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Studying is not about time. It’s about effort

25/09/2022

My city has a relatively well-educated citizenry, but as far as anyone can tell
its squirrels are not particularly distinguished. Rather, they have regular squirrel brains that run foodburying programs when the amount of sunlight that enters their regular squirrel eyes decreases by
a critical amount. Shortened days trigger burying behaviour with no intervening contemplation of
tomorrow, and the squirrel that stashes a nut in my yard ‘knows’ about the future in approximately
the same way that a falling rock ‘knows’ about the law of gravity–which is to say, not really.

22/09/2022

I have never before written The Sentence, but I’d like to do so now, with you as my witness. The
human being is the only animal that thinks about the future. Now, let me say up front that I’ve had cats,
I’ve had dogs, I’ve had gerbils, mice, goldfish and crabs (no, not that kind), and I do recognize that
nonhuman animals often act as though they have the capacity to think about the future. But as bald
men with cheap hairpieces always seem to forget, acting as though you have something and actually
having it are not the same thing, and anyone who looks closely can tell the difference. For example, I
live in an urban neighbourhood, and every autumn the squirrels in my yard (which is approximately
the size of two squirrels) act as though they know that they will be unable to eat later unless they
bury some food now.

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