No Worries

 Once upon a time I was heading home on a country road and came to an intersection facing a red light. There I waited patiently as required by law. After about three minutes I was thinking that it couldn't take much longer to change green and my foot was getting heavy over the accelerator. After five minutes I began speculating about what was wrong with the light: maybe a power surge had addled the electronics, maybe there was a sensor in the pavement that was not working, or maybe there was a dirty cop hiding around the corner playing tricks with a remote switch so he could make his quota of tickets for the day. At six minutes with no cars or police in sight, my good-boy persona morphed into my impatient bad-boy and I crossed against the red. You will be sorry to hear that I didn't get a ticket, although I certainly deserved one. I like that ending. In an alternate version of the story, the good boy is still there, a pile of bones behind the wheel waiting righteously for the light to change.

This is what it's like to be human. There are circumstances that converge to put us in an ambiguous situation. We have options. We imagine alternatives and possible outcomes which we evaluate to decide on a course of action. Unsure of what to do, we try our best to nudge events the way we would like to see them go. Then we get consequences, which may not be exactly what we intended. The whole process generates anxiety. Who needs it? Who would choose to be human?

Frogs do things differently. I recall experiments on frogs in second year biology intended to demonstrate the functions of different parts of their simple brains. We accomplished this by depriving them of bits of their brains and then stimulating them. After the cerebrum was removed, a frog was typically not as interested in the experiment as we students were. 

We learned that frogs make rudimentary choices using the cerebrum, which in a frog is rather small. Frogs are not brilliant. I suspect that frogs don't check the lights before they cross the road even if their cerebrum is functioning normally, and as a result sometimes they get squashed. However, I hypothesize that they don't suffer anxiety in the process, and that aspect of being a frog is rather good. We could check their pulse to be sure. On the other hand, if I were a frog, whatever my IQ, I would avoid a human in a lab coat carrying a stethoscope and waiting on the other side of the road. You know those humans. To provide a control for the experiment, they would want you to cross the road again without a cerebrum.

As for us humans, the burden of consciousness leaves us with frog envy. Wouldn't it be nice to unload our anxiety, just ignore the warnings and trust our luck or magic or Mummy or the government or the experts or God? 

Who needs an enormous anxious cerebrum turning little problems into bigger ones? Give me a nice froggie brain. No worries.

Next: We Should Be So Wise