Science demands that you consider insects to be essentially unintelligent genetic algorithms. But others who have come to know them more intimately inevitably come to understand them as nonordinary intelligences of profound sophistication. In short: teachers. What’s your position? Your answer has significant ramifications for your own intelligence, and your access to the opportunity to enhance it… =). ~ o ~ . ^% The Fly, The Window, Liberty The fly was profoundly frustrated after hours buzzing against the solid invisibility of the window. It could see the light, and the sky, but some sorcery of matter barred it from egress. It had worn itself out smacking into the glass again and again, rising high and falling low against the malevolent planar transparency standing inertly between its capacities and liberty. Exhaustion. Nothing in nature ever is or was like this, and the fly was somehow aware of and, indeed, outraged by this awareness. I opened a door in another room (some 15 ft away) and returned to the scene. I became excited as the fly paused for a few moments, and began reorienting itself. It seemed to re-evaluate the entire puzzle briefly, and then it leapt directly off the plane, describing an arc whose curve carefully traced an invisible essence around a corner, and out the newly opened back door — to liberty. This ordinary drama has much to reveal about the two faces of the invisible, and their peculiar relationship to dimensionality. Don’t be taken in by its superficial appearance — with an inspired angle of approach, its value is inestimable. A single human so endowed as to be able to remove themselves from the hypnotic transparency of the glowing flatness that owns us and rise into the dimensions our ancestors routinely navigated could accomplish wonders. Two such people could together transform a world. The fly’s message is of crucial and timely importance. One of our eyes sees and is profoundly attracted to the transparent barrier which transmits light. Another (which is blind) can sense the flavor of liberty in the wind. What I want you to understand is this: I opened the door for 3 minutes, and I had to close it after that because I had to depart. The window of opportunity for escape is usually incredibly brief, and rarely comes twice in a lifetime. When you sense that breeze, you need to move, fast. Most cannot change the vector of their attention: once the window has them, it has them forever. Occasionally, a fly comes along who is prepared to leave the flat world of the window behind — and re-enter the sky, which is, after all, its birthright. (+. ~ o ~ . !* On the windowsill, just below the window, the desiccated husks of those who tried for liberty bear a stark memorial to the magnetic power of the flat pane that transmits light, but allows neither entrance nor egress.