Arts, Ants and Sonic the Hedgehog

The line in High Fidelity (the book) goes like this: "I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want do it for myself." It comes near the end of the book. For those with only knowledge of the movie, it would be in the bar scene, where Rob asks Laura to marry him.



For those of us who love music - for those of us who love any kind of art form purely and with great fervor - we understand what Rob is talking about in that passage. It's a bit inexplicable how a moment of music, or a scene in a movie, a brush stroke in a painting can change your mind, but it can.



Some people have a deeper connection to art than others. And that sounds a bit pretentious, but its an unavoidable fact. Some people's eyes well up talking about Shakespeare, others can't help but get impassioned about Picasso's move into cubism, High Fidelity's Rob explodes about Solomon Burke compared Art Garfunkel. Of course, Rob can't handle the real bits of life, which he refers to in the book as "the stuff that stops you floating away," but a lot of people who do have this connection to art also can deal with that clutter.

What makes that connection? Why is it that some people just can't be bothered to care about the emotional nuances of a TV show like Mad Men compared to reality TV tripe? Why do some people just need to go to the movies to see shit blow up and Megan Fox run without a bra, but others need to see something new and artistically engaging?



I suppose the real question is, "What makes people so fundamentally different?" It goes beyond art. People live their day-to-day lives with vastly different priorities, and we're the only species on the planet that does so.

One person is satisfied simply going to work every day, coming back home every night, and going through the same routine day in and day out. Another person needs a constant change going on from one day, week, month, year to the next. Another person keeps their home life grounded and their work life dynamic. Or vice versa.

Consider a hedgehog.

A hedgehog's priorities don't change from day to day. A hedgehog's priorities don't change from lifetime to lifetime. But, more importantly, they don't change from hedgehog to hedgehog. Their basic goals are to find food, shelter and mates, avoid predators, find golden rings and Chaos emeralds, and destroy Dr. Robotnik.



And every hedgehog has those same priorities (how do you think there was a new one around every time you died?). Even more impressive is the concept of an ant or termite, who operate as part of an essential group consciousness. Ant colonies aren't independent, the actions of a single ant are determined by group around it. What we would call instincts makes up their entire thought pattern, and while that may sound limiting, it causes a group of ants to act with military-like precision, an entire group of creatures acting as one.

So, is it more or less impressive to have individuality? Is it more or less impressive to have free will?

There is an elegance to simplicity we often forget. Ants aren't as intelligent as people, obviously, but they act more properly in accordance with how to survive. Ants work together to preserve their existence as a single ant, as a group of ants, as a colony, as a species. People are too different to do so. Even when dividing our political ranks up into two parties, there are too many conflicts of interest and conflicts of priority to do anything effective as far as protecting our own.

So, there are benefits to a simple mind, benefits to relying purely on instinct, because they allow that species to work en masse to do nothing but benefit their own.

But there are benefits to independence as well. Self-interest is the one that people point to most often, which is the idea of looking out for yourself when the needs of the group run in opposition to your own personal needs, but there's more than that.

Sometimes I just like having a great chord change in a song change my mind.