Tourists try to feed them in places like the Piazza San Marco in Venice; then they might order piccione from a restaurant menu at dinner. Before scientists taught the birds to play ping-pong and piano, before they were conditioned to peck at a target from within a missile in order to keep it on course, pigeons simply spent time perching on the heads of statues, preening or puffing up their feathers or shitting on the cobblestones. And then pigeons became useful for demonstrating the obstinacy of human behavior, or the consequences resulting from reinforcement— The hope was to use these methods to optimize anything from educating children to motivating the poor— thus fashioning a more effective world through a system of control. Perhaps the experiments proved that the pigeon isn't very smart after all, if its programming makes it do the same thing over and over. The unseen hand has taken away the reward— and still it pecks at the green tile instead of the red; peck and peck and peck. Stupid bird. But aren't individual problems tied to larger structural ones? Belief in pure methods of control can lead as much to a police state. Whereas the point of persuasion allows the bird to come back to you, or not, of its own accord.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.