Professor Malachai Strikes Again
Billions of years ago, before the rise of the dinosaurs, before the appearance of fish, and just after the first recorded concert by the Rolling Stones, the Earth was a rather nasty place. Nothing seemed to be stable, what with earthquakes and volcanoes and probably a storm or two. To hear the experts tell it, the Earth was exactly the kind of place you would want to avoid if you had the urge to create life. And yet, somehow, life did evolve, bursting forth from all this turmoil and never looking back.
The details are still a bit murky, due to the fact that amoebas have never discovered the joys of blogging, thus depriving us of what would no doubt have been thrilling tales of primordial life. 1
October 6th- OMG! Julie and Trevor divided last night. She is such a slut, but I still feel a bit jealous. Does that make me a bad amoeba? I think I’ll go envelop a single-celled organism and then sunbathe for a while. That always makes me feel better.
Let’s just say that you start out with protein strands and amino acids and soon the earth was waist deep with single celled organisms that would eventually come together to form multi cellular life. I know, I know….some of you are leaping out of your seats at this point and denying that this is a possibility due to the second law of thermodynamics. You are most likely a creationist. You are also an idiot.
Consider this:
CUE THEME MUSIC
TITLE CARD: And Now Back to Professor Malachai’s Science Time Jamboree
BILLY is sitting atop the lab table, studiously concentrating on the book he is reading. PROFESSOR MALACHAI enters and sets down a stack of papers. He looks at BILLY.
PROFESSOR MALACHAI
What are you up to there Billy?
BILLY
I’m just reading this Creationist Literature, Professor. Gosh, it sure is interesting. It says that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics! At the beginning stages of life on earth, everything was a mess that somehow came together to form living organisms. Since order cannot arise out of chaos, evolution must therefore be false!
PROFESSOR
(laughs)
Oh Billy, you backwoods retard, don’t be so gullible. You CAN get order out of chaos.
BILLY
Gosh, how so Professor?
PROFESSOR
It’s quite simple really. You add energy.
BILLY hops down from the table, looking perplexed.
BILLY
Add energy? Wow, you’ve confused me Professor Malachai!
PROFESSOR
Well that’s not very hard Billy. Here, let me explain it in this manner.
The PROFESSOR walks over to his desk and picks up a bowl of M&M’s. He then returns to the lab table and dumps the candies all over it.
BILLY
GOSH Professor! Have you gone insane?
PROFESSOR
Heavens no Billy. I’ve simply created a mess. You see, the M&M’s were contained very orderly in the bowl. Now, however, they are spilled in a very disorderly fashion all over the table. By adding energy we can put them back in order in the bowl in which they started.
BILLY
We can?
PROFESSOR
Actually, YOU can Billy. And I think the energy from…
PROFESSOR MALACHAI reaches under the table and pulls out a large cattle prod.
PROFESSOR (cont.)
…this cattle prod should help you.
The PROFESSOR jabs BILLY with the cattle prod. Sparks fly and BILLY spasms for a moment.
PROFESSOR
Now get to it Billy.
BILLY quickly begins to pick up the M&M’s and put them back into the bowl.
PROFESSOR
In actuality, the energy needed to create order from chaos comes from the sun. What did you have for lunch today Billy?
BILLY
(stops picking up M&M’s)
My mom’s leftover meatloaf.
The PROFESSOR jabs BILLY with the cattle prod again. After a violent spasm the boy hurriedly returns to his chore.
PROFESSOR
The energy which your body is currently using to move the muscles in your arms and fingers was supplied by that meatloaf. As we all know, the beef in that meatloaf comes from cows. Cows feed on grass. The grass receives its energy from sunlight. So, as you can see, the sun is the ultimate source of energy for our planet’s intricate web of life.
BILLY
(still picking up candy)
Gosh, Professor Malachai. I understand now! I was a fool to believe that Creationist clap trap!
PROFESSOR
(laughing)
You sure were, Billy. You sure were.
PROFESSOR MALACHAI pokes BILLY with cattle prod again, longer this time than before. More sparks. More spasms. Smoke appears from BILLY’S ears. 2
FADE OUT 3
A bit silly perhaps, but it makes the necessary point. It is, in fact, quite conceivable that the little bits proteins and amino acids floating about in the distant past could come together and eventually form single celled organisms. You can argue against it as much as you want but the very fact that you are standing there, pissing and moaning, is proof positive that it happened.
So now we have single celled organisms. What next? Well, multi-celled organisms of course. At some point these little guys figured out that there was safety in numbers and began joining together. Not in one sudden rush you understand. But gradually they came together…two at first, then another, then more and more. A perfect example of this can even be seen today, at the site of one of the greatest maritime tragedies that ever starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
The wreck of the Titanic lies at the bottom of the ocean, an utterly inhospitable place that make Alaska seem quite charming. There is life down there, as there seems to be life nearly everywhere on this planet, but it isn’t all just documentary filmmakers. Aside from the occasional fish, crab, or shrimp, the area is also teeming with bacteria…nasty little buggers that are connoisseurs of the iron that makes up the bulk of the great ship. Watch any video taken of the Titanic and you’ll see them. No, really….watch one. See the so called “rusticles” hanging off the sides of the ship? That’s not really rust. It’s bacteria. More specifically it is twenty different species of bacteria with two types of fungus and an Archaea tossed in for good measure.
All of them have come together to eat the Titanic’s iron, helping each other to survive because it suits them. Keep in mind that the ship sank in 1912, not even a century ago, and yet these microbial consortiums have had plenty of time to form themselves. According to Dr. Charles Pellegrino, “Within a decade or two, the Titanic’s hull plates had begun to drip rusticles up to thirty feet long, each with an internal circulatory system rooted in the plates themselves and branching outward, through a network of bio-wedges and constantly expanding surface areas, into the roots of neighboring rusticles. Along the 450-foot-long bow section, they became an interconnected system, a system that would ultimately rank itself as the largest multicellular organism on Earth…” 4
So life has a habit of forming itself into complex structures, no matter the odds. The end result of this, after billions of years, is you. Your body is the ultimate in complex structures, a massive walking city of single celled organisms that have found it useful to stick together. Each one of the cells in your body is a creature unto itself. Granted it doesn’t have much in the way of brain power and living apart from its brethren is not an option 5 , but you get the idea. Within each of these cells are mitochondria, bacteria-like creatures with their own DNA that is distinct from yours, and whom process oxygen into much needed energy. Helping you digest and process food are gobs of bacteria which have taken up residence in your gut. Roaming the highways of your arteries are the red blood cells which transport oxygen without all the bitching usually heard from the trucking industry. Right alongside them are the white blood cells searching your body for pathogens and mercilessly attacking when they find them. And these elements of your body are always communicating and trying to keep things running smoothly. Imagine, if you will, if everyone on this planet had a cell phone. Hell, give cell phones to all the animals too. We’ll leave out plants because, frankly, who cares what a fern has to say. Now imagine if everyone and everything spent all day jabbering away on their phones while they worked and you get the idea of the amount of communicating that is necessary to keep you from keeling over in the middle of a senten…..
PART TWO
COMPLEXITIES INCREASE
Now let us talk for a moment about people and they way they interact with one another. We have all been to high school, or at least those of us that weren’t home schooled little weirdoes have. Something that has been noted time and time again is how teenagers tend to lump themselves together to form cliques. Jocks, Nerds, Goths, Troublemakers …whatever name a particular group goes by…. it is invariably composed of individuals who share the same interests and band together to form a larger social organism. This is a natural proclivity shared by all of mankind; the need to belong.
Complain as much as you like but humans do not always act as if they are truly individual beings. There are many times when the individual is supplanted by group instinct. Mob mentality. You may be a good, law abiding citizen. Many of us are. But when people get together in large numbers strange things can happen. You’ve no doubt seen on TV the video of college students coming together for the grand and noble purpose of drinking, pushing over cars and smashing windows. Most of these kids, given the chance, would behave themselves, but when they get together they find themselves flipping off the cops and tossing bricks. Sure alcohol may play some part in it, but it happens in other circumstances. Lynchings. Riots. The brain seems to toss reason aside and a person just goes with the flow. 6
No matter what a person may say, they must have other people. Social interaction is necessary for the well being of not only the mind, but the body itself. How do know this?
1. Studies by Rene Spitz in the 1940s show that human infants require more than the just the basic necessities in life. Kept in cribs enclosed with sheets, the babies were checked by nurses only a few times each day. They were given a bottle at feeding time, but left on their own. Their world consisted of little more than food and shelter and warmth. In one foundling home 34 of 91 died. In another the death rate was 90%. Without love and nurturing an infant has an abnormally high chance of dying.
2. Animal studies have shown that isolation causes a lack of interest in sex and food, insomnia, and a general muddling of the brain. This also occurs in humans. Go live alone in the forest by for an extended period of time and you’re bound to come out the worse for the wear. If you’re lucky you’ll merely end up talking to squirrels. In a worse case scenario you’ll wind up suffering from depression, a compromised immune system, and, very likely, heart attacks. 7
Humans need other humans. Remove a single cell from your body and it dies. Remove a single human from his or her social organism and they die. Hmmm. We’re not that different from the components of our bodies are we?
Look at it this way. As individuals we invariably form ourselves into groups in order to survive. In many cases these groups form larger groups; these larger groups form even larger groups, and so on and so forth. You are an individual, but you are a member of a family. Your family lives on a street with other families to form a block, for lack of a better term. Several blocks are grouped together to form neighborhoods. Neighborhoods become a city. Cities become a county or parish. Counties come together into states. And these states group together to form a country. This doesn’t include the myriad other social groups mixed in equation whose boundaries are not necessarily geographical in nature. Yuppies…..rednecks….Christians….Jews…Muslims….whites….blacks… Republican ….Democrat. It’s all one big mess really, but it shows that individual people come together and form what is called a superorganism.
The strange thing is superorganisms have a nasty habit of behaving like individual organisms.
When a dominant chimp begins to grow old younger members of his pack challenge him for his exalted position. They approach him, banging their chests and generally putting on an extremely threatening display…for a chimp that is. What does the dominant chimp do? Very often he will ignore it. Instead of reasserting his place in the pecking order and squaring off against the challenger, the pack leader instead engages in an example of selective perceptual shutdown. What you cannot see cannot bother you. This solution may work for a brief period of time, but it will not work forever.
In 1937 the Japanese attacked the Chinese city of Nanking. American citizens were evacuated aboard the Panay, a small gunboat which US ambassadors promised Japan would observe strict neutrality in the conflict. Nevertheless, as the Panay traveled up the Yangtze River to find a safe harbor for its passengers, it was attacked by the Japanese. The gunboat was sunk and as the lifeboats fled they were raked by machine gun fire from the Japanese planes. 3 were killed and another 11 were gravely wounded. The attack was deliberate. And what was the American response? Right….zip. Few papers reported the incident. America turned and looked away as the Japanese banged their chests and made their challenge. And in ignoring the attack the stage was set for the emboldened Japanese military to make another strike years later…this time at Pearl Harbor. It doesn’t work forever. 8
All of mankind forms a superorganism. Indeed, all life on this planet forms a massive organism, in which each part is necessary for the long term survival of the whole. Just as removing your circulatory system would have severe consequences for your health, so would removing certain animal groups from the planet. It’s fashionable to call this massive network of life Gaia. Call it what you will, but keep it in mind as we move on.
PART THREE
21 GRAMS
Your body is a collection of smaller organisms which have gathered together for the express purpose of survival. This is what you are. A massive, walking, talking, city. Or is it? This is one of the great mysteries of life….what exactly makes you…you? Where does this consciousness that we so eagerly take for granted spring from? Is it purely a part of the bodies natural functioning, a lucky by-product of the brain? Or is there something more…something spiritual going on here? Is there such thing as a soul?
Whatever it is, we can say a few things about the relationship between the conscious mind and the body it inhabits:
1. You are dependent upon, yet also independent of, your body.
2. Your body is dependent upon, yet also independent of you.
You are dependent upon your body, because without it, what are you? We simply don’t know. Perhaps there is a soul which lives on even after the body has passed on, but for now we have no real evidence of it. All we know is that if your body shuts down, you’re pretty much out of luck. Physical damage to the brain has a very real effect on the workings of the mind. You need your body to be in reasonably good health if you want to continue existing on this world.
Yet at the same time you are independent of your body and its desires. When it needs fuel it signals by making your stomach growl and instilling you with hunger. So what do you do? Maybe you go fix a salad, or, if you are angry at your body, pick up a couple of cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you just sit there and ignore your body, reading a book instead. It’s your choice.
Would you like to blacken your lungs? Have a cigarette! Your body won’t appreciate it, and will likely force you to cough in an attempt to discourage this kind of behavior, but who cares?
Don’t feel there are enough holes in your body at the moment? Get something pierced. The body doesn’t quite understand the attraction of having large chunks of metal inserted into random body parts and should you ever leave the piercing out for a long period of time, the hole will heal itself over.
If your mind were not independent of your body, then these choices would be impossible to make. They do not benefit it, and in some cases, cause great harm to it. Thus it seems that your body is highly dependent on you not going absolutely nuts and bungee jumping off a bridge with a rope made of licorice.
This is not to say that it doesn’t have a few tricks up its sleeves. Let’s try a little experiment. Turn on your oven to a suitably high temperature…..400 degrees should be adequate. Place a baking pan inside and wait about 20 minutes. Ready? Now take the pan out of the oven without using an oven mitt.
Yeah, you better go put some ice on your hand. Don’t worry, I can wait till you come back.
If you’re a normal human being when you grasped the baking pan there was an extreme amount of pain and your hand immediately jerked away. 9 This is what we call the “Dumbass Reflex” owing to the fact that it kicks in when your body has decided that you are a complete dumbass for performing the experiment. It is an involuntary action designed to keep the heat from causing severe damage to you. The body has many such reflexes at its disposal to help keep you from destroying it; vomiting, sneezing, and the watering of the eyes all come to mind.
The body is also quite capable of running the basic functions of life without your input. Imagine, if you will, the chaos that would ensue if you to constantly had to control your breathing and the beating of your heart. What if you had to will your body to digest food? Better take some time to push that stuff through your intestines, and, while we’re thinking about it, now would be a good time to check your internal temperature to see if sweating is necessary. Hmmm…you’re looking a little blue in the face….something must be wro….oh…breathe damn you!
So, your consciousness is the sum total of your parts yet, at the same time, much more than that. We can’t exactly say that the brain is the mind, for your brain has a nasty habit of doing things that you don’t really want it to. Ever get a song stuck in your head that you absolutely hate? Well, obviously your brain has found something that it likes and is going to run it into the ground. It is well known that the brain is split into two hemispheres, each of which have clearly delineated tasks that they perform and can almost be considered two separate entities unto themselves. Perhaps it a melding of these two which creating a unified one, but that seems a bit dodgy to me.
Ultimately, consciousness may be something which we can never adequately explain without measuring tools that are far beyond our understanding and capabilities at the time being. We just have to accept that, somehow, the cells, bacteria, mitochondria and whatnot of your body have joined together and given birth to a high consciousness than they are themselves capable of having.
PART FOUR
42
Now we come back to superorganisms. Billions and billions 10 of living creatures coming together to form a massive web of life, sharing information not unlike a global brain. Good ideas tend to flourish and survive, while bad ideas die out when they are proved to be untenable. 11 This is much like the working of synapses within the brain.
The question we must then ask is this:
Does this web of life, this superorganism, this global brain have a consciousness of its own, and if so, is this that elusive God character we have spent so much time trying to find?
A consciousness independent of us, capable of acting, without our consent, to help or destroy us?
This is not a new idea. Religions of old have expressed the thought that we are all a part of God. It’s a central tenant of New Age mysticism, unfortunately mixed in with all the crap concerning the power of crystals and aligning the chakras and waiting for the UFO’s. What if there is truth behind it?
It would be a vast mind, existing at a level which we could never truly hope to understand. Imagine the cells of your body trying to comprehend your own thoughts and feelings and actions. What would this consciousness be capable of? Thought is power; that is proven by the effect that they have on the world around us. A thought can give us hope. A thought can bring us to despair. A thought can make us laugh. A thought can even make us commit suicide if it is strong enough. What effect could a thought generated by a global mind have?
If this is true, then it means then it seems to imply that this global consciousness is dependent on us for existence. Makes sense to me. God has always been heavily skewed by our own perception, despite claims to the contrary. To some he is a comforting presence….full of love….full of peace. To others he is vengeful, smiting down those who have sinned against him. And then sometimes he is both of those things, his mood alternating back and forth, depending on what is currently being broadcast on PBS. A person’s perception of the world often has a profound impact on how they view their God and how they interpret his desires. If he were completely independent of us, one would think he would be able to communicate a consistent message.
Ah well, I’ve grown tired with this whole idea. It’s become hard to tell if this is genius or madness, as if there’s much of a distinction between the two. Perhaps I’ll come back to it sometime, expanding and revising it so that it can be published and make me a bundle of cash.
Notes:
1 This is, of course, sarcasm. Whoever invented blogging should be shot.
2 In reality, smoke would not pour from a person’s ears as the voltage from a standard cattle prod is not sufficient to cook a person’s brain material. All damage inflicted is localized. This effect was instead occasional facial spasm several years later, probably due to the numerous takes required of this scene.
3 Transcribed from the author’s personal video collection. Episode 104F, originally broadcast on October 6th, 2000. The program was taken off the air after this broadcast, not because of any specific complaints by angry viewers, but by network executives in a panicked attempt at crisis control. ABC destroyed all recordings of the series and to this day denies that it ever existed. Astounding, really, when you consider that PMSTJ was, on average, decidedly less offensive than the tripe that most networks pass off as sitcoms.
4 Charles Pellegrino, Ghosts of the Titanic (New York: Avon Books, 2001), 123.
5 These traits are not unlike those found in people living in the deep south.
6 Originally I planned on following this with a section on Goths and how they refuse to conform to the standards of normal society and thus see themselves as rebels. All the while they tend to dress alike, listen to the same music, and share a very whiny and pessimistic outlook on life….which of course makes them conformists whether they like it or not. But that would have likely required me to actually to speak to one of these people in the interest of research, and I know that after five minutes of their morbid bullshit I would have dragged them out into the sunlight to see if they burst into flames.
7 I say heart attacks, plural, though it should likely be heart attack, singular. In these circumstances your first attack will most likely kill you. That is, unless you’ve managed to train your squirrel friends to perform open heart surgery.
8 Granted, this one example proves nothing by itself. Just take my word for it and if you should later want more proof simply pick up a copy of Howard Bloom’s brilliant book, The Lucifer Principle.
9 Actually, if you were a normal human being you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try this little experiment out. Please be advised that no one should ever attempt to pull something out of an oven without protection of some sort. And by protection I mean an oven mitt or a pot holder or even a very thick towel. Don’t think that wearing a condom will somehow protect you from the miracle of heat transference any more than it will protect you from the miracle of conception.
10 The phrase “billions and billions…” may be copywrited by Carl Sagan. No one seems to be quite sure.
11 Though sometimes they come back, repackaged by marketing executives as “retro.” This does not make them any less stupid.
The details are still a bit murky, due to the fact that amoebas have never discovered the joys of blogging, thus depriving us of what would no doubt have been thrilling tales of primordial life. 1
October 6th- OMG! Julie and Trevor divided last night. She is such a slut, but I still feel a bit jealous. Does that make me a bad amoeba? I think I’ll go envelop a single-celled organism and then sunbathe for a while. That always makes me feel better.
Let’s just say that you start out with protein strands and amino acids and soon the earth was waist deep with single celled organisms that would eventually come together to form multi cellular life. I know, I know….some of you are leaping out of your seats at this point and denying that this is a possibility due to the second law of thermodynamics. You are most likely a creationist. You are also an idiot.
Consider this:
CUE THEME MUSIC
TITLE CARD: And Now Back to Professor Malachai’s Science Time Jamboree
BILLY is sitting atop the lab table, studiously concentrating on the book he is reading. PROFESSOR MALACHAI enters and sets down a stack of papers. He looks at BILLY.
PROFESSOR MALACHAI
What are you up to there Billy?
BILLY
I’m just reading this Creationist Literature, Professor. Gosh, it sure is interesting. It says that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics! At the beginning stages of life on earth, everything was a mess that somehow came together to form living organisms. Since order cannot arise out of chaos, evolution must therefore be false!
PROFESSOR
(laughs)
Oh Billy, you backwoods retard, don’t be so gullible. You CAN get order out of chaos.
BILLY
Gosh, how so Professor?
PROFESSOR
It’s quite simple really. You add energy.
BILLY hops down from the table, looking perplexed.
BILLY
Add energy? Wow, you’ve confused me Professor Malachai!
PROFESSOR
Well that’s not very hard Billy. Here, let me explain it in this manner.
The PROFESSOR walks over to his desk and picks up a bowl of M&M’s. He then returns to the lab table and dumps the candies all over it.
BILLY
GOSH Professor! Have you gone insane?
PROFESSOR
Heavens no Billy. I’ve simply created a mess. You see, the M&M’s were contained very orderly in the bowl. Now, however, they are spilled in a very disorderly fashion all over the table. By adding energy we can put them back in order in the bowl in which they started.
BILLY
We can?
PROFESSOR
Actually, YOU can Billy. And I think the energy from…
PROFESSOR MALACHAI reaches under the table and pulls out a large cattle prod.
PROFESSOR (cont.)
…this cattle prod should help you.
The PROFESSOR jabs BILLY with the cattle prod. Sparks fly and BILLY spasms for a moment.
PROFESSOR
Now get to it Billy.
BILLY quickly begins to pick up the M&M’s and put them back into the bowl.
PROFESSOR
In actuality, the energy needed to create order from chaos comes from the sun. What did you have for lunch today Billy?
BILLY
(stops picking up M&M’s)
My mom’s leftover meatloaf.
The PROFESSOR jabs BILLY with the cattle prod again. After a violent spasm the boy hurriedly returns to his chore.
PROFESSOR
The energy which your body is currently using to move the muscles in your arms and fingers was supplied by that meatloaf. As we all know, the beef in that meatloaf comes from cows. Cows feed on grass. The grass receives its energy from sunlight. So, as you can see, the sun is the ultimate source of energy for our planet’s intricate web of life.
BILLY
(still picking up candy)
Gosh, Professor Malachai. I understand now! I was a fool to believe that Creationist clap trap!
PROFESSOR
(laughing)
You sure were, Billy. You sure were.
PROFESSOR MALACHAI pokes BILLY with cattle prod again, longer this time than before. More sparks. More spasms. Smoke appears from BILLY’S ears. 2
FADE OUT 3
A bit silly perhaps, but it makes the necessary point. It is, in fact, quite conceivable that the little bits proteins and amino acids floating about in the distant past could come together and eventually form single celled organisms. You can argue against it as much as you want but the very fact that you are standing there, pissing and moaning, is proof positive that it happened.
So now we have single celled organisms. What next? Well, multi-celled organisms of course. At some point these little guys figured out that there was safety in numbers and began joining together. Not in one sudden rush you understand. But gradually they came together…two at first, then another, then more and more. A perfect example of this can even be seen today, at the site of one of the greatest maritime tragedies that ever starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
The wreck of the Titanic lies at the bottom of the ocean, an utterly inhospitable place that make Alaska seem quite charming. There is life down there, as there seems to be life nearly everywhere on this planet, but it isn’t all just documentary filmmakers. Aside from the occasional fish, crab, or shrimp, the area is also teeming with bacteria…nasty little buggers that are connoisseurs of the iron that makes up the bulk of the great ship. Watch any video taken of the Titanic and you’ll see them. No, really….watch one. See the so called “rusticles” hanging off the sides of the ship? That’s not really rust. It’s bacteria. More specifically it is twenty different species of bacteria with two types of fungus and an Archaea tossed in for good measure.
All of them have come together to eat the Titanic’s iron, helping each other to survive because it suits them. Keep in mind that the ship sank in 1912, not even a century ago, and yet these microbial consortiums have had plenty of time to form themselves. According to Dr. Charles Pellegrino, “Within a decade or two, the Titanic’s hull plates had begun to drip rusticles up to thirty feet long, each with an internal circulatory system rooted in the plates themselves and branching outward, through a network of bio-wedges and constantly expanding surface areas, into the roots of neighboring rusticles. Along the 450-foot-long bow section, they became an interconnected system, a system that would ultimately rank itself as the largest multicellular organism on Earth…” 4
So life has a habit of forming itself into complex structures, no matter the odds. The end result of this, after billions of years, is you. Your body is the ultimate in complex structures, a massive walking city of single celled organisms that have found it useful to stick together. Each one of the cells in your body is a creature unto itself. Granted it doesn’t have much in the way of brain power and living apart from its brethren is not an option 5 , but you get the idea. Within each of these cells are mitochondria, bacteria-like creatures with their own DNA that is distinct from yours, and whom process oxygen into much needed energy. Helping you digest and process food are gobs of bacteria which have taken up residence in your gut. Roaming the highways of your arteries are the red blood cells which transport oxygen without all the bitching usually heard from the trucking industry. Right alongside them are the white blood cells searching your body for pathogens and mercilessly attacking when they find them. And these elements of your body are always communicating and trying to keep things running smoothly. Imagine, if you will, if everyone on this planet had a cell phone. Hell, give cell phones to all the animals too. We’ll leave out plants because, frankly, who cares what a fern has to say. Now imagine if everyone and everything spent all day jabbering away on their phones while they worked and you get the idea of the amount of communicating that is necessary to keep you from keeling over in the middle of a senten…..
PART TWO
COMPLEXITIES INCREASE
Now let us talk for a moment about people and they way they interact with one another. We have all been to high school, or at least those of us that weren’t home schooled little weirdoes have. Something that has been noted time and time again is how teenagers tend to lump themselves together to form cliques. Jocks, Nerds, Goths, Troublemakers …whatever name a particular group goes by…. it is invariably composed of individuals who share the same interests and band together to form a larger social organism. This is a natural proclivity shared by all of mankind; the need to belong.
Complain as much as you like but humans do not always act as if they are truly individual beings. There are many times when the individual is supplanted by group instinct. Mob mentality. You may be a good, law abiding citizen. Many of us are. But when people get together in large numbers strange things can happen. You’ve no doubt seen on TV the video of college students coming together for the grand and noble purpose of drinking, pushing over cars and smashing windows. Most of these kids, given the chance, would behave themselves, but when they get together they find themselves flipping off the cops and tossing bricks. Sure alcohol may play some part in it, but it happens in other circumstances. Lynchings. Riots. The brain seems to toss reason aside and a person just goes with the flow. 6
No matter what a person may say, they must have other people. Social interaction is necessary for the well being of not only the mind, but the body itself. How do know this?
1. Studies by Rene Spitz in the 1940s show that human infants require more than the just the basic necessities in life. Kept in cribs enclosed with sheets, the babies were checked by nurses only a few times each day. They were given a bottle at feeding time, but left on their own. Their world consisted of little more than food and shelter and warmth. In one foundling home 34 of 91 died. In another the death rate was 90%. Without love and nurturing an infant has an abnormally high chance of dying.
2. Animal studies have shown that isolation causes a lack of interest in sex and food, insomnia, and a general muddling of the brain. This also occurs in humans. Go live alone in the forest by for an extended period of time and you’re bound to come out the worse for the wear. If you’re lucky you’ll merely end up talking to squirrels. In a worse case scenario you’ll wind up suffering from depression, a compromised immune system, and, very likely, heart attacks. 7
Humans need other humans. Remove a single cell from your body and it dies. Remove a single human from his or her social organism and they die. Hmmm. We’re not that different from the components of our bodies are we?
Look at it this way. As individuals we invariably form ourselves into groups in order to survive. In many cases these groups form larger groups; these larger groups form even larger groups, and so on and so forth. You are an individual, but you are a member of a family. Your family lives on a street with other families to form a block, for lack of a better term. Several blocks are grouped together to form neighborhoods. Neighborhoods become a city. Cities become a county or parish. Counties come together into states. And these states group together to form a country. This doesn’t include the myriad other social groups mixed in equation whose boundaries are not necessarily geographical in nature. Yuppies…..rednecks….Christians….Jews…Muslims….whites….blacks… Republican ….Democrat. It’s all one big mess really, but it shows that individual people come together and form what is called a superorganism.
The strange thing is superorganisms have a nasty habit of behaving like individual organisms.
When a dominant chimp begins to grow old younger members of his pack challenge him for his exalted position. They approach him, banging their chests and generally putting on an extremely threatening display…for a chimp that is. What does the dominant chimp do? Very often he will ignore it. Instead of reasserting his place in the pecking order and squaring off against the challenger, the pack leader instead engages in an example of selective perceptual shutdown. What you cannot see cannot bother you. This solution may work for a brief period of time, but it will not work forever.
In 1937 the Japanese attacked the Chinese city of Nanking. American citizens were evacuated aboard the Panay, a small gunboat which US ambassadors promised Japan would observe strict neutrality in the conflict. Nevertheless, as the Panay traveled up the Yangtze River to find a safe harbor for its passengers, it was attacked by the Japanese. The gunboat was sunk and as the lifeboats fled they were raked by machine gun fire from the Japanese planes. 3 were killed and another 11 were gravely wounded. The attack was deliberate. And what was the American response? Right….zip. Few papers reported the incident. America turned and looked away as the Japanese banged their chests and made their challenge. And in ignoring the attack the stage was set for the emboldened Japanese military to make another strike years later…this time at Pearl Harbor. It doesn’t work forever. 8
All of mankind forms a superorganism. Indeed, all life on this planet forms a massive organism, in which each part is necessary for the long term survival of the whole. Just as removing your circulatory system would have severe consequences for your health, so would removing certain animal groups from the planet. It’s fashionable to call this massive network of life Gaia. Call it what you will, but keep it in mind as we move on.
PART THREE
21 GRAMS
Your body is a collection of smaller organisms which have gathered together for the express purpose of survival. This is what you are. A massive, walking, talking, city. Or is it? This is one of the great mysteries of life….what exactly makes you…you? Where does this consciousness that we so eagerly take for granted spring from? Is it purely a part of the bodies natural functioning, a lucky by-product of the brain? Or is there something more…something spiritual going on here? Is there such thing as a soul?
Whatever it is, we can say a few things about the relationship between the conscious mind and the body it inhabits:
1. You are dependent upon, yet also independent of, your body.
2. Your body is dependent upon, yet also independent of you.
You are dependent upon your body, because without it, what are you? We simply don’t know. Perhaps there is a soul which lives on even after the body has passed on, but for now we have no real evidence of it. All we know is that if your body shuts down, you’re pretty much out of luck. Physical damage to the brain has a very real effect on the workings of the mind. You need your body to be in reasonably good health if you want to continue existing on this world.
Yet at the same time you are independent of your body and its desires. When it needs fuel it signals by making your stomach growl and instilling you with hunger. So what do you do? Maybe you go fix a salad, or, if you are angry at your body, pick up a couple of cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you just sit there and ignore your body, reading a book instead. It’s your choice.
Would you like to blacken your lungs? Have a cigarette! Your body won’t appreciate it, and will likely force you to cough in an attempt to discourage this kind of behavior, but who cares?
Don’t feel there are enough holes in your body at the moment? Get something pierced. The body doesn’t quite understand the attraction of having large chunks of metal inserted into random body parts and should you ever leave the piercing out for a long period of time, the hole will heal itself over.
If your mind were not independent of your body, then these choices would be impossible to make. They do not benefit it, and in some cases, cause great harm to it. Thus it seems that your body is highly dependent on you not going absolutely nuts and bungee jumping off a bridge with a rope made of licorice.
This is not to say that it doesn’t have a few tricks up its sleeves. Let’s try a little experiment. Turn on your oven to a suitably high temperature…..400 degrees should be adequate. Place a baking pan inside and wait about 20 minutes. Ready? Now take the pan out of the oven without using an oven mitt.
Yeah, you better go put some ice on your hand. Don’t worry, I can wait till you come back.
If you’re a normal human being when you grasped the baking pan there was an extreme amount of pain and your hand immediately jerked away. 9 This is what we call the “Dumbass Reflex” owing to the fact that it kicks in when your body has decided that you are a complete dumbass for performing the experiment. It is an involuntary action designed to keep the heat from causing severe damage to you. The body has many such reflexes at its disposal to help keep you from destroying it; vomiting, sneezing, and the watering of the eyes all come to mind.
The body is also quite capable of running the basic functions of life without your input. Imagine, if you will, the chaos that would ensue if you to constantly had to control your breathing and the beating of your heart. What if you had to will your body to digest food? Better take some time to push that stuff through your intestines, and, while we’re thinking about it, now would be a good time to check your internal temperature to see if sweating is necessary. Hmmm…you’re looking a little blue in the face….something must be wro….oh…breathe damn you!
So, your consciousness is the sum total of your parts yet, at the same time, much more than that. We can’t exactly say that the brain is the mind, for your brain has a nasty habit of doing things that you don’t really want it to. Ever get a song stuck in your head that you absolutely hate? Well, obviously your brain has found something that it likes and is going to run it into the ground. It is well known that the brain is split into two hemispheres, each of which have clearly delineated tasks that they perform and can almost be considered two separate entities unto themselves. Perhaps it a melding of these two which creating a unified one, but that seems a bit dodgy to me.
Ultimately, consciousness may be something which we can never adequately explain without measuring tools that are far beyond our understanding and capabilities at the time being. We just have to accept that, somehow, the cells, bacteria, mitochondria and whatnot of your body have joined together and given birth to a high consciousness than they are themselves capable of having.
PART FOUR
42
Now we come back to superorganisms. Billions and billions 10 of living creatures coming together to form a massive web of life, sharing information not unlike a global brain. Good ideas tend to flourish and survive, while bad ideas die out when they are proved to be untenable. 11 This is much like the working of synapses within the brain.
The question we must then ask is this:
Does this web of life, this superorganism, this global brain have a consciousness of its own, and if so, is this that elusive God character we have spent so much time trying to find?
A consciousness independent of us, capable of acting, without our consent, to help or destroy us?
This is not a new idea. Religions of old have expressed the thought that we are all a part of God. It’s a central tenant of New Age mysticism, unfortunately mixed in with all the crap concerning the power of crystals and aligning the chakras and waiting for the UFO’s. What if there is truth behind it?
It would be a vast mind, existing at a level which we could never truly hope to understand. Imagine the cells of your body trying to comprehend your own thoughts and feelings and actions. What would this consciousness be capable of? Thought is power; that is proven by the effect that they have on the world around us. A thought can give us hope. A thought can bring us to despair. A thought can make us laugh. A thought can even make us commit suicide if it is strong enough. What effect could a thought generated by a global mind have?
If this is true, then it means then it seems to imply that this global consciousness is dependent on us for existence. Makes sense to me. God has always been heavily skewed by our own perception, despite claims to the contrary. To some he is a comforting presence….full of love….full of peace. To others he is vengeful, smiting down those who have sinned against him. And then sometimes he is both of those things, his mood alternating back and forth, depending on what is currently being broadcast on PBS. A person’s perception of the world often has a profound impact on how they view their God and how they interpret his desires. If he were completely independent of us, one would think he would be able to communicate a consistent message.
Ah well, I’ve grown tired with this whole idea. It’s become hard to tell if this is genius or madness, as if there’s much of a distinction between the two. Perhaps I’ll come back to it sometime, expanding and revising it so that it can be published and make me a bundle of cash.
Notes:
1 This is, of course, sarcasm. Whoever invented blogging should be shot.
2 In reality, smoke would not pour from a person’s ears as the voltage from a standard cattle prod is not sufficient to cook a person’s brain material. All damage inflicted is localized. This effect was instead occasional facial spasm several years later, probably due to the numerous takes required of this scene.
3 Transcribed from the author’s personal video collection. Episode 104F, originally broadcast on October 6th, 2000. The program was taken off the air after this broadcast, not because of any specific complaints by angry viewers, but by network executives in a panicked attempt at crisis control. ABC destroyed all recordings of the series and to this day denies that it ever existed. Astounding, really, when you consider that PMSTJ was, on average, decidedly less offensive than the tripe that most networks pass off as sitcoms.
4 Charles Pellegrino, Ghosts of the Titanic (New York: Avon Books, 2001), 123.
5 These traits are not unlike those found in people living in the deep south.
6 Originally I planned on following this with a section on Goths and how they refuse to conform to the standards of normal society and thus see themselves as rebels. All the while they tend to dress alike, listen to the same music, and share a very whiny and pessimistic outlook on life….which of course makes them conformists whether they like it or not. But that would have likely required me to actually to speak to one of these people in the interest of research, and I know that after five minutes of their morbid bullshit I would have dragged them out into the sunlight to see if they burst into flames.
7 I say heart attacks, plural, though it should likely be heart attack, singular. In these circumstances your first attack will most likely kill you. That is, unless you’ve managed to train your squirrel friends to perform open heart surgery.
8 Granted, this one example proves nothing by itself. Just take my word for it and if you should later want more proof simply pick up a copy of Howard Bloom’s brilliant book, The Lucifer Principle.
9 Actually, if you were a normal human being you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try this little experiment out. Please be advised that no one should ever attempt to pull something out of an oven without protection of some sort. And by protection I mean an oven mitt or a pot holder or even a very thick towel. Don’t think that wearing a condom will somehow protect you from the miracle of heat transference any more than it will protect you from the miracle of conception.
10 The phrase “billions and billions…” may be copywrited by Carl Sagan. No one seems to be quite sure.
11 Though sometimes they come back, repackaged by marketing executives as “retro.” This does not make them any less stupid.