What it is like to be a Bee? Do Insects Have Consciousness?

There is an interesting bit of science happening about the consciousness of invertebrates such as insects. It centers around using computer modeling in conjunction with known anatomy to see how the brain and nervous system of insects developed and whether they have consciousness or not.  For a long time science has tended to see insects as akin to programmed robots, an idea some of you may find kind of sad an lacking for creatures that appear to be so complicated.  Simpler than us, the study finds, yes, but also that these ancient life forms also may suggest how consciousness evolved over vast time scales.

Using the insect's analogue to the human's midbrain, biologist Andrew Barron and philosophy professor Colin Klein have found that the activity being displayed there suggests that an individual insect has some sort of sense of itself within it's environment: where it is, what's around it, and how it needs to respond.

With this, Barron and Klein propose that the basis of consciousness may very well be traced back to the Cambrian period, a 56 million-year period that started 541 million years ago, when the first invertebrates first developed.(1)

Insect awareness may be debated by materialistic science, but as our ability to develop new methods for probing consciousness, we may be able to begin to bump up against still larger implications for our understanding of what consciousness is.  We can hope.  The source goes on to explain that,

"While insect brains are minute – the largest are far smaller than a grain of rice – new research has shown that they perform the same ancient functions as the human midbrain.
The insect central complex ties together memory, homeostatic needs and perception in the same integrated way. This integration has the same function as well: to enable effective action selection.

In the bee, this detailed representation of the animal in space is what allows it to perform remarkable feats of navigation. Thus, while insect brains and human brains could not look more different, they have structures that do the same thing, for the same reason and so support the same kind of first-person perspective.

That is strong reason to think that insects and other invertebrates are conscious. Their experience of the world is not as rich or as detailed as our experience – our big neocortex adds something to life! But it still feels like something to be a bee.

If this argument is correct, studying insects is a powerful way to study basic forms of consciousness. The honeybee brain has less than a million neurons, which is roughly five orders of magnitude fewer than a human. That is a lot easier to study." (2)

Sources - (1)  http://www.unknowncountry.com/
                (2) http://theconversation.com/what-it-is-like-to-be-a-bee-insects-can-teach-us-about-the-origins-of-consciousness-57792

The Turning

It happens
in our world
in long-scaled cycles
that our inner lives
express something
that continues on the outside
that we each agree to explore here…..

The Light is about to change…

The Collective is getting ready for a new game
a new way
a radical turn
it will seem
to usher in a new age.

This happens in cycles
this turning
that we our souls direct
so that the light in us
might be perfected.

For reasons most will not appreciate
our adventure for the last five millenials
have taken us into the rational
as we became untrusting of our intuition
dull but smart
and forgot the deeper waters
of our knowing, being, and love.

It was not for naught
but it had consequences
for all of us died a little
on the day when we made our last turn
and lost something
in order to gain something…

We did this without grace.
We fell into pits of dark
and damnable confusions.
We forgot ourselves
as empires rose
and we forgot the tender knowing
that we called
the feminine….
in all of us.

As hard as that turning was
and as much as we may want to visit our wounds
I say to you
that this next turning
will be the sweetest one of all
since the Beginning.

For this Turning will be for each of us
and will swallow us whole
in its embrace.
It will dismember us
and take out our bones
and put in their place
a metal of greater hue and temper
and will make of us
beings ready for the greatest love
we have ever known.

We are about to change
each of us
and its process is underway
right now
in cities and towns
and the shimmer cannot be denied
and if denied
not for much longer.

The crustal plates are to realign
in our hearts
and our souls.
We have thirsted for thousands of years
and it is this shock of thirst
that has made of each of us
perfect vessels for the flood
that is about to come.

We have thirsted,
each of us
for Her
and we have been made perfect for the union
that our souls now
yawning wide
are ready to embrace
to take in
and be taken by.

We are about ready now
to see a great folding of the race
into a new way
and it will seem to take years to unfurl
but in looking back
it will have gone by in a wink.

SO I say to each of you;
be of great joy
for we now are each pregnant
with the possibility of Her
and it is this that we birth
not a woman
nor a man
but a fully equipped human
ready for the star nations
for hearing sweet music
touching sound
and smelling light.
We are the new humans
lurking inside of the old
a rebirth that is moving
with great certainty and pace.
What was impossible
will become likely
as new horizons emerge
as we continue to balance
between disaster and light.