What
happens when an animal species, that is crucial to the proper functioning of
the ecosystems in which we live, starts to die off? It creates a major threat to the food chain
in which we participate for our survival.
The die-off under consideration here is of bees. The gradual loss of bees endangers the
pollination of crops.
Humans
are looking to establish what is causing this die-off. The most popular theory lately states that a
group of deadly pesticides called neonics are killing off the bees. Another theory has proposed that the cause is
the destruction of biodiversity in many living environments leading to a poor
diet for the bees. Both of these causes
are based on environmental degradation created by humans. Other additional causes
have been suggested such as infections from two different kinds of mites,
viruses and fungus. Whatever the reason, there is still a high probability that
humans are directly or indirectly involved as a result of changes they have
created in the living environment.
Humans
have caused the destruction of other animal species like the dodo bird, but
none of these species was crucial to human survival the way that bees are. Obviously, the loss of organic grounding in
many different ways appears to be affecting bees more than many other species. Not only are bees dying off in large
quantities, but colonies of bees are experiencing Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD), where the worker bees from the bee colony just suddenly vanish. It’s scary.
Humans, who are not yet
experiencing an unexplained mass die-off, have to find some solution to the
ecological gap created by the loss of bees.
And
a solution is being created: robot bees.
We are now at the point in robotics where we can approximate the
functions of a primitive animal and create a flying robot that can act
independently enough to pollinate plants.
If we succeed in this, we will have solved the main operational problem
of the loss of bees. And if we succeed
in this, we will have a model for dealing with the potential loss of other
animal species that disappear as a direct or indirect result of human
activities.
But
this is the point where we have to ask whether something irreplaceable is being
lost, as we substitute robot bees for animal bees. Are animal bees necessary for other things
besides their defined discrete function of pollination? If we reduce animal bees to one instrumental
function, we are reducing them to being robots. As important as pollination is, we also need
our organic relationship to bees. And
with robot bees, there is no capacity to make, preserve or receive organic
imprints. This is because robot bees
deal with defined discrete machine stimuli, not organic blendable flowing
continual stimuli. Their stimuli are
built on digital combinations of 1 and 0.
Robot bees will not have the capacity with their presence to create
flowing continual experience for other animals.
They just have the capacity to create remote isolated discrete events
like the pollination of plants.
With
the loss of each new species to environmental degradation, to the loss of
organic grounding, we lose one more unique source of organic imprints. Each loss of species lessens the total vibrancy
of our life experience.
As
we lose sources of organic stimuli from disappearing animals like bees, we
gradually slide more into a numbing experiential vacuum. And as we lose sources of organic imprints,
we lose the stimulation we need to turn us on to make our own organic
imprints. We lose our capacity to make and
preserve our own organic imprints and, thus, to prepare for death.
Yes,
lots of species have been lost to nonhuman causes in the past. Natural catastrophes, cosmological events
like meteorites hitting the earth, and periods of vast climate change (before
humans) have all wiped out many species of dinosaurs. But these are animals of the past. Humans never had an ecological connection or
an experiential connection with dinosaurs apart from their bones. Early humans did hunt animals like the
mammoth and the mastodon, and probably contributed to their extinction along
with climate change. But when these
latter animals became extinct, evolution provided other sources of prey for
food, other sources of organic experience for humans. Evolution is not going to be able to work effectively
enough to replace bees or other animal species that may be destroyed in today’s
technology-controlled world in such a way that we can find new quick organic sources
for both their ecological and their experiential functions.
On
the one hand, I certainly support attempts to find new ways to pollinate crops,
if bees are dying off. It is natural for
humans to think of methods that imitate what bees do in order to carry out this
process. However, I am concerned that
creating robot bees to do the work of animal bees sets a dangerous
precedent. It can lull people into not
worrying quite as much as they should every time a species starts dying
off. After all, people will think they can
always turn to technology to create a backup, should a particular species be
important to the dynamics of an ecosystem.
This will make people less careful about the introduction of new
chemicals or new technological processes to the living environment.
It
will also lead to even more blurring in people’s minds between their senses of
self as humans, on the one hand, and the body of processes that make up machine
activity, on the other. Rather than
missing the organic experience benefits of being around animal bees, humans
will slide more and more into an identification with the wired mechanical
complexity of robot bees. The efficiency
of robot bees will mirror efficiency behavior in humans and will be one more
component in the network of complex modern machinery to further stimulate
efficient robotic behavior in human activity.
Yes,
I know that animal bees sting and robot bees don’t. Lions and tigers are dangerous, and we don’t
want to get rid of them. They are
beautiful animals. And there are many
positive sensory aspects to animal bees as well. The buzzing of animal bees is part of the
music of warm weather in many parts of the world. And animal bees make honey and robot bees
don’t. They are the only animal that I
know of that is capable of bringing sweetness to human life that way. Finally, animal bees are visually attractive
insects that bring color to our flower gardens.
So they add to the positive organic sensory experience of the world by
people in multiple ways.
The
dying-off of animal bees is only a partly replaceable loss. If modern technological society does start
using robot bees to replace them, we cannot let that in any way reduce the
enormity of the experiential loss in our lives.
Animals are not only sources of function. They are sources of sensory experience. And our experience of animals in turn
stimulates a sense of organic humanity in each of us.
By
the way, the engineers who are creating robot bees are giving them other
functions besides that of pollinating crops.
The robot bees are going to be used for search and rescue missions and
for military surveillance among other tasks.
With these additional uses, it is not as if the robot bees are going to
be used only as a basic organic replacement for a gap in our ecosystems. With their disconnected diverse activities,
the robot bees are going to act like and be machines whose intrinsic worth is
based on a bundle of non-related specific functions. This is very distinct from animal bees whose
worth is based on a cohesive organic identity within an ecosystem. Getting back to the mind/body dichotomy that
I discussed in a previous article, there is something in all organisms, some
sentient activity, if not a true consciousness, that allows that organism to
leave an organic imprint that is different from a mechanical physical
mark. This sentient activity is built on
organic blendable continual stimuli which robot bees won’t have. Robot bees are built exclusively on the
defined discrete stimuli of digital processes.
If
we can’t save the animal bees, and robot bees are the only option for
pollinating crops, so be it. But let us
not get smug that we are truly replacing animal bees. There is a German company called Festo that
makes robotic models of many different animals.
If all the sub-human animals on the earth were wiped out and replace
with robots, humans would truly be very lonely organisms in a vast vacuum
living environment.
The topic for this article was suggested by Chuck
Freilich
(c) 2014 Laurence Mesirow
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