In the coffee shop, two talk.
“Says here that oceanographers caught a giant squid on camera.” *
“You and your science stuff. Okay, they videoed a squid. What’s the big deal?”
“Well, you know that that’s the model for the Kraken, the monster large enough to capsize a whale boat, fight with Jules Verne’s Nautilus, and deep-six pirates. You have to have seen the movies about the Kraken. At least, you have to know that giant squid swim deep down and that when a dead one shows up on a beach, people gather in amazement, marine biologists scurry over the sands to gather up the body to make measurements and do autopsies, and newspapers print the pictures, or now, I guess, people upload their videos onto YouTube with titles like ‘Unknown Monster Found on Beach’.”
“Okay, yes, I know big squid aren’t swimming with snorkeling tourists on the shallow reefs of the Dry Tortugas. And yes, I confess, I’ve seen that old 20,000 Leagues under the Sea with Kirk Douglas and the recent Pirates of the Caribbean one with the Kraken. And I know that giant squids are big, but not Hollywood big.”
“Yeah, but some are as long as an eighteen-wheeler’s trailer. And their eyes are supposed to be as big as basketballs. But then, I guess they live mostly in the dark 3,000 or more feet under or the semidark in the ocean’s twilight zone that starts about 600 feet down.”
“So, back to your science article. You say oceanographers filmed a giant squid alive.”
“Yep, and the reason that that’s an accomplishment is that the trick they used can be used to capture other giant squid on camera, maybe even capture a living squid and bring it to the surface for study.”
“I’ll bite. What was the trick?”
“Turned down the submersible’s lights, in fact, changed them to the red end of the spectrum. Those giant eyes evolved to see blue bioluminescent flashing, so in addition to using red light, the scientists used some flashing blue to mimic the jellyfish squid eat. I guess all those previous attempts to find and film the squid failed because the creatures saw the bright lights coming at them from those submersibles. The squid they videoed in the study tried to take the blue-flashing lights from the sub. Guess it was fooled. I suppose for the squid seeing in blue light makes evolutionary sense. You know, the ocean and the sky appear blue because the blue end of the spectrum gets scattered, whereas the red end gets absorbed. Squid supposedly have monochromatic eyes.”
“Now let me guess. You’re going to derive some lesson from this. Right?”
“You know me. I’d rather you drew one on your own; but since you asked, I have one to offer. It’s easier to get people to say yes to something when they can’t see part of what’s there. It’s the magician’s trick, the lawyer’s trick, the ideologue’s trick, the politician’s trick, the propagandist’s trick. Take advantage of a natural blindness while enticing one with an apparent truth or distraction, the flimsy wiggling jellyfish that isn’t really a jellyfish, but is rather just a mimicry. Any of us can be fooled at times. Any can be tricked into saying ‘Yes’ or ‘Aye’ because we don’t fully see what is in front of us, and that is coupled with seeing what the other person wants us to see and knows we can’t see. I think of the terrible bombing of Dresden in World War II. No one knows the exact number of people killed in the Allied air raids, maybe 6,000, but the German propaganda machine turned that into 60,000, a number that shocked the citizens in the Allied countries, even England. Amazing! The Germans were in the process of killing millions systematically; they had bombed numerous cities, including London most notably, with their bombers and their V-1 and V-2 rockets. Yet, somehow, people in the Allied countries were horrified by Dresden’s destruction. Selective vision, I guess, duped by the light from fires in Dresden while ignoring the fires from German bombs and Holocaust furnaces.”
“Ah! Your lesson. I knew you’d have one.”
“I could, of course, say more.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, since you ask, I would like to point out that there’s a lot of that going on right now in various countries, especially so in the United States and European countries.”
“What?”
“It’s a complex set of responses. People ignore what is visibly invisible.”
“That’s gobbledygook. You didn’t say ‘visibly invisible,’ I hope.”
“I don’t know how else to put it. I’m looking at this in two ways, from the perspective of the scientists who filmed the squid and from the perspective of the squid. Think about it. Giant squid are invisible ordinarily, but we’ve seen them. Giant squid see only monochromatically, so they don’t see the red light that shines on them. It’s plainly there, but they don’t see it.”
“There has to be some wire loose in that brain of yours. Oxymorons like ‘visibly invisible’ don’t really make sense. What are you getting at?
“I’m thinking of how people often see through monochromatic eyes, eyes incapable of seeing the full spectrum. We don’t see everything mostly because we can’t. As you and I have said before in this same café, it’s the brain, and not the eyes, that see. Now, I’m saying that we can’t see what’s before us because we let preconceptions, distractions, and Ego blot out what is embarrassing to us personally and what is revealing to our enemies or even to our friends.”
“Revealing?”
“Yes, we don’t want to look at that which exposes us for our hypocrisies, our contradictions, or our errors.”
“Just had a thought. You mean like a professional sports league criticizing one group for alleged biases while saying nothing about a foreign country’s brutal treatment of a minority group.”
“Yes. Everyone in the world knows about the persecution authorized by a government, so it’s one of those visible invisible matters. Go back to World War II. People had at least some peripheral vision of the German atrocities. And now the NBA and he MLB go after a few flashing lights because they’ve recently evolved to see them, like the squid trying to take the blue lights from the submersible because they appear to be bioluminescent flashings of deep-water jellyfish. Meanwhile, the squid can’t see they are being illuminated in red light. That’s what happens to humans who see monochromatically, so to speak. They ignore the visibly invisible conditions around them and chase after the artificial flashings.”
“I think I understand what you’re saying now. Just like using part of the spectrum to illuminate invisibly while using another part of the spectrum to attract the attention of the squid, people use the parts to distract from the whole. That’s part of this generalized popular cry of bias for anyone who takes a contrary stance. We’ve all be trained to see, or should I say we’ve all evolved socially to see only a part and not the whole in any complex social group. I remember reading years ago the story of a woman who in some southern state, maybe Louisana or Mississippi, found that on her official state documents she was listed as ‘Black.’ When she examined her geneology, she discovered that she had a 17% African-American heritage and that she was, therefore, 83% European Caucasian. Nevertheless, the state continued to list her as African-American or whatever the designation at that time might have been, maybe something like ‘Colored.’ So, is a person who is 17% Black actually Black? At what point do we see polychromatically? At what point do we draw the line. Is 90% Caucasian, Caucasian? Does one have to be 100% Caucasian to be Caucasian but only 17% Black to be African-American? What do we do, then, with the genetic fact that all humans derive from Africa, with ancestors that go back 60,000 to 80,000 years and ancestral mitochondrial Mom maybe 200,000 years ago? What if each of us is 1% African? Or 0.005% African? What do we do then? How do we see one another? Do we rank individuals by their percentage of belonging to a group? And if we do, at what percentage do we draw lines? Isn’t it ironic that a species like ours, a species that sees all the wavelengths from indigo to red, actually acts as though we see only monochromatically? What do we do with a President whose father was African and whose mother was Caucasian, a President reared by Caucasian grandparents? How is that President ‘African-American’? Does that mean 50% is the dividing line. That’s a strange teeter totter. Both sides hold equal weights, but one side tips up and the other tips down. Then what of that woman who was 83% Caucasian but who had to be listed by state law as Black because she was 17% African-American?”
“Yep. I guess you’re onto drawing your own lessons. I guess also that we’re all like giant squid, swimming around in the dark or semidark, enticed by flashing lights that we can see while others observe us under the full illumination that we can’t see. Others see us for the monsters that we are, the Krakens that we’ve become, grasping for artificial constructs. We see little though we are bathed in the light they shine, and we take the bait of the artificial lights they use.”
Note:
*Specktor, Brandon. How scientists caught footage of ‘the kraken’ after centries of searching. Livescience. May 1, 2021. Online at https://www.livescience.com/first-footage-giant-squid-jellyfish-lure.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LVS_newsletter&utm_content=LVS_newsletter+&utm_term=2816625&m_i=OguO3tMzbsJG%2Be42PoUWWSJ9JH6Fu2Gw5YMrDqA6mRcaCKF2Vcz_XGvae51wBm1PVLjOl_mX6hefSU%2BjLtsqY3h5PYWIT2QZszn9HGGOO3&lrh=00e6cecd00801376766145b60d8a6556273a450d68f177d27f8a81ef369584e1 Accessed May 2, 2021. Originally published in Live Science.
“Says here that oceanographers caught a giant squid on camera.” *
“You and your science stuff. Okay, they videoed a squid. What’s the big deal?”
“Well, you know that that’s the model for the Kraken, the monster large enough to capsize a whale boat, fight with Jules Verne’s Nautilus, and deep-six pirates. You have to have seen the movies about the Kraken. At least, you have to know that giant squid swim deep down and that when a dead one shows up on a beach, people gather in amazement, marine biologists scurry over the sands to gather up the body to make measurements and do autopsies, and newspapers print the pictures, or now, I guess, people upload their videos onto YouTube with titles like ‘Unknown Monster Found on Beach’.”
“Okay, yes, I know big squid aren’t swimming with snorkeling tourists on the shallow reefs of the Dry Tortugas. And yes, I confess, I’ve seen that old 20,000 Leagues under the Sea with Kirk Douglas and the recent Pirates of the Caribbean one with the Kraken. And I know that giant squids are big, but not Hollywood big.”
“Yeah, but some are as long as an eighteen-wheeler’s trailer. And their eyes are supposed to be as big as basketballs. But then, I guess they live mostly in the dark 3,000 or more feet under or the semidark in the ocean’s twilight zone that starts about 600 feet down.”
“So, back to your science article. You say oceanographers filmed a giant squid alive.”
“Yep, and the reason that that’s an accomplishment is that the trick they used can be used to capture other giant squid on camera, maybe even capture a living squid and bring it to the surface for study.”
“I’ll bite. What was the trick?”
“Turned down the submersible’s lights, in fact, changed them to the red end of the spectrum. Those giant eyes evolved to see blue bioluminescent flashing, so in addition to using red light, the scientists used some flashing blue to mimic the jellyfish squid eat. I guess all those previous attempts to find and film the squid failed because the creatures saw the bright lights coming at them from those submersibles. The squid they videoed in the study tried to take the blue-flashing lights from the sub. Guess it was fooled. I suppose for the squid seeing in blue light makes evolutionary sense. You know, the ocean and the sky appear blue because the blue end of the spectrum gets scattered, whereas the red end gets absorbed. Squid supposedly have monochromatic eyes.”
“Now let me guess. You’re going to derive some lesson from this. Right?”
“You know me. I’d rather you drew one on your own; but since you asked, I have one to offer. It’s easier to get people to say yes to something when they can’t see part of what’s there. It’s the magician’s trick, the lawyer’s trick, the ideologue’s trick, the politician’s trick, the propagandist’s trick. Take advantage of a natural blindness while enticing one with an apparent truth or distraction, the flimsy wiggling jellyfish that isn’t really a jellyfish, but is rather just a mimicry. Any of us can be fooled at times. Any can be tricked into saying ‘Yes’ or ‘Aye’ because we don’t fully see what is in front of us, and that is coupled with seeing what the other person wants us to see and knows we can’t see. I think of the terrible bombing of Dresden in World War II. No one knows the exact number of people killed in the Allied air raids, maybe 6,000, but the German propaganda machine turned that into 60,000, a number that shocked the citizens in the Allied countries, even England. Amazing! The Germans were in the process of killing millions systematically; they had bombed numerous cities, including London most notably, with their bombers and their V-1 and V-2 rockets. Yet, somehow, people in the Allied countries were horrified by Dresden’s destruction. Selective vision, I guess, duped by the light from fires in Dresden while ignoring the fires from German bombs and Holocaust furnaces.”
“Ah! Your lesson. I knew you’d have one.”
“I could, of course, say more.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, since you ask, I would like to point out that there’s a lot of that going on right now in various countries, especially so in the United States and European countries.”
“What?”
“It’s a complex set of responses. People ignore what is visibly invisible.”
“That’s gobbledygook. You didn’t say ‘visibly invisible,’ I hope.”
“I don’t know how else to put it. I’m looking at this in two ways, from the perspective of the scientists who filmed the squid and from the perspective of the squid. Think about it. Giant squid are invisible ordinarily, but we’ve seen them. Giant squid see only monochromatically, so they don’t see the red light that shines on them. It’s plainly there, but they don’t see it.”
“There has to be some wire loose in that brain of yours. Oxymorons like ‘visibly invisible’ don’t really make sense. What are you getting at?
“I’m thinking of how people often see through monochromatic eyes, eyes incapable of seeing the full spectrum. We don’t see everything mostly because we can’t. As you and I have said before in this same café, it’s the brain, and not the eyes, that see. Now, I’m saying that we can’t see what’s before us because we let preconceptions, distractions, and Ego blot out what is embarrassing to us personally and what is revealing to our enemies or even to our friends.”
“Revealing?”
“Yes, we don’t want to look at that which exposes us for our hypocrisies, our contradictions, or our errors.”
“Just had a thought. You mean like a professional sports league criticizing one group for alleged biases while saying nothing about a foreign country’s brutal treatment of a minority group.”
“Yes. Everyone in the world knows about the persecution authorized by a government, so it’s one of those visible invisible matters. Go back to World War II. People had at least some peripheral vision of the German atrocities. And now the NBA and he MLB go after a few flashing lights because they’ve recently evolved to see them, like the squid trying to take the blue lights from the submersible because they appear to be bioluminescent flashings of deep-water jellyfish. Meanwhile, the squid can’t see they are being illuminated in red light. That’s what happens to humans who see monochromatically, so to speak. They ignore the visibly invisible conditions around them and chase after the artificial flashings.”
“I think I understand what you’re saying now. Just like using part of the spectrum to illuminate invisibly while using another part of the spectrum to attract the attention of the squid, people use the parts to distract from the whole. That’s part of this generalized popular cry of bias for anyone who takes a contrary stance. We’ve all be trained to see, or should I say we’ve all evolved socially to see only a part and not the whole in any complex social group. I remember reading years ago the story of a woman who in some southern state, maybe Louisana or Mississippi, found that on her official state documents she was listed as ‘Black.’ When she examined her geneology, she discovered that she had a 17% African-American heritage and that she was, therefore, 83% European Caucasian. Nevertheless, the state continued to list her as African-American or whatever the designation at that time might have been, maybe something like ‘Colored.’ So, is a person who is 17% Black actually Black? At what point do we see polychromatically? At what point do we draw the line. Is 90% Caucasian, Caucasian? Does one have to be 100% Caucasian to be Caucasian but only 17% Black to be African-American? What do we do, then, with the genetic fact that all humans derive from Africa, with ancestors that go back 60,000 to 80,000 years and ancestral mitochondrial Mom maybe 200,000 years ago? What if each of us is 1% African? Or 0.005% African? What do we do then? How do we see one another? Do we rank individuals by their percentage of belonging to a group? And if we do, at what percentage do we draw lines? Isn’t it ironic that a species like ours, a species that sees all the wavelengths from indigo to red, actually acts as though we see only monochromatically? What do we do with a President whose father was African and whose mother was Caucasian, a President reared by Caucasian grandparents? How is that President ‘African-American’? Does that mean 50% is the dividing line. That’s a strange teeter totter. Both sides hold equal weights, but one side tips up and the other tips down. Then what of that woman who was 83% Caucasian but who had to be listed by state law as Black because she was 17% African-American?”
“Yep. I guess you’re onto drawing your own lessons. I guess also that we’re all like giant squid, swimming around in the dark or semidark, enticed by flashing lights that we can see while others observe us under the full illumination that we can’t see. Others see us for the monsters that we are, the Krakens that we’ve become, grasping for artificial constructs. We see little though we are bathed in the light they shine, and we take the bait of the artificial lights they use.”
Note:
*Specktor, Brandon. How scientists caught footage of ‘the kraken’ after centries of searching. Livescience. May 1, 2021. Online at https://www.livescience.com/first-footage-giant-squid-jellyfish-lure.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LVS_newsletter&utm_content=LVS_newsletter+&utm_term=2816625&m_i=OguO3tMzbsJG%2Be42PoUWWSJ9JH6Fu2Gw5YMrDqA6mRcaCKF2Vcz_XGvae51wBm1PVLjOl_mX6hefSU%2BjLtsqY3h5PYWIT2QZszn9HGGOO3&lrh=00e6cecd00801376766145b60d8a6556273a450d68f177d27f8a81ef369584e1 Accessed May 2, 2021. Originally published in Live Science.
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