Bee Consciousness: the Latest Buzz from the World of Melittology (and How D. H. Lawrence Stung First)

Lars Chittka: The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2022)

Stephen Buchmann: What a Bee Knows (Island Press, 2023)

 

I. 

 

According to Lars Chittka - a man who, after thirty-odd years of pioneering research, knows more (and cares more) about insect intelligence than most people - bees are sentient beings that deserve our respect and affection.

 

Not only can they count, recognise human faces, and learn simple tool use, for example, but Chittka's studies suggest that bees have a distinct sense of self, experience emotions, and conceptualise the world around them in abstract terms [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Stephen Buchmann, another insect-loving academic and author, has also arrived at the conclusion that bees have complex feelings - ranging from fear and frustration to joy - and, despite being small-brained, are far more mindful than even he imagined three decades ago [2].    

 

This, of course, raises ethical questions about how we treat bees, who play a vital role in food production (many fruits, nuts, and vegetables rely on bees for pollination). Presently, they are subject to shameful exploitation and abuse by an agricultural industry that makes billions of dollars from their intensive labour. 

 

Whilst the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder is often blamed on emerging diseases, the use of pesticides, and/or climate change, Buchmann and others concerned with this issue argue that the shocking decline in bee numbers is also due to the physical and psychological stress caused by the practices of industrialised agriculture; billions of bees are literally worked to death each year so vegans can pour almond milk on their oranic cornflakes and feel virtuous [3].       

 

 

III. 

 

Like Buchmann and Chittka, I hope that things will change if enough people accept the fact that bees are sentient creatures - and can therefore suffer - and not merely tiny living machines [4].

 

And like both men, I am filled with a sense of wonder when I consider the mysterious, alien mind of a bee. 

 

However, coming as I do from an intellectual background heavily influenced by D. H. Lawrence, it does not surprise me in the least to discover that what is often called instinct in creatures such as bees, is the working of a primary mind - i.e., a form of spontaenous consciousness arising directly from the body, centeralising in the blood and nervous system.

 

Lawrence writes: 

"When a bee leaves its hive and circles round to sense the locality, it is attending with the primary mind to the surrounding objects, establishing a primary rapport between its own very tissue and the tissue of the adjacent objects. A process of rapid physical thought takes place [...] That is, there is a rapid sensual association within the body of the bee, equivalent to the process of reasoning; sensation develops sensation and sums up to a conclusion [...] which we may call a sensual concept." [5]

 

It's amusing, to me at least, how scientists, such as Buchmann and Chittka, have arrived at similar conclusions with reference to bee consciousness more than a century after Lawrence - who was a novelist and poet, not a zoologist, ethologist, or entomologist - wrote this astonishing passage.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lars Chittka is Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2022). 

      Not only has Chittka carried out extensive academic research on bees and their relationship with flowers, but he has been involved in a number of creative projects involving bees. For example, in 2006 he worked with installation artist Julian Walker to evaluate what bees think of Van Gogh's Sunflowers - click here - whilst in 2019 he and fellow members of the alternative rock band Killer Bee Queens released an album entitled Strange Flowers, which explores the world of bees and hopes to raise awareness of their fascinating biology. 

      Click here to play the first track on the album, entitled 'The Beekeeper's Dream'. The video uses footage from David Blair's surreal sci-fi documentary film Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991).

 

[2] Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees and an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. See his book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees (Island Press, 2023). 

 

[3] Unfortunately, as Annette McGivney points out in an article in The Guardian (2 April, 2023), finding a method to mass-produce crops whilst at the same time reducing the pain and suffering of bees is not going to be easy: "If vegetarians and vegans who avoid eating animals for ethical reasons were to apply the same standards to foods pollinated by bees, they would have very little on their plates." Click here to read McGivney's piece in full. 

 

[4] Presently, there are no animal welfare laws protecting insects in a lab setting and experiments are often deliberately designed to fatally stress bees in order to determine out how much the insects can tolerate when working in the fields.  

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne', chapter VII of the First Version (1918-19) of Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 241.

 

 

On Herman Melville's Moby-Dick & Larry David's Mopey Dick

Leon Black / Herman Melville / Moby Dick

 

 

I. 

 

A friend of mine, Anja, has decided to read Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick (1851) between now and the end of May (she plans to digest a chapter a day for the next 135 days).

 

It's not a book that I've read: I've tried, but have never managed to get through more than a few pages. For some reason, I find it irritating. And this, despite the fact that Lawrence describes it as "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" [a].

 

Indeed, in his chapter on the book in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), Lawrence also insists that Moby-Dick is "the greatest book of the sea ever written" [146]; a work whose profound symbolism inspires him with a mixture of fear and wonder. 

 

And, let me assure you, that's rare praise coming from Mr. Lawrence, who doesn't often gush about books or their authors. But Melville is, for him, the greatest poet of the sea:

 

"His vision is more real than Swinburne's because he doesn't personify the sea, and far sounder than Joseph Conrad's, because Melville doesn't sentimentalise the ocean and the sea's unfortunates." [122] [b]

      

Perhaps that's because, according to Lawrence, Melville has "the strange, uncanny magic of sea-creatures, and some of their repulsiveness" [122] - i.e., something not quite human. 

 

But never mind Melville, let's focus on the huge white sperm whale, Moby Dick, and discuss what it is that Lawrence finds so fascinating (and yet so terrifying) about these magnificent mammals whose commercial hunting began in the 18th-century and only came to an end in the 1980s [c].   

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, he is more interested in Moby Dick as a symbol. Although, like Melville, Lawrence is not quite sure what the warm-blooded whale symbolises. 

 

But that doesn't prevent him from declaring Moby Dick to essentially be a phallic symbol; "the deepest blood-being of the white race [...] our deepest blood-nature" [146]. 

 

And the fact that he is so cruelly and relentlessly hunted "by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness" [146] symbolises the fact that we are motivated by a kind of death drive: 

 

"We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal  conscious hunt of ourselves [...] is our doom and our suicide." [146]   

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"The last phallic being of the white man. Hunted into the death of upper consciousness and the ideal will. Our blood-self subjected to our own will. Our blood-consciousness sapped by a parasitic mental or ideal consciousness.

      Hot-blooded sea-born Moby Dick. Hunted by monomaniacs of the idea." [146]

 

A tragic fate. But one that Lawrence accepts: 

 

"Ah well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, it is something greater than I which dooms me, so I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am." [146]    

 

 

III.

 

Of course, there are some fates worse than the collective doom of a people; worse even than having your leg torn off at the knee, or being drowned at sea. 

 

For example, one can be so heart-broken following a painful separation from a loved one, that one takes to one's bed, depressed, and lacking the energy to do anything. This form of spiritual impotence is what Leon Black famously describes as mopey dick [d]. 

 

Whether the cure for this psycho-physiological condition involves inserting a gerbil into one's anus remains, please note, highly controversial.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'Herman Melville's Moby Dick', in Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 145. 

      Future page references to this text - and to the preceding chapter, 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo' - will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] Despite his admiration for Melville the artist, Lawrence can't help taking a pop at Melville the man; "a rather tiresome New Englander of the ethical-mystical-transcendentalist sort" [134]; someone often clownish and clumsy as a stylist who writes in sententious bad taste. 

 

[c] Commercial hunting led to the near-extinction of large whales, including sperm whales. The International Whaling Commission only granted the species full protection in 1985 (although hunting by Japan in the northern Pacific Ocean continued until 1988). Recovery has been slow, but remaining sperm whale populations are now large enough that the species is no longer listed as endangered. 

 

[d] See the season 6 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled 'The Bat Mitzvah', dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, and first broadcast on 11 November 2007: click here. The character Leon Black is played by J. B. Smoove.

 

 

Torpedo The Ark Post 2399 on SCP-2399

SCP Foundation logo

 

 

According to the SCP Foundation [1], there's a complex alien superstructure (known as a Malfunctioning Destroyer) located beneath Jupiter's Great Red Spot [2] capable of causing an end-of-the-world event. 

 

It has been designated with the Special Containment Procedure number 2399, although it's really just knowledge of this object that has been suppressed. For due to SCP-2399's location and very nature, it can neither be physically contained nor destroyed at this point in time, as we simply do not have the technological means to do so.  

Where it originated and how it travelled to our solar system are unknown. However, electromagnetic-based commands seem to be being sent to SCP-2399 from the Triangulum Galaxy, approximately three million lights years away. 

 

Fortunately, SCP-2399 seems to be severly damaged, so currently presents no direct threat to life on Earth. 

 

Unfortunately, SCP-2399 also seems to possess an unlimited power supply and be programmed to self-repair using a series of drones to complete the necessary work. And so, in a few decades time, we might be in trouble.

 

For now, however, we can relax and endeavour to have a happy new year (and worry more about how to pay the energy bill than some made-up machine of extraterrestrial origin stranded on Jupiter).

 

Notes

 

[1] The SCP Foundation is a fictional secret organisation featured in texts created by contributors on a wiki-based collaborative writing project known as SCP Wiki: click here. It is primarily concerned with mysterious phenomena known as anomalies and its mission is to secure and contain these anomalies so as to protect humanity from them. 

 

[2] Located in Jupiter's lower atmosphere, the Great Red Spot is a persistent high-pressure region responsible for the largest anticyclonic storm in the solar system. According to those who belong to the SCP Universe, SCP-2399 uses highly advanced anti-matter technology to create this 10,000 mile-wide spacial voretx.