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Written by: Kamran Mofid

Published: 21 August 2018

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In Praise of Ants: Ants are efficient because they know when enough is enough!

‘Ants have a lesson for humans on how to be more productive: Less is more. Here’s the ingenious trick the insects deploy for maximizing efficiency.’

Lest we forget: A bit of idleness is not the same as laziness. It is a way of utilising our time most efficiently and getting things done most effectively. Ants have a lot to teach us humans!  

Photo: Lessons to learn from Ants:Youtuble.com

Happiness is to Do Nothing. This was the Blog I wrote on 24 July 2018, when I tried to show that indeed, sometimes, ‘Doing Nothing Is Doing Everything’.

Then, on 7 April 2015, I had posted In Praise of ‘Enoughness’ and 'Lagomist' Economy , where I had posed some pertinent questions: “How Much Is Enough? What is money and wealth for? Why do we as individuals and societies go on wanting more? What is economic growth for? Can we/ should we carry on just growing, creating, producing, consuming,…,more and more, forever more? Do we need to satisfy our needs or our wants? Should we be a “maximiser” or “satisfier” and choose the path of “enoughness”?  Then, what is a good life? What are the main ingredients of a good, happy and peaceful life? Should we move away from Gross National Product (GDP) to Gross National Happiness? What are we here for?”

Today I am very happy to note that, Yes, Its True, ANTS Have Proved Me Right!

‘The Secret to Ant Efficiency Is Idleness’*

An article by James Gorman

Photo:bing.com

Ants are renowned for their industriousness. Ask the grasshopper in the story by Aesop. He had to come begging the hard-working ant for food when winter came because he had frittered away his summer.

But that is fable, the ultimate in what scientists call anecdotal evidence. And new research at Georgia Tech suggests that although ant colonies are very efficient, that may be because 70 percent of them are doing very little — at least when it comes to tunnel digging.

Daniel I. Goldman, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his colleagues, found that the secret to efficient tunnel digging by fire ants was that 30 percent of the ants did 70 percent of the work. They reported their fable-shaking finding in the journal Science.

The reason, it seems, is that the ants were working in narrow tunnels where traffic jams could easily clog up the entire effort to build nests. So it helped if some of them took a pileup in the tunnel as a signal to suggest that they take a break.

To come to this conclusion, they set up material for the ants in containers in the lab. After painting identifying codes on the ants, videotaping them and analyzing who was doing what, the team found several things.

The ants were easily discouraged by traffic jams and were flexible enough to turn around and go back out the tunnel. It was the hardworking few who kept the job going.

“Some of them worked for five hours at a time just going up and down and up and down and up and down. And most of the other ants never appeared at the tunnel,” Dr. Goldman said.

This didn’t have to do with some ants being lazier than others. His team could remove the hard workers and another group would take over and do just as well, and the same 70/30 rule would hold.

After running various computer models of the behavior, he found out that this was the ideal distribution of work. And that the individual virtual ants had to have idleness built in as a potential response to a crowded tunnel.

To get the digging done efficiently, he said, “there’s only one good strategy” — an unequal distribution of tunnel digging work and a willingness to turn away from work.

If you start out in a computer model with eager diggers, he said, you have to add some programming that says, for any ant, “I’m going to get down there and then if it’s taking too long, I’ll turn around.”

He said, “You have to add a lot of this kind of giving up in the eager ants to make it actually work.”

His team also tested this out with small robots and came up with the same conclusion. And this could matter quite a bit, he pointed out. The formula does not apply only to tunnel digging, but to any situation in which a traffic jam could stop progress, such as a swarm of robots entering a disaster site to search for survivors or hazards. Or imagine a lot of nanobots deployed into the bloodstream to deliver drugs to some site in the body.

If this distribution of labor operates this way in your office, however, (the 30 percent may laugh knowingly now), there’s no real solace to be taken from the ant experiment, unless you are digging a tunnel perhaps. Assuming everyone has their own computer, phone and cubicle, they could all be working all the time.

It does, however, apply to kitchens with limited space. Too many chefs? But then we knew that.*

* This article was first published in the New York Times on 16 August 2018.

Click here to see the original article

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Written by: Kamran Mofid

Published: 19 August 2018

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Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

"Laughter," theologian Karl Barth reminded us, "is the closest thing to the grace of God."

“The most radical act anyone can commit is to be happy.”-Patch Adams

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”– Charlie Chaplin

“Laughter is a bodily exercise, precious to health.”- Aristotle

“When it comes to relieving stress, more giggles and guffaws are just what the doctor ordered.”- Mayo Clinic

“There is little success where there is little laughter.”– Andrew Carnegie

“It helps us de-stress, lear, cope, transcend, recharge, renew, hope, optimize, enjoy, create, meditate, digest, exercise, connect, engage, energize, oxygenate, release, persist, and preserve. ”- Christa Scalies

In Praise of Laughter and Joy in these Dark and Uncertain Times

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”– Victor Hugo

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the

heart finds its morning and is refreshed.” Khalil Gibran

With my mother-in-law, Nancy, on her 90th Birthday.-Photo: Anne Mofid

‘I’m idealistic enough to suggest that if we think seriously about laughter and what it means,

we might even begin to save our planet.’-Charlotte Wood

'In these dark times, embracing laughter is an ethical choice'

An article by Charlotte Wood

‘Laughter has optimism embedded in it. It allows us to see that, while we are all human and we fail, we can change’

What a beautiful, optimistic and hopeful reading for any day of the week, but perhaps more so on a  Sunday, a day of reflection, contemplation, peace, and I also very much hope, of joy and laughter, to build a better and happier life, and a better world.

N.B. Before I share Charlotte’s article with you, I must say why?

Because, laughter and joy, wishing to create a happier, fairer and better world, was amongst the first wishes and dreams I had, when I founded the GCGI in 2002.

This is why, I have written the following in all our conference programmes, public lectures, and more:

‘..., we invite you to share a common belief in the potential of each one of us to become self-directed, empowered, and active in defining this time in the world as opportunity for positive change and healing and for the true formation of a culture of peace by giving thanks, spreading joy, sharing love, seeing miracles, discovering goodness, embracing kindness, practicing patience, teaching tolerance, encouraging laughter, celebrating diversity, showing compassion, turning from hatred, practicing forgiveness, peacefully resolving conflicts, communicating non-violently, choosing happiness and enjoying life.’

And then, these went on to become the backbone of the GCGI Values.

Now reverting to Charlotte’s very interesting article:

In these dark times, embracing laughter is an ethical choice

‘Because we live in such very dark times, I’ve been thinking about laughter and art.

If you feel as I do, some days you’ll see no hope for humanity. We’ve destroyed much of the planet already and seem hellbent on continuing that destruction. People all over the world suffer unspeakable violence and deprivation. We in affluent countries seem unwilling to share our wealth with others, and we spend our time and money on pursuits that wreak ever more environmental destruction.

At the same time, those of us in wealthy nations suffer ever-rising levels of anxiety and depression. Australians have the second highest rate of antidepressant use in the world. What can simple laughter possibly do to counteract all of this?

It might seem a trivial thing to be talking about, when the world is in such trouble. You might expect that I’m about to advocate fiddling while our planet burns, urging you to enjoy a kind of nihilistic amusement at what we’ve done to ourselves. But nothing could be further from my mind. The embrace of laughter in our art and in ourselves is an ethical choice that we can and must make; I’m idealistic enough to suggest that if we think seriously about laughter and what it means, we might even begin to save our planet.’...Continue to read

Related reading:

Is the ‘Modern World’ depressing, lonely, fearful, hopeless and untrustworthy? These are some pertinent and timely questions

The Scream by Norwegian Expressionist artist Edvard Munch

“‘Obviously there’s a lot of good things about societal and technological progress and in a lot of ways our lives are much easier than, say, our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ lives. But there’s a paradox here that we seem to have so much ease and relative economic prosperity compared to previous centuries, yet there’s this dissatisfaction, there’s this unhappiness, there are these mental health issues in terms of depression and anxiety.’”+

'The forces of psychological distress in our world are – currently – much wealthier and more active than the needed cures. We deserve tender pity for the price we have to pay for being born in modern times. But more hopefully, cures are now open to us individually and collectively if only we recognise, with sufficient clarity, the sources of our true anxieties and sorrows.’*

Continue to read: Goodness gracious me, What is going on? What is this ‘Modern World’ doing to us all?

In closing, I offer this quote from Conrad Hyers as a beautiful summary of this spiritual practice. "The first and last word belong to God and therefore not to death but life, not to sorrow but joy, not to weeping but laughter. For surely it is God who has the last laugh."

And God Created Laughter: The Bible as Divine Comedy

‘Recognizing "a playful spirit" as part of our human makeup, Conrad Hyers shows how laughter and humor are integral to our serious study of the Bible. With the darker realities of the Bible--sin, suffering, and death--there exists a lighter side--laughter, humor, and playfulness. Competent biblical study, Hyers explains, requires both perspectives. This highly readable, preachable, and teachable work gives ministers, students, and lay readers a valuable tool for recovering the spirit of humor and offers a chance to share in the celebration of life and the divine comedy of faith, hope, and love.’