Intelligence

When wasps have a housing crisis, they promptly gather materials and build safe, appropriate dwellings that are elegantly and efficiently designed. They’re also free! Actually, wasps don’t have housing crises (unless they have habitat crises, which is another story). Meanwhile, humans have made housing into an industry: it’s complicated, expensive, and of course, exploitable. The results have been mixed: very good for some humans, not good for others, and ultimately not great for the rest of the living world. Gaston Bachelard wrote that “a dreamer might say that the world is the nest of mankind”. My nest, your nest, our nest; it’s in a sad state. Do we patch and repair like the mud dauber? Start over each season like the yellow jackets?