Today’s post is from guest author Bill Harper. The short allegory is by Theodore Parker, a Unitarian pastor and influential abolitionist philosopher in the lead up to the Civil War (Quoted from "The Emancipation of the Mind" by Matthew Stewart).
“A Bumblebee’s Thoughts on the Plan and Purpose of the Universe.”
A million years ago, it seems, a population of Bumblebees gathered to hear a sermon by one of their number, a distinguished individual known as the “MOST MAGNIFICENT DRONE.” The august personage describes the great chain of being in the world, with mere matter at the bottom and the world of mind at the top. At the apex of the system, he enthuses, stands the mighty Bumblebee. How impenetrable is our armor! How sweet our honey! How strong our stingers! How exquisite the chemistry of our digestive processes! How far more wonderful is the Bumblebee’s mind! By contrast, he sneers, “there is no logic in the crickets’ senseless noise.” In conclusion, “THE BUMBLEBEE IS THE PURPOSE OF THE UNIVERSE!”
Parker is reminding humans in search of order and inclusion how easy it is to accept our positions as truth and our intuition as valid when we feel informed and righteous. Parker invites readers to take a step back to reconsider the nature of purpose, knowledge, and existence from a different vantage point.
The bumblebee, with its limited capacity for comprehension compared to humans, reminds us of the limitations of our own knowledge. Just as a bee cannot grasp the complexities of astrophysics or the vastness of space, so too are humans inherently constrained by the limits of our perception and intellectual capacity.