Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Prelude . . . Ant Fugue 185ANTEATER: The communism is on the ant level. In an ant colony all ants work for thecommon good, even to their own individual detriment at times. Now this is simply a built-inaspect of Aunt Hillary's structure, but for all I know, she may not even be aware of thisinternal communism. Most human beings are not aware of anything about their neurons; infact they probably are quite content not to know any' thing about their brains, beingsomewhat squeamish creatures. Aunt Hillary is also somewhat squeamish; she gets ratherantsy whenever she starts to think about ants at all. So she avoids thinking about themwhenever possible. I truly doubt that she knows anything about the communistic societywhich is built into her very structure. She herself is a staunch believer in libertarianism-youknow, laissez faire and all that. So it makes perfect sense, to me at least, that she should livein a rather sumptuous manor.ILLUSTRATION BY THE AUTHOR.TORTOISE: As I turned the page just now, while following along in this lovely edition of theWell-Tempered Clavier, I noticed that the first of the two fermatas is coming up soon-so youmight listen for it, Achilles.ACHILLES: I Will, I Will.TORTOISE: Also, there's a most curious picture facing this page.CRAB: Another one? What next?TORTOISE: See for yourself. (Passes the score over to the Crab.)CRAB: Aha! It's just a few bunches of letters. Let's see-there are various numbers of theletters 'J,,' "S," "B," "m," "a," and "t." It's strange, how the first three letters grow, and thenthe last three letters shrink again. 'ANTEATER: May I see it?