Antemortem Confession of an Ant

 

Let me introduce myself. I am ‘Mister Ant’. Yes, the six-legged, hardworking Formicidae that you usually pass by without taking a second look. If not for the crumb trail we left behind, you would not have even noticed us, despite the fact that we had shifted from the peony in your garden to the back of the cabinet in your kitchen a few weeks ago. What a lousy host you are.

I stay with my family, working day and night to grow our colony. As we live most of our lives in underground darkness, we have to rely on the use of a special chemical called ‘pheromone’ to communicate. This is both a blessing and a curse. Be it a discovery of a new food source or a warning of a looming danger, we benefited much from this unique way of communication. I know you Homo sapiens hate your own body odor, but for us, it is our fundamental survival skill. Since young, we were taught to obey instructions dutifully like a law-abiding citizen. Likewise, we apply the same herd mentality in the way we doggedly track down pheromone scent along the trail that leads to our food source. We have been practicing this over and over again with an unwavering faith. So far, it has yet to fail us.

Everything was fine until recently. It seems like we have been following the same track for quite some time. At first, there was no sign at all. As fatigue started to sink in, some of us got grouchy and broke away from the file. Nobody knows what is going on although a few of the veterans suspect that something strange is happening. Apparently, we have unknowingly fallen into an ‘ant mill’ entrapment – a phenomenon in which each of us staunchly follows the one in front, thereby forming a continuously rotating circle. Sometimes, this rare phenomenon is also known as ‘Spiral of Death’. It is a taboo in our clan. So, no one dare to talk about it openly. Nevertheless, recently there was this valiant fool who was bold enough to suggest that we might have been trapped in this fatal entanglement. As expected, his voice was instantly crushed under the barrage of vitriolic rebuttals from the gainsayers and authorities. The poor chap was eventually brushed aside and dismissed as having a hallucinated fantasy. This is a common tragedy in large primeval families like us. We get too entrenched in our heredities, both good and bad ones, unwilling to shake them off. It looks like the several millions years of evolution has not made us any smarter. Once we have identified something that works, we will cling on to it like a limpet, reluctant to let go.

“Is this right?” I have been asking myself over and over again lately. Ironically, this is the same old culture that we have lived in for millions of years. Although we may have evolved physically, our culture remains untainted by time. And culture is a strange thing – we are part of it, yet so apart from it. Hence, I guess there is no straight answer to my dilemma. The closest explanation that I can find is perhaps a stigmergic coordination failure resulting from the impact of the ‘Abilene paradox’ complication. Sounds esoteric? Okay, in layman’s terms, it means “the blinds following the blinds with a naïve fear of rocking the boat”. Every morning, we embark on a food-hunting expedition with this foolhardy goal in mind – to find new food sources. However, I have never seen any proper plans or instructions. Everything is ad hoc and depends on spontaneity. The only strategy we count on is ‘the blinds following the blinds’ with the help of the pheromone cue of course. We repeat this cycle every day, rain or shine. Be it skittering across the torrid sand or tiptoeing around the puddles of water, we move on without questioning the sanity of the mission or the risks we have to take. No one knows if we will get lucky and achieve our goal for the day or we will fall into another unforeseen deathtrap. Each trip is a new challenge. No time to bid farewell. We just ‘trial’ our best.

Unfortunately, the food supply in our nest continues to deplete, yet there is still no sign of new food sources. Our foragers are still on the march, full of hope, with the rest of us catching up from behind in a frenzied manner. I am not sure how long we can keep going at this rate as the tired legs have started to take their toll. Perhaps, all of us will die of exhaustion very soon unless there is a change. And yes, there should be a change if we want to have ourselves extricated from this entanglement. We need a leader to guide us through this. Well, we do have a leader although most of us have probably forgotten that. She is the ‘Red Queen’ – this is what we call her. The problem is she is not with us in this expedition. Perhaps she is now in the nest, happily indulging herself over the supreme power of her reign while waiting to be fed, oblivious to the calamity that is going to befall on us in the field. What a superb personification of a lousy, yet extremely common, leadership. Is she doing anything at all to save us? Obviously not. Maybe she is just too far away to be able to know what to do. In other words, we have to depend on ourselves and hang on to the last streak of faith that is left in us. Yet, there is only a thin line between faith and foolishness. Many of us still believe that there will be a miracle. That explains why we are still on the march. Pretty naïve huh? I do remember what Orson Welles once said – “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” It is time to stop dreaming. There will be no miracle waiting for us ahead, only debacle. When the sun rises again, there will be another forager group sent out to replace us. I wish them the best of luck. I wish we will be remembered for our pluck.