travelerhaa.blogg.se - The myth of the ant queen individuality

Note to residents regarding Long-tailed Silverfish.

Note to residents regarding clothes moths.

Note to residents regarding skin beetles.

Note to residents regarding cockroaches.

We just follow the natural migration and things tend to figure themselves out. Naturally things migrate to where they will fit in without looking out of place, and this is what happens with the ants, neighborhoods, and everything else in our lives. Where one thing is, more of that thing will go, by itself. Johnson’s essay seems to be nothing more than the ‘Broken Windows Theory’ applied on a much broader scale. There will continue to be slums where there already are, and nice new shops where there are nice new shops already. From what it seems, Johnson is trying to say that the ants don’t need management or a ‘queen’ because the way things will be is somewhat pre-determined already, if that makes sense. This also goes back to Gladwell’s essay a little bit and we can take the broken windows theory, and make it the bright shop windows theory in this case.

The author said that, “The bright shop windows attract more bright shop windows and drive the impoverished toward the hidden core.” (315) This applies both to ants (putting the cemetery far away) as well as Manchester and many other cities where they put the slums in one part and the nice neighborhoods on the other side. This goes right along with the construction of Manchester. They apply many of the concepts we take and use them in their ant civilization, just on a smaller scale, and we have no idea why or how they know how to do this. Obviously by putting the cemetery away from the colony and protecting the queen like Johson talked about on 309, ants are more complex than we thought. Prior to this, I just assumed ants were dumb little insects that didn’t do anything for any reason in particular. It goes along with the whole idea of Johnson’s essay that there is an order to how humans as well as ants do thing. It was amazing how the ants organized their living area: “…they’ve bulit the cemetery at exactly the point that’s furthest away from the colony.” (310) This to me was insane. I think Johnson used ants as an example because they are something we don’t really know much about, or why they do things. Using the ant colony as an example was amazing, and provided a comparison to our society. The title was a good one and described the purpose of the essay well, which I thought was to show how communities form and interact. I’d have to say that Johnson provided a different way to look at things than I’d ever looked at them. This was a very interesting and strange essay.