THE RIDDLE

Riddle me why and I'll rhyme you the sense and the reason in relevance to shared intent and mutual presence shared in cocreative confluence 

Which animal is synonymous with sin?

Ever heard of the Sloth?

These arboreal, tree hugging mammals got their name from their mottled and pest ridden fur, and their excruciatingly slow movement that suggest they are dirty and lazy by nature, but if we take a closer look we see much more than the unfortunate name of sloth would suggest.

For starters, the Sloth is believed to have existed for about 60 million years, almost 24 times longer than Homo Sapiens, given the current understanding of our own evolution. Just like the human race they are considered to be somewhat of an oddity in the animal kingdom, and in a manner of speaking the Sloth seem to share many habits with ourselves.

Sloths prefer to set up a permanent home, and may live their entire life in one tree. These solitary animals prefer to spend their life hanging from from branch to branch in search of green leaves and buds that form the staple of their diet. Just like humans, the Sloth find themselves at the top of their very own and unique branch of the food chain. Protected by their lofty position in tree tops as well as the camouflage of leafy shade, they keep hidden from the rest of the world by a combination of circumstance and lack of movement.

Besides humans, they are probably the only known species that crap on their own porch, a risky practice that come with a high fatality rate. Once a week they climb down to the same piece of ground below their tree, make a hole in the ground, take a dump, and then carefully cover the excrement after they are finished. It is during these times of ablution that the Sloth become easy prey, risking life and limb to perform the ritual burial of . Just like we find in the human race, it is an example of instinctive behaviour that persist even though it seems to be a negative evolutionary trait.

But then, as we often find in nature, similar does not mean same. Contrary to the human race, these ancient and peaceful beasts exhibit various complex symbiotic systems that are inextricably part of their existence. From their furry coats, right down to their diet of leaves and their curious excretion habits. The fur of a sloth host two species of symbiotic cyanobacteria, which provide additional camouflage. And because of the cyanobacteria, sloth fur is a small ecosystem of its own, hosting many species of non-parasitic insects.

The diet of leaves provide the Sloth with very little energy or nutrition as they do not digest easily. Sloths therefore have very large, specialized, slow-acting stomachs with multiple compartments in which symbiotic bacteria break down the tough leaves. As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth's body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete. Sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures: they have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a mammal of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30 °C (86 °F) to 34 °C (93 °F)), and still lower temperatures when resting.

With all these fascinating facts about the Sloth I cannot help but wonder if perhaps we are wrong about the nature of sloth, and since it is only recent that we have invented a tool to observe the working brain we may well find that like the Sloth, the sin that shares in its name is nothing at all what we think.

More sense and sensibility

Have you ever stopped to consider how common sense is, and what the world would be like without it?

Well, it may come as a surprise but the low down on sense is that it is not. Not common that is. In fact it would seem as if something as simple as a mutually shared sensory experience is just about the last thing we can expect.

You see, people observe the world they find according to the heuristic control of everything they believe to know. Simply put it means that people see what they expect, and the same holds true for pretty much all the commonly known senses.

Besides the fact that this innate ability is the reason for the infuriating futility of entertaining something as empty as jealousy, it also means that most of us would probably ignore the alien spacecraft that landed in our back yard, just because they don't.

And in defense of my argument on the absence of mutual sense I would like to submit into evidence the historical account of Columbus, from the native population's point of view.

The story goes that three days after Columbus dropped anchor and sails in the bay of the promised land, the native elders told of a strange dream they had. A vision that told of a massive white bird that would beach, and of strange men with strange clothes and strange customs that would step from it's fold.

It was shortly after they shared their “dream vision” that people started to notice the ships that lay anchor in plain sight for the last couple of days. Such is the power of our innate heuristic control, believe it or not.

And by a similar stroke of blind luck it would seem that we actually do not need to share such detail to communicate and grow. With half of it done it only remains to be told in the truth we behold…

I say who cares if it is common or not, the value of a picture without it’s emotional content is pretty obscure if you compare it to the full frontal quadraphonic kind, splendant and replete with enhanced 3D emotional content natively embedded.

Arrr me mateys, ahoy!