The original artwork for this strip is available for purchase. See the original artwork information page for more information.
Notes: Pasted-in dialog changes in the last panel.
Ozy and Millie
Wisdom for short attention spans.
Over at my home station:
- The gay unicorn agenda July 26, 2017Did you catch the reveal of Max’s parents in this week’s strips? I’ve actually known all along that Max has lesbian parents. I’ve been waiting for years for it to come up organically. And it actually did in the forthcoming Phoebe and Her Unicorn In: The Magic Storm, which is due out in October. So […]Dana Simpson
- School Library Journal June 28, 2017SLJ’s Brigid Alverson interviewed me for a great article about LGBTQ representation in comics. I’m quoted in the article, but I said a lot more, and apparently it was interesting enough that she also published the whole interview. Read more →Dana Simpson
- I am a geek and these are my secret loves June 27, 2017I contributed a story to Dark Horse Comics’s The Secret Loves of Geeks. Some other amazing contributors, too. Check it out. Read more →Dana Simpson
- Music Monday April 17, 2017Scandanavia does many things well. Including songs. Read more →Dana Simpson
- Unicorn Crossing March 29, 2017Hooray! New book! Read more →Dana Simpson
- There’s No Place Like Home February 28, 2017I’m headed back to Seattle, land of my youth. And my early adulthood. And my early middle adulthood. Look for me at Emerald City comic con this weekend! Booth 512. The Collapsar booth. (Collapsar is a loose group of people I’ve been splitting an ECCC booth with for several years.)Â Read more →Dana Simpson
- Music Monday December 12, 2016I’m pretty sure I’m stealing that tradition from someone. Possible Atrios? I’m too lazy to check. This is my favorite REM song. Read more →Dana Simpson
- Friday Cat Blogging November 25, 2016Me: Hey, look how Sofia’s posed on the landing! It’s a perfect photo opportunity! *grabs phone, lines up shot* Sofia: Took too long! You snooze you lose. Read more →Dana Simpson
- At the end of the tour November 21, 2016Three weeks. Like 16 elementary schools and some bookstores too, from south of LA all the way up to Portland. And I met a LOT of incredible kids, and adults too. I’m still processing it all…thanks, everybody. Read more →Dana Simpson
- Upcoming appearances October 29, 2016As you can see on the left side of this page, I’ve got a couple bookstore appearances coming up. If you’re in the San Francisco Bay area or near Portland, Oregon, come out and see me! Read more →Dana Simpson
To ants, the behavior of other animals is as inscrutible as the nature of terrain. They don’t ask ‘why is this deer walking by’ or ‘why is this tree here’. Humans do not seem especially inscrutible; we walk through their territory like everything else. But then, they don’t see the connection between humans and sidewalks and houses.
Human beings ask deeper questions about where things around us came from. We seem to have a good idea of how to tell when we’ve arrived at a ‘complete picture’, a consistent account that explains everything, though we don’t really have any complete pictures yet. So yeah, I guess there could be stuff we’re incapable of understanding, but it’s also possible that there aren’t any such things, that we will forever increase our knowledge.
Notice though, that she referred to herself and not all of human(or furry)kind when asking the question if there is anything she cannot understand.
I think she is talking about the limitation inherent in one life, how though there may be nothing that cannot eventually be explained, there will always be some things that cannot be made explicable in just one lifetime, her lifetime.
It is also entirely possible that there are those things so incomprehensible, without any stepping stones to them, that we will always try to ignore them or make up our own explanations for why they are, and persistently ignore the obvious holes in our own theories. Because of our ignorance, we enforce our own ignorance.
Makes me think of this metaphor where an ant colony is a brain, and the ants are the neurons.
In the Orion’s Arm Universe Project, there are AIs that are this incomprehensibly beyond humans. And AIs incomprehensibly beyond those AIs. And so on for six levels.