Book 180 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Open Your Eyes to The World Around You!

Book – Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godrey-Smith

Book Description: Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind - and on our own.

Reflection:

I and 2 other friends, James and James, regularly get together with the intention of recording a podcast. These are 2 of the smartest, intelligent, and most opinionated people I know in this world, and we always have some serious fun and random conversations when we get together. The 3 of us find a comfy space, grab a few drinks, pick some topics, and then let it rip. These conversations, in our opinion, are hilarious, off the wall, and a ton of fun. They always divulge into a fun argument just for argument’s sake. Inevitably, one of us will get a little to heated during each topic where you find yourself passionately defending a position that you really don’t even care about and getting a little heated which would prompt another to say, “Dude, why are you yelling?”

We decided to call the podcast “Why Are You Yelling?” in homage to this feeling of getting a little too irrationally heated and passionate about topics that none of us really care about, and these conversations are always a blast.

We’ve gotten together many times over the years, turned the recorders on, and had a blast with a night of off the wall conversations. Unfortunately, we’ve never officially turned the recorded sessions into an actual edited podcast for public consumption, and I’m not sure if we ever will, but at this point I think we are all okay with it.

On one of these “Why are You Yelling” debate nights, we were passionately discussing whatever the random topic was when James dropped the knowledge bomb about Octopus’ supposedly having consciousness. He said something like, “Well, is it ethical to kill or eat an Octopus knowing that their minds can process things like a human?” I replied with something like, “what are you talking about”? He said, “I’m serious, go check out the videos on the internet…Octopus’ can think, feel, have consciousness, and process things like us”.

That was all it took for me to hear to become intrigued and curious to learn more. I had never heard anything like that in my life! Up until this point in my life, and on this YOML journey, I had always assumed that humans were unique in this world with our abilities to have thoughts about thoughts and experience consciousness. I immediately went to the google to search for a book about Octopus’ to learn more, settled on Other Minds, and by the next morning I found myself diving deep into the book to learn more about these curious little creatures.

I was about 5 or 6 months into my YOML journey at the time of this conversation and most of my daily learning and books I was consuming since Emilia had passed away had been mainly centered on better understanding myself and deepening my knowledge of humanity. I had been focused on hearing human stories of strength and resilience, understanding how our minds worked, understanding how our emotions worked, how our cultures were built, and how and why we communicate with each other.

This comment from James, and subsequent reading of Other Minds, marked a turning point and evolutionary jump for me on this whole journey. After I read this book, I came to feel a sense of greater connectedness with all the wonders and living creatures of this amazing world. It opened my eyes to amazing world around me and not just within my own mind. I thought, if this is true about Octopus’, what else don’t I know? That is what sent me down a rabbit hole of reading books like The Botany of Desire, The Secret Lives of Trees, The Entangled Life, I Contain Multitudes, The Hidden Lives of Animals, Eager, the Secret Lives of Beavers, Cooked, Rain, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, On the Origen of Species, and so on. I’ve never looked back and I’m more fascinated now that ever with other lifeforms in this world and beyond.

What I discovered was that while humans are unique and special, so is everything else in this world! Everything, and I mean everything, in this world has a purpose, plays a role, and we can’t do life as we know it without one another doing our unique part. We are all interconnected and dependent upon each other to keep this thing called Earth going.

We all have something unique and special to offer to this world and we can all can learn so much from one another as well if we are willing to open our eyes.

Question: What do you see and feel when you look at all the other life around you?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godrey-Smith