Fly on the Wall—Getting our Shift Together

Dusk brings an orange glow to the African savannah. Amidst the gloaming interplay of sultry slender shadows and reclining shafts of dull light, diurnal animals bed down for the night. Giraffes meander off over the horizon, their long necks seeming to sink like the masts of ships as they pass out of sight. Lion cubs, their rough-and-tumble afternoon play session leaving them haggard and hungry, recline amidst the luxuriant folds of their mother’s bosom. The cubs suckle assiduously, and their young eyes wander outwards to the world passing by. Two dung beetles trundle into sight, each rolling a gigantic ball of dung ahead of itself like a hunk of chocolate and peanut butter. They’re getting to an early start to their day, the beetles, and it’s a night shift.

The young lions, neophyte Queens and Kings of the continent, wonder “what are those bugs gonna do with that and how do they know where they’re going?” After all, the massive spheres of sustenance are much larger than the insects can possibly see over. The answer to this simple query reveals much about the nature of knowledge and the differing ways in which we seek it. Dung beetles, it turns out, navigate not with their eyes on the literal prize, their destination, but by keeping an eye on the stars in the night sky above. These industrious gatherers of excrement navigate by triangulating their humble, earthly location with the shifting position of celestial objects far, far, away.

Perhaps lowly dung beetles are the best animal expression of Oscar Wilde’s famous line “each of us is in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars.” To be sure, they express the to each its own version of common sense so often missing in culture, academia, and politics – a realm where the egoistic desire to be right, and to make others aware of ones’ righteousness, often gets in the way of that most innocent aspects of thought: raw curiosity.

Students, Stars to Be, Guided by our Chosen Stars

In a sense, we choose which stars to follow as students and thinkers. Our different evolving beliefs and academic objects of intrigue can lead us to forget that that ours is a solitary journey; no matter how much we share with our fellow humans our journey is as unique as the pattern of sand on the paw of a lion. Yet, as we grow and learn, our learned assertiveness can, basically, lead us to see others as dung beetles and be utterly befuddled by the seemingly nonsensical goings-on of their lives and minds, intellectually in the scholarly landscape and, more fundamentally, in the realm of life choices.

To each differing sustenance appeals, and this extends into the realm of philosophy. More comfortable terrain than the gossip-laden aforementioned life choices arena. As humans sharing a species ontology with billions of others, we all-too often assume that what we value most, what truths and methods by which we purvey our ideas and survey our realm, must apply to others of our ilk. If only the others would see things the way we do. Sigmund Freud noted wryly how the education of young people often amounts to finding a band of like-minded minions to this or that political posture: “a young man has to learn to suppress the over-weening self regard he acquires in the indulgent atmosphere surrounding his childhood, so that he may find his proper place in a society that is full of other persons making similar claims” .

Perhaps awareness that truth and education is about more than finding solidarity with others is what progressive pundit Julie Roginsky meant when she expressed empathy with parents who say, “Wait a second, I send my kids to college so they can learn, not so they can burn buildings and trash lawns.” At the lesser, but no less egregious, level an awful lot of our peers cling to social media certainties to express what ought to be a more thoughtful academic pose as relates to current events.

References
Freud, S. (1963). Character and Culture. New York: Collier Books.
Kroen, G.C. (2013). ‘Dung Beetles Navigate By the Milky Way’. Science. Retrieved from https://www.science.org/content/article/dung-beetles-navigate-milky-way
Roginksy, J. In Schorr, I. (Nov 2024). ‘Democrat Strategist on CNN Absolutely Lose it on Dems for not Knowing how to Talk to ‘Normal People’: ‘Not The Party of Common Sense’. Mediate. Retreved from https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democratic-strategist-on-cnn-absolutely-loses-it-on-dems-for-not-knowing-how-to-talk-to-normal-people-not-the-party-of-common-sense/ar-AA1tH6GQ