First it was the Ants, now it’s Habitat for Humanity

You may have noticed in some of my previous musings in Connections that I try to find paradigms of thought that take antipodal elements and show how they are united. When we use antipodes (or opposing concepts) to explain a single concept, we call this consilience. Antipodes literally are two cities that are diametrically opposite on the earth (The Rock of Gibraltar and Auckland, New Zealand, for example). Yet, antipodes are constrained by being on the unifying surface of Mother Earth and the opposites are not free to escape her unifying gravity.

In Catholic liberal arts education, we are always stretching ourselves to achieve consilience (or unifying antipodes). For example, we unite the humanities and the sciences, faith and reason, and teaching and learning for that matter. Our own Congregation of Holy Cross Consti-tutions say: "We ourselves stand to learn much from those we are called to teach."

The scientist and humanist E.O. Wilson revived the term consilience about two decades ago. After I read his book "The Ants" (1990) I became a great proponent and was attracted to read more socio-biology. In this book, Wilson has proposed that altruism is an evolutionary trait, not learned behavior or cultural appendage. Rather than practicing "the law of the jungle," or every ant for himself, individual ants readily sacrifice self for the sake of the colony. Isn’t this antipodal to the theory of evolution?

On the contrary, Wilson argues that it makes sense that evolution would reward species and societies that paid attention to building strong communities—like the ants—not threatened by "sharing the wealth" but rather thrive on it. Perhaps that is why God gave the ant physical strength pound-for-pound 100 times that of our own because they only use it to serve the greater good.

Now I don’t mean to imply that a Catholic College would promote service because it is in our genetic makeup whether we choose it or not. We are not ants! But I do believe it makes us stronger.

Keeping with the theme of this issue of Connections— "Service Learning" and practicing a bit of consilience myself, I want to see if I can convince you that we need to "learn to serve" to fulfill any meaningful vocation in life.

Almost every college has some service learning requirement both for its faculty and its students. Faculty members enjoy putting their knowledge and scholarship to practical use outside the academic classroom, often in the civic community—giving back to those from whom we often seek support. Both faculty and student service are traditional but somewhat antipodal because of the contrast between remuneration and volunteer service—an undertaking for which compensation is not anticipated.

Students volunteer—doing freely for others—because it enhances the dignity of all and builds community. Hope-fully, students pick up some useful knowledge, skills and strength as a result.

Athletes have long recognized that the endorphins produced by strenuous physical activity have an analgesic effect, relieving bodily pain as well as providing a psychological bump not unlike euphoria. Serving others has an analgesic effect on our souls, relieving the pain of guilt and a religious effect of induced joy in the privilege of participating in the very work of creation.

We make service experience a requirement because learning to serve is good consilience of the human and the divine; of working and praying. The consilience approach would be to view all our productive activity as altruism—community building at its core—because no matter what we do to make a living in this world, our activity nearly always helps somebody other than ourselves.

Inevitably when the spring returns you will encounter an ant. Perhaps it will be crossing a trail on a nature walk or maybe in your sugar jar. May it remind you of this little treatise. May it also remind you to support our college as so many of you do. The ways to support are as many as the species of ants—the most bio-diverse genus on the planet. I pray that you will find as many opportunities to support as you have encounters with these very social insects. And, I pray that you garner more strength from this support than we do.

Sincerely,
Br. Richard Gilman, CSC, PhD, President