First, Do No Harm

My daughter and I had an argument about the definition of intelligence yesterday. We were on a walk at the nature preserve across the street from us. Because the speed limit is 50 and the road is busy, and because our dog is a bit unruly, we drove there in a large vehicle filled with our family of four and the dog.

We walked a well-worn path over expansive fields of wan grasses, avoiding the giant patches of mud that dot the New England landscape in late March, stopping every now and then to let the dog sniff some interesting scent. My daugther marveled at his insistent and prodigious sense of smell and asserted that humans are not necessarily the most intelligence animals. Given the utter disaster that is our country’s response to our current global pandemic, this was a somewhat difficult statement to argue with. But I had to.

“Well, technically, we are the most intelligent animals,” I said.

She would not concede the point, pointing out that humans are pretty mediocre at a lot of things: in addition to our dog having a far better sense of smell than we do, cats have quicker reaction times, dolphins’ communication is so complex we can’t understand it, and certain types of lizards, birds and bugs have multiple times the capacity to perceive color.

“Sure, but really the definition of intelligence is the ability to process and synthesize information and apply it to new situations. We are very good at that,” I countered.

“Yeah, but really, knowing how to make an atom bomb is one thing, actually making them is just not smart.”

“But ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ are two different things, and smart is more of a cultural thing. Intelligence can actually be measured based on the complexity of the synaptic network in the brain and the ability to learn. That’s why they call what computers are doing artificial intelligence. AI might actually surpass humans in intelligence pretty soon, actually.”

My daughter was frustrated, pointing out that she had taken a class on this in college and wasn’t “just pulling this out of my ass”.

I reassured her that I was not in any way suggesting that she was pulling anything out of her ass, and that she had a valid point about there being different types of intelligence, but that overall, taking a holistic view of things, humans were at the pinnacle of what is defined as intelligence.

“But that doesn’t make us any better!” she said, pivoting to a point she could win by insinuating that I had equated intelligence with worth. It was a familiar tactic, and I was perfectly happy to concede the point.

“God no!” I said, “it definitely doesn’t make us any better.”

Upon further reflection, though, I think this IS the main problem with humans. Most of us do think we’re better because we are intelligent, and though rationally I know this, my own actions tell a different story. I may not be making or dropping an atomic bomb every day, but I do utilize my (and my species’) intelligence to make myself more comfortable at the expense of pretty much all other living creatures. No one and no thing is effectively getting in humans’ way as we pave over larger and larger swaths of earth, cut down the rain forest, capture all the fish in the sea, dig giant holes in the ground that we fill with chemicals to extract minerals and gases and oils, build bigger and bigger cities, send planes into the sky and satellites into orbit, dam the most powerful rivers in the world, create continent-sized islands of plastic in the ocean, develop body-protecting and preserving drugs that allow us to live longer and healthier lives, and develop a communication network that allows us to get information on any subject we can think of in a matter of seconds.

(“Hey, Siri!”)

I think this pandemic (which, incidentally is from the Greek word ‘demos’ that is also at the root of “democracy” and means people) has caused so much consternation because we humans of high intelligence are not used to being threatened by anything other than other humans. We cannot argue a pandemic away, or vote it out, or lock it up. We can’t launch a media campaign to render it irrelevant; we can’t hire a hit man, or bribe or bully it, or try a little quid pro quo. This stupid little, itty bitty corona-virus is not even technically alive. How fitting that this thing is named after a crown, fit for a king, ready to subdue us.

It has been suggested that maybe the pandemic is our comeuppance for treating the world with such disrespect; that perhaps the earth, known variously and throughout the ages as Gaia, Ala, Ki, Geb, Erde, Tellus, Asase Yaa, Prithvi, Danu, Mokosh, and Coatlicue to name but a few, is trying to get us out from under her skin, shed us off, sweat us out, throw us up to purge us from her system. Maybe we are the virus: billions of replicating little kings and queens infecting her airways, her waterways, and her skin with our poison. Maybe the earth is intelligent in the way of plants and animals: not through deliberately planning for the future, or analyzing data, or applying previously learned information to novel situations, but by simply being a well-regulated, interconnected, highly complex system.

Primum non nocere – first, do no harm – is the philosophical underpinning of medicine since the time of Hippocrates, the idea being that we must be careful that we don’t administer a cure that is worse than the disease. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that we let Covid-19 (or the next pandemic) take its course and wipe us all out. But I am suggesting that we recognize that we, too, are a dis-ease upon the planet and that to protect ourselves, we have to protect our host. In the 14^th century, the Great Plague killed upwards of 200 million people over the course of four devastating years, or about half of the human population. It changed everything: there were labor shortages, massive population relocations, changes in the climate, and a Renaissance in arts and culture focused more on earthly experience than the spiritual afterlife.

I’d like to think that we can use our impressive neural and communication networks to re-organize ourselves during and after this pandemic. I’d like to think that we can learn a thing or two from our fellow species: to use our senses to learn about the world under our feet, to see how glorious Mother Earth is, and how bountiful, to listen more carefully to each other, to rest more, consume less, use only what we need, share the leftovers, pick up after ourselves, slow down, and abide by the principle of primum non nocere – first, do no harm.

We’ll see.

(Note: The names of the deities all female but for one come from respectively, Ancient Greece, Nigeria, Sumer, Egypt, Germany, the Roman Empire, West Africa, the Hindi tradition, the Celtic tradition, the Slavic tradition, and the Aztecs.)