Political Note:
Blotter Philosophy
13 September 2018

¶ Honeybees live in a perfect society. Everyone has a job to do, and they do it accordingly.

Heaven is in the details: not “willingly,” or even “dutifully,” just accordingly. Perhaps only a harried police officer — in this case, Patrolman Darren Mays, who, as a professional sideline, is a member of the NYPD’s beekeeping unit (it deals with swarms) — would put it quite that way.  

From the time of Plato onwards, it has been grudgingly conceded that earthly life would more closely approach paradise if everybody else would just do what is supposed to be done. The problem is that, unlike bees, human beings are tempted by their imaginations into acting otherwise

Later in the same issue of The New Yorker in which this Talk piece occurs, the eusociality of termites, estimable or not, is explored by Amia rinivasan. 

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