When I come across these amazing bonds which great men seamlessly surpass the species boundaries; needless to say, I smile and this idiot thinks of his bond with Max :-):
Is it ironic or apt that a man who had dedicated much of his life to the future of wireless communication would fall for the ancient, living technology of a carrier pigeon? And is it ironic or apt that a man whose final years as an inventor were dedicated to a fearful direct-energy “teleforce” weapon (dubbed the “death ray” by the press) fell in love with the key symbol for peace?
We cannot know what thoughts or emotions were coiled inside Tesla’s mind and heart as he feared for the life of his nameless, winged mistress, and then mourned her passing as he would a lover. But we can discern, and appreciate, the creaturely affection that he experienced, and ultimately spoke of matter-of-factly, once the race for absolute human technical mastery had been assumed by others. For the man who invented the rotating magnetic field, “animal attraction” or “animal magnetism” was not simply a figure of speech, but an everyday experience and personal responsibility, and one that did not stop at the border between species. As such, this patron saint of the cybernetic triangle—one linking human, animal, and machine—sends us a message from the age of high industry and scientific discovery concerning love itself as the invisible but overwhelming alternating current that animates existence, and can sometimes be explicitly shared among creatures.
It might seem that this nameless bird was not in a position to reciprocate Tesla’s affections. And yet who could speak for this pigeon of pure white, with light gray tips on her wings? Who could say what she “felt” for the tall, melancholy, strangely dressed creature who fed, nursed, and caressed her? As with the love between two humans, or between Balthus and his cat Mitsou, or a human and an operating system like Samantha in the 2013 film Her, fully symmetrical affection is not the criterion by which we can determine whether love is in effect. We need not invoke the transmigration of souls to account for the connection or recognition that occurred. Nothing mystical need have taken place; no modern Ovid is necessary to account for the romantic sacrilege. Finitude is what all creatures share. No matter how carefully philosophers try to build a semantic or ontological wall between ourselves and other animals, we all perish. We all die. Humans may anticipate their end with more conscious and unconscious dread than do our fellow animals, but we need only see the survival instinct in action to appreciate that all creatures cling to life with furious intensity when the spark of their inexplicable existence is threatened.
Love is the name we give to this furious intensity when we direct it outward, beyond the survival of the self, to the compassionate caretaking of another pulse, pounding fragile and finite, under another skin.
Is it ironic or apt that a man who had dedicated much of his life to the future of wireless communication would fall for the ancient, living technology of a carrier pigeon? And is it ironic or apt that a man whose final years as an inventor were dedicated to a fearful direct-energy “teleforce” weapon (dubbed the “death ray” by the press) fell in love with the key symbol for peace?
We cannot know what thoughts or emotions were coiled inside Tesla’s mind and heart as he feared for the life of his nameless, winged mistress, and then mourned her passing as he would a lover. But we can discern, and appreciate, the creaturely affection that he experienced, and ultimately spoke of matter-of-factly, once the race for absolute human technical mastery had been assumed by others. For the man who invented the rotating magnetic field, “animal attraction” or “animal magnetism” was not simply a figure of speech, but an everyday experience and personal responsibility, and one that did not stop at the border between species. As such, this patron saint of the cybernetic triangle—one linking human, animal, and machine—sends us a message from the age of high industry and scientific discovery concerning love itself as the invisible but overwhelming alternating current that animates existence, and can sometimes be explicitly shared among creatures.
It might seem that this nameless bird was not in a position to reciprocate Tesla’s affections. And yet who could speak for this pigeon of pure white, with light gray tips on her wings? Who could say what she “felt” for the tall, melancholy, strangely dressed creature who fed, nursed, and caressed her? As with the love between two humans, or between Balthus and his cat Mitsou, or a human and an operating system like Samantha in the 2013 film Her, fully symmetrical affection is not the criterion by which we can determine whether love is in effect. We need not invoke the transmigration of souls to account for the connection or recognition that occurred. Nothing mystical need have taken place; no modern Ovid is necessary to account for the romantic sacrilege. Finitude is what all creatures share. No matter how carefully philosophers try to build a semantic or ontological wall between ourselves and other animals, we all perish. We all die. Humans may anticipate their end with more conscious and unconscious dread than do our fellow animals, but we need only see the survival instinct in action to appreciate that all creatures cling to life with furious intensity when the spark of their inexplicable existence is threatened.
Love is the name we give to this furious intensity when we direct it outward, beyond the survival of the self, to the compassionate caretaking of another pulse, pounding fragile and finite, under another skin.
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