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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Baby Sea Turtle Problem

You are a fresh young hatchling, itching to live. you pierce through your soft and now largely devoid-of-nutrients shell and are immediately met with a facefull of fucking sand. I think most of you, would agree that turtles have fairly well developed pain sensors, nerves, and we all know that sand in your mucousy parts is not too enjoyable. So, on my journey to discover the main, unifying factors of life, I asked myself, given that this must be painful as fuck, the first push, let alone the 100th push, through all of your siblings; are we to assume that masochism, systemically illogical, self-destructive behavior, is programmed into these young reptiles and that is why they, being faced with a simple energy logic problem, that of general energy falling as a factor of time (as suggested by pain sensors in the stomach, the assumed reason for leaving the egg in the first place), and a powerful pain stimulus, sand, do not decide to consume as little of this dwindling energy as possible, by shutting off their sensors (closing their eyes), staying still, and essentially going to sleep? This would be a logical response to pain, which is usually defined as a feeling suggestive of cell death (illogical behavior extinction signal), but as you can see at many coastal points, even in the US, this is not the case. What is the basis of this powerful and illogical hope, which, in the face of a simple diminishing energy problem, uses all available resources, rather than conserving?

2 comments:

  1. "But we all know, don't we, how sometimes things have to feel anger, so as not to be defeated"
    Mary Oliver

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