011 FOUNDATION BLOCKS OF INTEGRATIONAL SPIRITAN MOVEMENT CHAPTER 10: LECTURES FROM THREE UNIVERSITIES

011 FOUNDATION BLOCKS OF INTEGRATIONAL SPIRITAN MOVEMENT

CHAPTER 10:  LECTURES FROM THREE UNIVERSITIES

i      We now come to the basics of nature study. Have you ever observed soldier ants on the march? It will definitely be difficult for those of us who did not grow up in a rural community or in a farm! For such persons, their elementary biology textbooks will suffice. All they need do is revise what they learnt in secondary school about social insects or look up that title in an encyclopaedia or browse the Internet.

ii.                      In either case, what they will learn is that these small insects are so well organised that it is a wonder why we, the so-called ‘Homo sapiens sapientes’ are so disorganised. Why do we need the police force to beat us into line, whereas these minute insects do not step out of line nor try to do another insect’s duty?

iii.                   They have specialists for any and every problem they group will ever encounter while they are on any march. Pity yourself, if you interrupt their movement. By the time they swarm around you and sink their jaws into your exposed skin area, you will feel so much pain that next time you will not only fear to cross their path, but you will dread and avoid any other insects that resemble them! Why?

iv.                   These little creatures have soldier ants with larger mandibles specialised for aggressive actions against any intruder and their duty it is to fight and protect the group. And their job ends there. They do not interfere in other duties like reproductive activities or in feeding the younger ones in the group. We have copied that much, but do our own soldiers mind their duty only?

v.                      There, is an important lesson for us humans to learn! A little common sense is all that we need to learn only one trade, specialise in it, be proud of it and not interfere in other people’s professions! But this rarely happens in the social organisation of mankind, yet we claim to be ‘the lord of the material universe’.

vi.                   Or shall we take lectures from another university? This time, from honeybees? Read all you can about this other social insect that even has a language communicated by a dance ritual. It is wonderful how minute beings out-class us in organising their little worlds. They eschew in- fighting. Rather they co-operate so well that their hives are always peaceful until man, the selfish scavenger intrudes to harvest where he never sowed, namely their honey that we steal in order to please our tongues!

vii.                 Again, they are so specialised that only one queen and a king may be found in each community at a time. Unlike what obtains in our human world, where we fight to establish supremacy! How many kings, queens, presidents, chairmen/women and traditional or religious rulers do we have? Are we ready to serve, take orders and obey even our own constitutions? Yet we pride ourselves as ‘Homo sapiens’!

viii.              Visit web sites and learn how the honeybee communicates to the members of the hive that it has found nectar, either nearby or faraway. It is amazing, especially when one realises that they never learn these things. They are born with the peculiar knowledge of the waggle or straight dance. Scientists call this ‘species-specific’ behaviour, thereby indicating that they are born with the information stored in their memory and they must willy-nilly manifest them at the appropriate developmental stages of their lifecycles.

ix.                   The inquisitive minds will at once want to find out whether human infants have anything that resembles this. The answer is an affirmative YES! So the next natural question that follows is what happened to the human infant. You want an answer? Are you really that inquisitive or you want to behave like your species of proud apes?

x.                     You will have to wait till we have received tutorials from another university of nature, the termite colony! You must do yourself this favor. Don’t believe me, nor trust the information you surf from the Internet. Go out there, into the fields and have a firsthand experience of these data that biologists have spent years documenting so as to spoon-feed our infants at schools. That may also explain to you how and why human beings, are the laziest and craziest veterbrates in existence.

xi.                   The termites are the greatest engineers in the universe! That you doubt me fades into insignificance when you compare their anthill, structure weight for weight with their bodies. Our skyscrapers are nothing wonderful if we recognise that these minute ants don’t use mechanical machines to assist them in the construction work, nor do they use building plans scaled and drafted by architects!

xii.                Again, what happens inside the termite palace is another natural wonder! The social organisation, though absurdly hierarchical, commands our respect! There is specialisation, not only in body structures, but also in the roles and duties each ant plays for the mutual benefit of the community.

xiii.              That, precisely, is the point I am trying to emphasise. We, humans need to send our politicians to these anthill universities scattered all over the globe, to learn public administration! For as long as we allow mediocres to manage the affairs of any nation all in the name of political patronage, for so long shall the masses bear the brunt of their bungling of the administrative apparatus of the state.

xiv.              It does no one good to function as a Minister of Health with credentials in engineering or even business administration! I am sorry for developing countries that waste their little resources by so doing.  My opinion is that they must learn to put square pegs in square holes and round ones in round holes! They need these tutorials from termites, honeybees and soldier ants!

xv.                My dear reader, are you following my trend of meditation? What of in our individual homes, kindreds and villages? Should fathers, mothers and children not take notes of lessons from these insects? My emphatic answer is a capital YES! What a mess is made of family life and peace by parents who throw their weight all round the place, all in the name of stamping their authority and exacting immediate obedience from everyone around!

xvi.            Let’s quote an example to illustrate my point; “Apart from the reproductives, all castes are sterile and wingless and have whitish bodies, Typically, the workers constitute the most numerous caste and are the smallest of the adult forms. Workers build and provision the nest, tend the eggs, and feed and groom all the other inmates of the community.”

xvii.           “ All species have soldiers with greatly enlarged heads. The soldiers of certain species are equipped with huge jaws for defence of the colony; in some species, the soldiers have long snouts, from which they eject a sticky, poisonous substance to envelop an enemy and render it helpless.”

xviii.         Do you see what I mean? They owe their efficiency to dedication to duty despite the fact that they do not enjoy the basic rights of all other animals, namely the joy of sexual intercourse. May be I should have said ‘mainly because they do not indulge in the time-consuming and diversionary sexual copulation’ that is the genesis of distraction and depravity in the human species. Do you get my gist?

xix.             The rivalry and competition to attract and please the opposite sex is the bane of all in-fighting animals on earth, be it in higher or lower creatures, the unicellular or multicellular forms of all animate beings. In olden days, and in some cultures to date man-made eunuchs exist and perform their duties more religiously than our so-called priests and nuns!

xx.                The radical position being canvassed for by this writer for a wiser society is this: ‘It is time for selective social engineering, genetical selection and specialisation of men and women!’ Reproductive activities must be controlled to reduce defective babies as well as the over -production of a generation of human beings with a very high load of defective genes! You may scream ‘Tufia-kwa!’ or curse in any other dialect or language ‘God forbid this!’ But only time will tell whether the recommendation is completely anathema! For now, most religions of the Far East and the Catholic Church do not think I am crazy!