Brainless

image by AI; my own somewhat hyperbolic prompt Reconnaissance The ravens come to feast upon the deer. Their talons are too dull to tear like claws. They smartly team with wolves, as hunting peers And point the way to road kill with their caws. These creatures love to play, nurse others’ chicks, Do barrel-rolls and bathe collectively, Use rocks for self-defence and play with sticks And flying upside down proclaim they’re free. But still, to man, an animal can’t feel — We daren’t believe they love or hurt or think. We cage them all in labs and farms concealed: The human ‘masters’ cannot face the stink. Our bankrupt, separate culture’s madness reigns. We think. Ergo we end the world, with brains. — my attempt at a sonnet; one of my first blog posts, in 2003, (before Facebook existed, let alone AI!) Imagining the existence of a mind-body (or brain-body) ’split’ is a pretty ubiquitous practice when we write and talk about the ‘components’ of ‘us’ — as if the brain and the body are somehow…