Social Biology (or Bound By Dulosis)
ISBN-10: 0674454901
“The mind makes the world in which it lives.” E.O. Wilson (1971)
Starting at fifteen,
adopting a priestly life
from fieldwork to fame.
Fondness for ants in amber
in fide scientiam.
Did you remain cloistered in your rooms
like an ascetic finding pleasure in restraint
a Lucretius of Sociobiology
investigating the way things were
as well as the way things are
not separate but connected
as solitary is connected to eusocial
and Polistes to Polybia
and Euclid to Mirzakhani?
You a storyteller not a mythmaker
a cenobite in scientific guise
aged by the ergonomic business of grants
and research and writing and papers or books
riving colleagues into separate classes or castes
with you and Hölldobler on top of them all
secure that your own kind honors patriarchy
above the societies of your ants always active
never able to afford contemplation
or forays beyond the local regime.
What codes prompted you to specialize on hexapod labor
divided like a Frau specializing on shopping or cleaning
while Herr divides his time between the laboratory and the gym
both places of commerce whether in Cologne or Cambridge
both places driven by testosterone's tendency to dominate the other type
dominating in some societies alien to altruism in the insect mode
as females form the nest and all its roles
succeeding in stunning contrast to their coevals with chaulky spines
separate domains
neither sex coexisting peacefully as matriarch or patriarch
since conflict releases ego from its boundaries.
I belong to a caste of workers acting for their own type
and types like them
wearing men's boots and gold hoop earrings
complement to the hues of their shoulders
strong as workers hauling detritus from their nests
as I cleansed my synapses of him, a task requiring months, no, years
memories persisting in some disarray, out of order
as you seemed to summon Hecate
rejecting, or, appearing to reject, Hamilton's c,
b being less of a loss in any formulation.
You know the gold ring encircles a formula
even though empiricists are the true heroes
the fact-checkers keeping Theory on the path to confidence
or, if not confidence, clarity of motive and function
an Atta foray on a clear night.
“You would make a worthy parasite.
May I be your host?”
a couplet spoken to too many consorts
iterations of manic emotions
nearly similar guises
on continents as different as South and West
and cities as alien as Letícia and Salzburg
but only one of you was called, “Patrón”
the one never forgotten
like the hostage-taker constantly on the other's mind.
Using energy that might succor herself
a contract that our kind calls “Love”
though insects know only slaves
as acervorum serves sublaevis in Germany
caring for the parasite's young
a task reserved for Patrón's other host
in another city, in another country
his supercolony extending across thousands of miles
connected by airplanes and radio towers
not limited by tiny legs moving in single file behind a leader.
I stayed exhausted, but, then, I was a caste of one, a man's host.
It might be easier to work with sisters and to serve one's own type.
Ant workers must have the best of all possible worlds.
Human families are polydomous
scattered yet still connected
across scales too massive for pheromones to span
though my senses recall him close to me in our humble cabina
lying parallel or not
anything but humble
our families nested thousands of miles away
secure that we were not a family
and never would be yoked through a new generation
or through some other holy contract
preventing us from gamboling serious contests with the highest stakes
and from morphing from pedestrian to universal
but, then, I could not sit at the High Table with him
though some reflect upon a negress wanting to
predisposed instead by ancient contracts advancing dulosis
and the fate of chance encounters
over the predictability of domestic life.
Once I saw a video of New York during rush hour
a high-speed moving picture of humans striding, or, running
in apparently random walk
ants scurrying in, out, around a perturbed nest
expending energy proportional to size
as humans do when not projected ahead in time
both types bound by Kleiber's Law and temperature
confounded by a constant
related to that other rule that you've rejected
where b and c expressed in terms of reproduction
will be defined as functions of Brown's theory
advancing our claims on the Unification Project
treating Solitary, Quasisocial, Semisocial, Eusocial
as states subsuming minimal and maximal rates
with each ergonomic component making its contribution
summation of energy-producing genotypes and phenotypes
conserved and reprogrammed from ants to man.
A robo-bee guided by my circuitry
semi-autonomous since that night in San José
a humanoid sitting opposite him at dinner
my fingers awkwardly grasping a fork
skewering chunks of brothy bass
both bitter and sweet with lemongrass and honey
made by bees near Bagaces
my hand steered remotely
powered by signals pulsing from his optic nerve
striking my programmed hand
avoiding an angle that might unveil my face
expressionless but wondering how I would return
to Cañas from Alajuela at 3 a.m.
My brain detached from self-induced intention
sensing that I was “winging it”
as scientists do while waiting for the next data point
humanoids as tethered to society
as an Apis flying alone to a blossom.
If not an individual, what?
If social behavior is a subterfuge
then selfish behavior is a hungry lion looking me in the eyes
calculating her odds with Hebbian precision
knowing in some connectome of her cortex that
without a good algorithm and a share of luck
potential for success may be as costly as failure.
A female lion and a worker ant are not alone
encumbered instead
by the energy of others in a pride or a colony
like other mammals or insects dominating terrestrial landscapes
or like ants fixed in amber
superior in ancient regimes arid or wet.
