Published in the Cork Independent online on 11th September 2012
My friend tells me that his now deceased father was both wonderfully eccentric and slightly misanthropic. ‘The animal is more civilised than the Christian’ was a favourite saying of his. It is an astute observation, not designed as a critique of the Church (the phrase was coined when it was assumed everyone was Christian), but rather as an admonishment of the ills of modern society. My friend grew up in the sleepy rural fringes of the city, although today the city has crept out to meet it. Even in those seemingly halcyon days, the same despair over man’s imperfections existed: destruction, greed, pride, division. Perhaps it is somewhat myopic to view the rest of the animal kingdom as a kind of utopian social order – after all, in many instances they share with us some of our more feral and ignoble characteristics: abandonment of the young, killing of the weak, cannibalism. However there is one important difference – the behaviour of animals is never mindless (though some do not actually have minds, I mean this in the figurative sense); there is always a purpose to their actions, generally to promote their chances of survival. The human species, the apparent flagship of all life on earth, is the only species that is capable of frivolous behaviour, and quite often in nasty and grotesque ways. As a social species, too often we are united only in our obsession to clamber over one another.
Physalia physalis – the Portuguese Man-O-War, to you and I, is a remarkable example of social cohesion in the animal kingdom. The jellyfish has been grabbing the headlines of late due to its sudden invasion on our southern shores. For ongoing research in the centre in which I work, I have had the pleasant task of walking the beaches of Waterford and West Cork seeking out these enigmatic animals. During August and September it is not uncommon to see strandings of the jellyfish on our beaches after an episode of strong southerly winds. The Portuguese Man-O-War is at the mercy of the winds and the ocean currents for it has no means of propelling itself. Hence its wonderfully adapted pneumatic float that acts like a sail. This ship-like adornment and its legendary potent venom is the reason for it being named after a 16th century English war ship. The Portuguese Man-O-War is a siphonophore, a type of jellyfish that is actually a composite of several individuals – a colony of animals. The float, tentacles, feeding and reproductive structures all began life as separate polyps, and then were incorporated into a mother species, which is the one you see washed up on the beach. It is an astounding example of the yielding of the self for the greater good of the whole. The Swiss philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau expounded this concept of the general will, whereby individuals commit themselves absolutely in the attainment of a well-ordered society. This involved relinquishing a degree of natural liberty, but in return, as part of a social contract, receiving a greater degree of civil liberty. In this way one is only accountable to the state and not to his fellow man. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that Rousseau’s philosophy was hijacked, manipulated and used as an intellectual weapon to justify totalitarianism (strictly speaking Rousseau allowed for benevolent dictatorships, but a benevolent dictator is like an honest politician – desirable yet improbable). His book, The Social Contract, is said to have directly inspired the French Revolution. The Revolution, as many know, had great and noble beginnings but quickly it descended into terror and repression of the French people. A good case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The writer John Steinbeck, a lover of marine biology, was inspired by the perfect order of the animal kingdom in the espousal of his ‘phalanx theory.’ In his essay, ‘Argument of Phalanx’, Steinbeck spells out his philosophy that humanity is only truly successful within a unit – the phalanx – a group of individuals with a single purpose. Much like Roman soldiers marching forward into battle or defending from attack, the phalanx has a consciousness almost of itself, an instinct to advance and to protect. In The Grapes of Wrath the fortunes of man are attenuated as the phalanx (the Joad family) slowly fractures on the long journey from Oklahoma to the lush valleys of California (itself a metaphor from birth to death). Like the Portuguese Man-O-War the only purpose of the phalanx is to survive. This is what underpins all societies, from jellyfish to apes to humans. The individual abhors isolation in the way nature abhors a vacuum.
Given that we are by far the most recent of animals in evolutionary terms, it is strange to think of ourselves as successful. You may consider such things as democracy, civilisation and exploding populations as a barometer of our dominance. In our eternally anthropocentric vision, we naturally see our species as a sort of culmination, a sculpted work whose chiselled greatness has finally been unveiled to an expectant universe. Then you see on television a family mercilessly executed in front of their children or a madmen indiscriminately spraying bullets into crowded movie theatre or a monster locking young girls in a dungeon for years on end, raping and beating them when his appetite warrants. It is tempting at these times to compare the animal and the Christian. Perhaps for our sanity we should think instead of Rose of Sharon, the heroine of The Grapes of Wrath. In the unforgettable closing scene the young woman has just lost her infant child after months of carrying it in her womb across the vastness of the American West. When they encounter a dying, starving man in a barn, she feeds him with the milk from her breast. In a bleak world the image serves as a powerful restoration of faith in the human race.
