Natural selection is imperceptible to the creatures that it operates upon. The lion stalks, crouches, springs — and the slowest zebra falls, while the quicker ones dash to safety, pause, look back, and then return to cropping the grass. No conscious (or unconscious) drive for speed. Just differential success for the survival of genes into the next generation. Simple math.
But once in a while, a zebra vanishes. It transcends the game of chase & catch, elude & evade — and starts to play a new game, with new rules and new opponents. Wings sprout from its shoulders; it leaps into the air and flies away into a dimension beyond the lion's ken.
Can people learn to be invisible? Have some of us already done so? What's it like?
(from recent Philosophy Breakfast musings by BW & comrades)
2001-08-07
(correlates: Comments on Wind Men, MacDurk, JoyToStuffRatio, ...)