own reflections in the dishpan's
shiny aluminum. The more sophisticated tadpoles might sometimes catch a glimpse
of me with my magnification glass looking down at them -- this huge eye-in-the-sky,
the God of Providence who thumps them cornbread -- and they would produce
tadpole priests and tadpole mullahs and tadpole rabbis who would assiduously
and interminably interpret and reinterpret the meanings of every little thing I
did.
And if there were an Einstein among
them, I suppose he would just keep quiet and write in obscure forums,
suggesting that it is hardly to be expected that the God of the Cosmos would be
at the beck and call of every wiggly little tadpole in a dishpan... though in truth
it is quite wonderful for this brief moment in eternity to be granted the
perspective of a tadpole in sparkling water temporarily pooled on a random,
laughing hermit's warped and moldy, falling-apart, outside table.
*****
IGUANA FIGHTS, MONEY & ENLIGHTENMENT
During the half hour of watching
two iguanas fight I found myself thinking about this question: Why did nature
create this species so that males must fight, and subordinate males on the
periphery must suffer such frustration?
Of course I knew Darwin's answer, for here I was seeing
"survival of the fittest" at work -- evolution being powered by
"natural selection." The strongest, most dynamic male would get to
pass on his genes to the next generation, while the weaker or less adapted
males would not.
Since I am on record as regarding
"Nature as Bible" -- as believing that enlightened human behavior
should be harmonious with paradigms observable in nature -- one might assume
that witnessing this iguana fight might convince me that human competition of
all kinds is good. Since the iguana fight was natural, maybe I should champion
the highly competitive free market system, and maybe I should even agree with
the claim made by many evangelical Christian groups that material wealth is a
reward from the Creator for hustling.
There are different levels of
interpretation for everything. At one level, two male iguanas fighting over
territory and females are indeed like two capitalists competing over resources
and customers. On the other hand, fighting iguanas and consequent rewards and
punishments are not ends in themselves. They are no more than the means by
which the evolutionary process fuels itself through natural selection.
Evolution is the greater thing here, with greater implications for my
philosophy of life, not fighting. Therefore, what is the meaning of evolution?
The only way I can
set my teeth into that question is to try to identify trends in the examples of
evolution I see around me every day. After all these years of