Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. Now, I don't know how many times you have orbited the sun, but I've gone around it enough times to notice a pattern: Every year in late winter, I feel what generations of my European ancestors felt. They felt cold. They felt hungry. They felt grim. Winter in northern climates is so long and so hard that every creature goes into slow motion - or freezes to death. By this time of year food is so scarce that the only thing keeping you alive is your anticipation of spring. You make it through this hardship by revering and honoring anything that helps you stay alive. Fasting becomes sacred to you because it's better than starving. And fasting, if it's done properly, has health benefits. After all, toxins bond to fat molecules. So by fasting, you can purify. And in late winter, purification through fasting is a tradition the world over.

Last week I began fasting. What I'm giving up wasn't food for my body, but was food for my ego. And I didn't have to decide what to give up. The decision was made for me; it arrived in my daily Science News email.

Scientists are shocked to find that a brain is NOT necessary for intelligence. Evidence of this has been coming from many directions for years now. In the latest news, scientists experimented with slime mold. They placed oat flakes (a slime mold treat) in the same pattern as the pattern of cities around Tokyo. The slime mold explored the oat flakes, spreading itself evenly around them. Then, it refined and improved its access to the food. After about a day, it built a network of inter-connected, nutrient-ferrying tubes in a design almost identical to the rail system around Tokyo. It did this in far less time than it took engineers to design the rail system. And it did this WITHOUT A BRAIN! Now scientists are developing models based on slime mold behavior - models that may lead to the design of more efficient, adaptable networks for transportation, exploration, disaster-relief, and for understanding things like blood circulation.

Yes, I'm fasting from a belief that made me feel superior to creatures whose brains are small - or non-existent. As I drop the notion that my intelligence resides in my brain, I'm noticing the intelligence distributed throughout my body: hands that know which keys to punch on a keypad when my brain can't remember this; a body that knows how to ride a bike, even though I couldn't tell you how it's done; antennae that read people's body language, listen to their tone of voice, and alert me to when they're lying.

If all your intelligence were concentrated in one place, wouldn't you have a bottleneck, an overly centralized authority? Wouldn't de-centralized intelligence spread throughout your body be more capable of adapting to change?

Yes, as I fast during this late-winter, I'm pondering the possibility that our natural intelligence is de-centralized. IT'S A NO-BRAINER!

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


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