God’s Pigeons

Sometimes the most obvious question is the one you never ask. I remember in my student days being told about experiments in which pigeons were trained to press a lever whenever a light went on, which caused a machine to release a pellet of bird food. I saw black & white films, with vertical scratches and a hissy soundtrack of the coercive male voice popular at the time, showing pigeons looking askance at the light, the switch and the pellet, and then doing their bit without undue haste, as if what was left of their dignity depended on looking relaxed. The question none of us ever asked was, “How do you get a pigeon to do such a stupid thing in the first place?”

It was only much later that I saw the full movie detailing the training. The pigeon was allowed to move around and, as in a game I used to love playing as a kid, was guided towards the switch and the light by indications akin to getting warmer, warmer, warmest. At first, whenever the pigeon comes nearer to the switch, a pellet drops from the food dispenser. This, to the poor beast, must look like happenstance, but in time it figures out that food is dispensed only when it is the correct half of the cage. In time this shrinks to the correct quarter, then a small area that happens to contain the switch. Pigeons peck at things, and eventually the pigeon pecks at the switch. Food is released and half the job is done. Then add the light and you’re home.

In these experiments, the pigeon trainer, a wretched creature, plays the role of God. By this I mean that he orchestrates a series of uncanny events that eventually fall into a pattern. Pigeons are naturally superstitious, so every pigeon in training must suspect the presence of a hidden supernatural entity that makes food happen if you do the right thing. The pigeon eventually discovers how to make it happen every time, turning what was originally a spooky event into a simple cause-and-effect. I am certain, even though pigeons are notably tight-lipped, that once they found the switch, they forgot all the weird events that led them to it.

As do we. Every scientist, every artist restlessly wandering around his world picks up bits and pieces of evidence dispensed at intervals by an unseen hand, which, as significant objects do in video games, have a special glow that says, “Take me.” The dreamer places these objets trouvés on their mind shelf. Together they make no collective sense. Then one day a strange wind blows, which arranges them into a readable message. At that point the light goes on and you press the switch, immediately forget the long trail of minor miracles that led you to it, and call it your creation.