Bewilderment

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I HAVE A GREAT IDEA, Robbie said. Dr. Currier’s lab could take a dog. A really good dog. But it could be a cat or a bear or even a bird. You know that birds are a lot smarter than anybody thinks? I mean, some birds can see magnetism. How cool is that?

I’d taken him to my office for the afternoon while I got things ready for the new academic year. He was playing with a toy programmable scale that showed your weight on Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, or anywhere in the solar system.

“Take a dog and do what, Robbie?” His thoughts these days often grew richer than he could say.

Take him and scan him. Scan his brain while he was really excited. Then people could train on his patterns, and we’d learn what it felt like to be a dog.

I failed to rise above adult condescension. “That’s a cool idea. You should tell Dr. Currier.”

His scowl was gentle compared to what I deserved. He’d never listen to me. Which is sad, you know? I mean, think about it, Dad. It could just be a regular part of school. Everyone would have to learn what it felt like to be something else. Think of the problems that would solve!

I can’t remember how I answered him. Three weeks later, I learned that a prominent ecologist at the University of Toronto used parts of my atmospheric models to map how the Earth’s own ecosystems might evolve under steadily rising temperatures. Dr. Ellen Coutler and her grad students saw thousands of interconnected species failing in a series of cascading waves. Not a gradual decline: a cliff.

Robbie was right: we needed universal mandatory courses of neural feedback training, like passing the Constitution test or getting a driver’s license. The template animal could be a dog or a cat or a bear or even one of my son’s beloved birds. Anything that could make us feel what it was like to not be us.