At a place called Brock Pond in northern Wisconsin, philosopher Strachan Donnelly experienced a "philosophic lightning bolt" revelation in the croaking of frogs at the center of the pond.
"The universe burst forth into sound with the croak of a frog. Before, there had been a vast, meaningless silence of whirling forces. Now there was sound, a sounder, and an audience appreciative of the character and quality of the sound, which was laced with subtle meanings and significance. Before a soundless universe; now a soundful universe, a cosmological frog leap forward..”
With the frog pond a metaphor for the realm of life with its billions of organisms, each with their unique and artful sounds that could create a harmonious symphony except for a small section of this natural orchestra that refuses to blend in with the others, creating discordant cacophony by following its own tune to the exclusion of all others.
“If we humans do not tune in, the pond literally might become frogless, humanless, and soundless. Such a lapse into disvalue and lifelessness is a potential ontological and cosmological evil that vastly overshadows the pleasures, pains, life plans, and deaths of individual organisms, human or other. The wonderful and complex interplay of the bounded, boundaries, and the boundless threatens to become unraveled, leaving insignificant life or animate being, if any at all. Relatively or absolutely, there might be only the soundless, the valueless, the boundless. “
