A long time ago when I was a courier for Fedex I had a dropbox on my route at the front of a vacant office building. While emptying it of overnight-letter envelopes one evening, I noticed the tiny body of a gecko tucked into the lower lip of the dropbox door. As I had to empty the box each day, I noticed that over the next few days the gecko started to rot. The stench was amazingly potent and widespread especially considering how small it was. It got worse and worse until one day the smell was gone. I popped open the door to empty the dropbox and looked down to find a naked gecko skeleton. A single fat maggot was curled inside the ribcage.
I was amazed at the transformation. The gecko had probably died a few days before after getting trapped inside. Then bacteria had gone to work digesting its dead flesh. Then a fly detecting the stench had come along and laid an egg on the corpse where this newly hatched maggot had made quick work of the remains. Now finally, this maggot was preparing to develop into a fly. It was the circle of life played out in miniature.
It got me thinking. Can we really call ourselves individuals? You can shave off some of your cells and grow them in a dish for years if they have access to enough food. Are those cells you? Where does your body end and you begin? Is it just that plants and animals evolved as intelligent vehicles for multi-cellular life? In other words, what if consciousness is just a highly developed system for protecting and reproducing life? What if we, our consciousnesses, are just an adaptation to better promote a lower-level biological imperative? What if our minds are just the pilots for a lifeboat of individual cells and creatures? A Portoguese Man O’War is a colony of organisms working together as one unit. Maybe we are not much different. In biology there is this theory that the individual organelles of our cells, like mitochondria, were once separate organisms who were taken inside other prokaryotic organisms to live together as endosymbionts. As a single organism. Did the separate natures of each creature disappear when they became one?
What are you? Consider that your body cycles much of its components on a monthly basis as your cells divide, tissues replenish, waste excretes, and nutrients move through your system. Physically, you are never the same person twice. If that is the case, what makes you you?
We know that a body can be kept biologically alive without higher-level brain function. I’m no atheist by any means, but I do have to wonder. As every dream and thought I have experienced has taken place within my body, what happens when my body ceases to function and dies? It stands to reason that whatever I am also dies.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article You are a colony organism, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
I found this article by performing a search for the phrase “you are a colony”. I hold a bachelor degree in molecular biology and the point of view that we are not single or individual beings. What's more, we live symbiotically with bacteria, fungi, and other organisms which are found on various mucosa. Without them, we would surely die. We could sooner lose all of our limbs and survive than lose the approximate 3 pounds of microorganisms.
Speaking of the mitochondria, they are symbiotic organisms and organelles present in most cells; all with their own life cycles and distinct DNA. They are present in the ovum of the human female prior to fertilization by the sperm, which itself lacks mitochondria. Our cells provide a relatively harmless, nutrient-rich environment for the mitochondria, and they produce excess of the chemical complex ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which most cellular mechanisms in turn use as a source of chemical energy.
But, this conclusion lead to the notion that our consciousness is a limited device meant to perpetuate the colony, as mentioned above. A plastic, adaptable set of imperatives meant to allow the system to thrive in the local ecology. In a very real sense, humans are no more individual beings than the planet is a single individual being. Because as your consciousness is limited to sensory inputs and motor responses, so are your cells limited to chemical sensory inputs (and there are more than you would imagine) and a chemical-motor response. If you don't believe that, then search for information on cancer and reproduction to learn the impact a single cell may have on the entire body.
Our conscious influence over our bodies is quite limited. Our desires are mostly selfish. Our actions are largely habitual. How might you behave differently if you no longer saw yourself as an individual?
I found this article by performing a search for the phrase “you are a colony”. I hold a bachelor degree in molecular biology and the point of view that we are not single or individual beings. What's more, we live symbiotically with bacteria, fungi, and other organisms which are found on various mucosa. Without them, we would surely die. We could sooner lose all of our limbs and survive than lose the approximate 3 pounds of microorganisms.
Speaking of the mitochondria, they are symbiotic organisms and organelles present in most cells; all with their own life cycles and distinct DNA. They are present in the ovum of the human female prior to fertilization by the sperm, which itself lacks mitochondria. Our cells provide a relatively harmless, nutrient-rich environment for the mitochondria, and they produce excess of the chemical complex ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which most cellular mechanisms in turn use as a source of chemical energy.
But, this conclusion lead to the notion that our consciousness is a limited device meant to perpetuate the colony, as mentioned above. A plastic, adaptable set of imperatives meant to allow the system to thrive in the local ecology. In a very real sense, humans are no more individual beings than the planet is a single individual being. Because as your consciousness is limited to sensory inputs and motor responses, so are your cells limited to chemical sensory inputs (and there are more than you would imagine) and a chemical-motor response. If you don't believe that, then search for information on cancer and reproduction to learn the impact a single cell may have on the entire body.
Our conscious influence over our bodies is quite limited. Our desires are mostly selfish. Our actions are largely habitual. How might you behave differently if you no longer saw yourself as an individual?