blind benthic communities

The Buddhists, I’ve always thought, have the most lively sense of a depiction of hell imaginable: rebirth as an insect or some such creature. There it is, right beside you. Talk to it if you want to but don’t - for fear - harm it. Do no harm. It follows, if you follow this imaginative principle that there are myriad forms of hell each perfectly matched to the unfortunate soul imprisoned within it. Consider the abyssal plain - creatures there aren’t blind from birth - they’re born without eyes! The pressure there is so intense that they’re not even endowed with an exoskeleton. And the water temperature is so close to freezing that I bet they don’t even have a circulatory system. A sign over the door: “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” would be, in this context, immensely consoling.

Assuming, in the sweep of our considerations that these creatures stemmed from sentient life and would some day perhaps - eons hence - return to sentient life, what would they find on the upward path to a brighter, more securely endowed future? If these creatures knew what they were without, I suppose they would imagine, as first order of business, suffering a lot less from darkness, pressure and temperature. And that situation is easy to visualize. Simply move out of the abyssal plain to the intertidal zone and presto: you get a hard exoskeleton, a circulatory system of some kind and even the potential to be born with eyes. But you wouldn’t be able to read. Can’t read with compound eyes. But you would, in principle, have two pair of antennae to work with. And so, technically, you just couldn’t sight read. Well, there you are in semipermanent darkness, still classified as hell, but a lot less deep. What kind of upgrade could you hope for now?

Well, at about 600 feet below the surface the light is shut out. So at that depth you might be led to suspect the existence of another realm based on an entirely different set of principles: a place where you could see, bask and perhaps even yearn. We may identify this realm in our minds with purgatory. The existence of other more favorable worlds is made known all around us even though we may not be able to apprehend them satisfactorily. And what happens then? Here things get interesting. Off goes the exoskeleton, the circulatory system takes care of itself, and we get real eyes. And maybe even some sonar. Here the crustaceans gather. We look upwards now. Night is accepted but day is prayed for. We learn how to pray. That’s a difference. And so, what lies ahead above us? Who shares life between the surface regime and these deeper currents?

In daylight, we could now see the interplay of wind and water on the surface itself. We would become habituated to this lively and never ending display and could detect anomalies in its complex and ever variegated visual texture. That would mean, to a still primitive brain, that we could sense when something interesting was going on above us and, if unimpeded by nature, we would be free to go check it out. We could steer ourselves towards the surface anomaly if we so chose, unless we were aware of a shared concern that told us that it might be inadvisable to venture too close to the unknown and anomalous disturbance.

Now, we’re almost there. What’s up above that might be anticipated by a yet higher form of life? Well, we would now see and recognize the contrast in light and the ripples associated with a prow as it sheared through the water, propelled by wind and oar, belonging to seafarers under way in vessels over our heads. Men moving purposefully from one vista to another outside and beyond our reach. Heaven knows what we could imagine if we knew who was in the boat or what their concerns were. The vessel might harbor a master tactician setting out to contend with his own kind in war. We might understand the concept, if not the reasons for it. Who would these men be? Well, that’s easy to say: to a crustacean, they’re gods.

Now, what happens in the reverse direction? How can you go from the seafaring Greeks, civilization makers, all the way back down to the crustaceans on the bottom? Well, that’s easy to do. Just flee reason. You could use reason as a metric for depth below the surface if you so choose. It’s detrimental to do so though. If your intention is to engage the Greeks in dialogue, know that once you’re below the surface there is from their vantage point no further report.