Excuse me, I'm going to have to, um,
get this frog out of my throat.
You know, frogs are going extinct.
Let's start with the title of your book.
It's called, "The Meaning of Human Existence."
So, I'm curious, is the most frequently asked question you get about this book,
"So, what is it?"
The meaning of the human existence comes down to what created the human species.
It was brought about by group formation that involved heavy emphasis for survival on social intelligence,
communication, and cooperation.
This must be taken from the hands of theologians
and philosophers, and put into the hands of scientists.
You started out with ants, sort of famously,
and here you are writing about the meaning of human existence.
So how do you get from one thing to the other?
I started as a kid, 9 year-old, and I was out netting butterflies
and going on what I called expeditions. I wanted to do what I read about in the National Geographic.
I just never grew out of that period.
I wrote a book called, "Sociobiology" in 1975. It was quite controversial then because
I suggested in the final chapter that human beings might have originated by the same principles as
all lower animals, like ants,
and it fed naturally to a fuller consideration of humans.
You've pointed out that there is very little that we can learn, morally speaking, from ants.
Nothing. Nada. Not a thing. In fact, you don't want to learn anything about what our behavior should be.
All ants are female. Males are produced in the colony for just one purpose and for a very brief period of time.
Now, I'm a feminist, for sure. But I think that's sort of pushing things.
Older females are the ones that do battle to the enemies.
So that's a principle we don't want to follow.
And some eat their injured.
No ant military hospital.
But anyway, with that behind us --
So, we shouldn't do that?
What?
We shouldn't do that?
No.
Ok.
But then, what can we learn from ants, generally?
Insects, even with their small brains, could have as many as ten or twenty "words," so to speak,
but they would be pheremones, the chemical signals they pass back and forth.
Almost all the rest of life communicates the same way -- pheremones.
We, our species, opted for audo-visual, as did birds.
And we are lousy at smell and taste. So we live almost alone in one sense.
You do have a line in here that humans on earth relate to the universe the way
of the second segment of the left antenna of an aphid sitting in a garden in Teaneck, New Jersey, for a few hours.
So that's pretty diminishing.
Well, it's diminishing as reference to what's out there in the galaxy.
Part of our problem as a whole is that we're a species that is narcissistic.
We're intensively social, and intensely interested in other people.
And that's how we keep our groups united and well-coordinated.
The result is that we are geniuses at social intelligence, but we're really stupid when it comes to understanding how to manage the environment.
We are a badly adapted species right now. We have created civilizations in which we lead
and live on parts of the planet on our own. And we haven't gotten over our emphasis on forming groups
and having groups compete with each other.
So when you talk about bringing together the sciences and the humanities, what implications do you think that has for the way we tell the story of the anthropocene, and of climate change?
Science should be conducted to explain, more than the manner of the humanities, but it's not a matter of telling human stories
about the romantic triangle that develops on a spaceship on its way to Pluto, or whatever Hollywood comes up with.
That's not combining humanities with anything. The humanities are sort of unaware of the significance of intense focus on individual relationships.
It's easy for us to think that the world was made for us. And we don't really need to know about the 8 million or so species on this planet.
Even when we're told that keeping them in tact and making sure they continue to live is probably necessary for our own long-term existence.
So I'm curious about where that leaves the environment.
Are we at the mercy of selfish individuals or can we count on the altruistic groups to kind of bring us out of the trouble we're in?
On some occasions, the selfish prevail in a particular incident or part of the life cycle.
On other occasions, the group of effecting genes favor the altruism and the high degree of cooperation.
And what do you have, out of all of it? You have a conscience.
We are a real mess.
Particularly, since we developed our cultures that way. In between, we have to live with this constant fight within our own conscience.
And what do we get out of it? It's called, may I use the word? It's called the humanities.
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