The Bee is the epitome of hard working scrabbling lifestyle, struggling against odds. Buzzing around looking for food, coming back to share the info with the rest of the community, then fetching it one bee-sip at a time, protecting the queen, protecting the next generation, building elaborate hives of mathematical precision and high structural integrity, and doing all this while fitting in with the bee society and its rules. Clearly this is beyond humans on a sustained basis.
There is a considerable body of research on how the bees do what they do. How they find the flowers which hold their food, how they communicate the flying directions to that spot through a complex and ritual dance setting out the flying directions and distance, how they defend their hives housing their queen and the future generations. All these are amazing feats. They way they deal with invaders is no less amazing and is based on selfless team work - they do this by literally baking the invader with the heat generated by vigorous wiggling of their bodies. While humans are known to do this in some sports like rugby (the piling atop the invader), or at night clubs (the vigorous wiggling to generate heat in the other), doing both simultaneously is normally not known among humans. Goes to show how far behind bees we humans are in some respects.
Their direction-finding is nothing short of miraculous.We have difficulty in giving and indeed understanding directions in two dimensions. We are quite imprecise with our "lefts" and "rights", to the point of pointing to left even as we say and mean right. . There is even a joke - quite accurate, I might add - about how accountants can give you precise directions which are perfectly uninformative and utterly unusable like most information they provide. Bees' instructions to their fellows is a three-dimensional flying map involving not only distance, but the angle to the sun as well. If you factor in the fact that angle of the sun changes with the time of the day, the complexity of their mapping abilities becomes clear.
Their hives are truly architectural masterpieces. The shape of their cells - hexagonal- made of what is essentially soft and pliant wax acquires enormous strength when put together and can support huge colonies weighing tens of kilo grams. Many modern day structures, including advanced armour, use honey-comb patterns for strength without paying the penalty in weight. How did the bees figure out that the hexagon is the right shape? How do they then proceed to build it? How did they figure the 3 dimensional polar coordinate system needed for their navigation when even the mathematically adept humans find it difficult? Surely their language and communication must be very sophisticated indeed to communicate the complex building instructions and flying directions.
A bee society is complex. There are queens, generals, workers, and eggs and larvae which need protecting. Each one knows its allotted role and plays it perfectly in order that the whole may survive and indeed flourish. Some get killed defending their colony but no one seeks a "safe posting", away from the front lines. There is no resentment against the allotted social roles, nor against the real or perceived inequities in this social order.
Idols on the other hand are a different matter. Usually they are lifeless except when shedding alleged tears of blood or milk depending on your religious persuasion. They don't move, in one, two, or three dimensions, save when enterprising felons cart them off to be sold in far shores for profit. They don't mean anything by themselves - they only have meanings , powers and persona attributed to them by us. Idols are literally and figuratively human creations; they are expressions in stone of our imagination.
They are pretty useless too. Admittedly they do help us structure time as when we visit them to unburden ourselves and seek blessings and material gains, breaking a coconut or two in the process. Some times we even propitiate them with offerings thus attempting to tempt them with a bit of human corruption. They only are what we think they are and thus can be one thing or another depending on ones point of view. They sometimes are also convenient political pawns. In their defence it must be said that they are all uniformly good looking - obviously because they are meant to be easy on the eye. Idols do not achieve anything; they inherit their qualities from whoever made them.
Why then do we have so many aspirants to be "Idols" and so few to be "Bees". Look at the numerous "Idol" competitions on the popular telly and the so few "Bee" competitions. Doesn't it say something about ourselves? That we prefer to receive than to earn? That we prefer to be entitled than to struggle to achieve?
I think we want to be worshipped, revered and even feared for our inheritance than to be respected for what we do or have achieved and prefer the idle life of an idol to the busy - and sometimes unavailing - life of a bee.
What would you rather be - an Idol or a Bee? As for me, I would rather be (pun unintended) the latter, and would prefer to die of overheating in a jolly scrum - preferably one involving close proximity to, and a lot of wiggling from, Mallika Sherawat.
There is a considerable body of research on how the bees do what they do. How they find the flowers which hold their food, how they communicate the flying directions to that spot through a complex and ritual dance setting out the flying directions and distance, how they defend their hives housing their queen and the future generations. All these are amazing feats. They way they deal with invaders is no less amazing and is based on selfless team work - they do this by literally baking the invader with the heat generated by vigorous wiggling of their bodies. While humans are known to do this in some sports like rugby (the piling atop the invader), or at night clubs (the vigorous wiggling to generate heat in the other), doing both simultaneously is normally not known among humans. Goes to show how far behind bees we humans are in some respects.
Their direction-finding is nothing short of miraculous.We have difficulty in giving and indeed understanding directions in two dimensions. We are quite imprecise with our "lefts" and "rights", to the point of pointing to left even as we say and mean right. . There is even a joke - quite accurate, I might add - about how accountants can give you precise directions which are perfectly uninformative and utterly unusable like most information they provide. Bees' instructions to their fellows is a three-dimensional flying map involving not only distance, but the angle to the sun as well. If you factor in the fact that angle of the sun changes with the time of the day, the complexity of their mapping abilities becomes clear.
Their hives are truly architectural masterpieces. The shape of their cells - hexagonal- made of what is essentially soft and pliant wax acquires enormous strength when put together and can support huge colonies weighing tens of kilo grams. Many modern day structures, including advanced armour, use honey-comb patterns for strength without paying the penalty in weight. How did the bees figure out that the hexagon is the right shape? How do they then proceed to build it? How did they figure the 3 dimensional polar coordinate system needed for their navigation when even the mathematically adept humans find it difficult? Surely their language and communication must be very sophisticated indeed to communicate the complex building instructions and flying directions.
A bee society is complex. There are queens, generals, workers, and eggs and larvae which need protecting. Each one knows its allotted role and plays it perfectly in order that the whole may survive and indeed flourish. Some get killed defending their colony but no one seeks a "safe posting", away from the front lines. There is no resentment against the allotted social roles, nor against the real or perceived inequities in this social order.
Idols on the other hand are a different matter. Usually they are lifeless except when shedding alleged tears of blood or milk depending on your religious persuasion. They don't move, in one, two, or three dimensions, save when enterprising felons cart them off to be sold in far shores for profit. They don't mean anything by themselves - they only have meanings , powers and persona attributed to them by us. Idols are literally and figuratively human creations; they are expressions in stone of our imagination.
They are pretty useless too. Admittedly they do help us structure time as when we visit them to unburden ourselves and seek blessings and material gains, breaking a coconut or two in the process. Some times we even propitiate them with offerings thus attempting to tempt them with a bit of human corruption. They only are what we think they are and thus can be one thing or another depending on ones point of view. They sometimes are also convenient political pawns. In their defence it must be said that they are all uniformly good looking - obviously because they are meant to be easy on the eye. Idols do not achieve anything; they inherit their qualities from whoever made them.
Why then do we have so many aspirants to be "Idols" and so few to be "Bees". Look at the numerous "Idol" competitions on the popular telly and the so few "Bee" competitions. Doesn't it say something about ourselves? That we prefer to receive than to earn? That we prefer to be entitled than to struggle to achieve?
I think we want to be worshipped, revered and even feared for our inheritance than to be respected for what we do or have achieved and prefer the idle life of an idol to the busy - and sometimes unavailing - life of a bee.
What would you rather be - an Idol or a Bee? As for me, I would rather be (pun unintended) the latter, and would prefer to die of overheating in a jolly scrum - preferably one involving close proximity to, and a lot of wiggling from, Mallika Sherawat.
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