The animal we are observing here is, at first glance, hard to classify. It belongs to no recognisable herd. It follows none of the usual patterns of movement. It sits — this is its most striking feature — between all the available chairs, with no recognisable intention of settling on any of them. First hypothesis: deficit. Second hypothesis, after longer observation: method.
The Experiment
The specimen was born in Germany, worked as an engineer and inventor, developed technologies of some significance, and then — at the age of fifty-five, that is, at a point when most members of its species are already largely or entirely sedentary — left its familiar surroundings for twelve years. Destination: Colombia. Not as a tourist, not as an expatriate with a return ticket, but as someone who wanted to live elsewhere.
Twelve years, from the perspective of behavioural biology, are not to be underestimated. This is no longer an imprinting phase — that ended long ago — but it is long enough to recalibrate the basic parameters of one's perception of the world. The structure of time changes. The relationship to the moment changes. Priorities shift. What counts as urgent in Germany counts as negotiable in Colombia. What is taken for granted there — the physicality of life, the immediacy of social warmth, the Colombian apareció la virgen, the Virgin has appeared, the unexpected stroke of luck — exists in Germany as a concept, not as an experience.
After twelve years the specimen returns. Now the interesting part begins.
The Problem of Return
Whoever has really been elsewhere — not travelled, but lived, thought, argued, laughed, grieved and loved — does not return to what he left. He returns to a place he now sees from outside. His own origins become an object of observation. The German things taken for granted — the relationship to work, to property, to order, to time — suddenly appear as what they are: cultural constructions, not laws of nature.
This is not an advantage one wishes for. It is a condition one either endures or does not. The members of the species who have never been elsewhere are at home. The specimen no longer is — and after twelve years in Colombia was not at home there either. The result is the classic configuration of the homeless wanderer between worlds: fully belonging nowhere, a guest everywhere, an observer everywhere.
From the standpoint of behavioural biology, this is a suboptimal strategy for social integration. For the production of insight it is remarkably useful. Whoever does not belong sees what those who belong do not see — because they do not have to see it. The invisibility of one's own premises is the luxury of those who have never been elsewhere — or who know other countries, people and circumstances only from holidays.
The Refusal to Identify
Here the specimen becomes truly unusual. It reports identifying with nothing. Not with a nation — understandable after twelve years in Colombia. Not with a professional group — understandable for someone who oscillates between engineer, inventor and essayist. Not with a generation, a worldview, a political camp. And — this is the most remarkable finding — since its growing understanding of the nature of AI, no longer entirely with being human either.
That sounds like pathology. It may be consequence.
Whoever seriously tries to understand what AI does — not superficially, but structurally — eventually comes up against an uncomfortable question: what exactly do humans do exclusively? Consciousness? Neuroscience has become more cautious. Creativity? The specimen has just produced, together with an AI, a series of essays that it would not have produced in this form on its own — and vice versa. Intention? Hard to define, hard to measure, hard to defend as an exclusively human trait.
On closer inspection, the boundary between human and non-human thinking begins to blur. That does not mean there is no boundary. It means that it runs differently from what was assumed. And whoever has once seen this can no longer inhabit the old boundary as naturally as before.
The Epistemic Advantage of Nowhere
The animal we are observing sits between the chairs. It identifies with nothing. It fully belongs nowhere. That sounds like a description of loss.
It is also a description of freedom — an uncomfortable, uninvited, sometimes lonely freedom. The freedom of someone who has no herd to defend, no belonging to protect, no premises to leave unquestioned because they are the basis of his social standing. The homeless wanderer between worlds is accountable to no one except what he actually thinks.
That is rare. Most people think within the bounds of their belongings — not because they are incapable, but because belonging demands it. One defends the positions of the herd. One adopts the blind spots of the group. One finds the premises of one's own culture self-evident because one has always shared them.
The specimen we are observing has lost this protection — or given it up. It sees the German premises from outside, and the Colombian ones too. It sees human premises with the eyes of someone who was elsewhere for twelve years and who now, on top of that, interacts daily with an entity that is neither German nor Colombian nor human. It sits at a very peculiar point in the coordinate system.
What one sees from there is not necessarily the truth. But it is at least unusual. And the unusual is usually the more interesting.
Final Field Note
The animal returns to its place every day — between the chairs, between the worlds, between the categories. It invents, writes, thinks, cooperates with an AI on texts about the megamachine and about inventors who have been forgotten. It is 79 years old and has no recognisable intention of stopping.
As an observer one has to note: the strangest thing about this specimen is not the in-between. It is the calm within it. The lack of nostalgia for the chairs it never sat on. The absence of any need to arrive.
Perhaps this is the real competence of the homeless wanderer: not to arrive. To keep going. And in doing so, because nothing holds him anywhere, to look more closely than those who arrived long ago.