myself: Why the bees?
me: Ants would do just fine.
myself: Go on.
Following elaborates the way I think we think. We experience things, collecting information which is compartmentalized by the brain. Forming memories. We learn. We can recall those memories and can link them, coming up with a coherent story, thinking of scenarios that have not happened. The capability of abstraction. We think. That is, our brain is capable of abstraction through the very coherent stories it comes up with. Stories with assumptions and biases, full of ignorance. So is the nature of abstraction.
There is one other thing. We can review the coherent stories we form based on past experiences, constantly reviewing what we do, being introspective of the coherent stories i.e the abstraction of brain.
And thus the complicated world of humans came to be. Yes, bees don’t have lawyers. We do. We have all sorts of imagined order. Brain does a lot of things. It can think of things that have happened. But more powerful is the fact that, it can think of things that can happen, through abstraction.
Suppose a forager, in search of food, wandering, finds a tree with a new fruit in a place new to him. He plucks some, eats them, and goes back to his resting place. All along, he experienced new things. He walked a new path, found a tasty food resource. New information was memorized. As soon as he’ll think of that particular fruit, the related information will cross his head with images and words(if he did acknowledge them with something he could murmur), even the taste. Day 2. He’s hungry but now goes straight to the tree, brain helping him with the path. But as he reaches the tree, something different happens. A strange animal appears. Never having encountered the animal, the forager stays put, confused. The pointed teeth of this particular animal reminds him of another animal which had once bit him. The forager backs off with a pumping heart. He goes back to his resting place. Next day, he’s more hungry but now, rather than going to that place at once, he thinks. What happens during this short period is, words(maybe), images(definitely) cross his head. He comes up with a coherent story(based on his previous experiences. Not one, possibly multiple). This happens innately. Something brain finds important. In this, as stated previously, brain works independently towards the best of its host. It goes through all the scenarios, favorable and non-favorable. That can exist, or can’t. All from various combination of the compartmentalized information. But this story is only good as all his past experiences up to that point. The different scenarios contain assumptions. Will the animal be there. Maybe yes, maybe not. If he goes there will he return home hurt, or with the tasty fruit. And that’s not all there is to it. The coherent stories are reviewed. He doesn’t know any better but this helps gets rid of the fallacies of the coherent stories. Like tackling the assumptions that maybe the animal is in fact friendly.
Now, this coherent story is the very basis of the abstraction we’re capable of. Pondering about things that don’t exist. One apparent consequence seems to be the existence of god.