tree:  "Collectively, they are a collection of dolts.  In all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic, half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known and in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half  the time, the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it.  They simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement".
  
Hive Queen: "So you are saying that no one is ever individually intelligent and groups are even stupider than individuals and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with?"


The Tree: "Exactly".


Hive Queen: "If they are so stupid and we're so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us and why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance that you make?"


The Tree Called Human: "Maybe intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Are we asking ourselves the big questions?  Are our employees?  Can we as a group of dolts accidentally stumble upon something a little closer to the truth?