A. The Subjective.
The official line holds that I am an individual, a one, a singularity, that
which is incapable of division. The official line is so ingrained and
taken for granted that any other perspective is marginalized. The promise
of the official line is that no matter how fractured or self-contradictory I
am, there is path or therapeutic response leading toward wholeness, integrity,
a unity that synthesizes all inconsistencies into a coherent wholeness.
I have at long last come to doubt the official line. I have abandoned
hope that some "true self" will arise within me, as though I should
suddenly be endowed with a skill like juggling, tight-rope walking or solving
for f(x) I did not heretofore possess. Without the promise of resolution,
I am resigned to accept a condition of multiplicity, of tension unresolved, of
simultaneously saving and losing my cake. At one and the same time I feel
obliged to work late and “catch-up" and also to leave early and relax at
home, to find a buck or two to give the panhandler at the freeway exit and also
to selfishly horde and preserve every dollar for my own use, to answer
truthfully as questions arise and also to hide behind polite prevarication.
And it is not as though I was of two minds; it is as though I am
cluster-minded, as though I am crowd-sourced, poll-driven, building an inner
consensus, forming parliamentary coalitions, an insecurity council sometimes as
random as a sample of YouTube comments.
B. The Objective.
The two prevailing theories that seek to explain the development of
multi-celled organisms uses the symbiosis model or colony model 1.
In symbiosis two or more different organisms each helping and feeding off
the other in some way develop an ever closer relationship until at some point
they are treated as one organism. Under the colony theory, clusters
of identical cells combine into a single mass for some benefit such as
protection or grazing. Given enough time the different cells within the
cluster develop or evolve specialization, differentiation and division of labor
so that some cells become feet and some become hands and one day the cluster of
cells can climb a tree.
At our biologic foundation we are not a single cell that grew up to be a
complex humanoid. We are formed from a mob, a collection, a committee, a
conglomeration of identical and symbiotic cells.
There are nine times as many microbial organisms in and on the human body as
there are human cells.2 Bacteria and fungus are much smaller
than human cells and our human microbiome amounts to only 1-3% of a human body
by weight. The vast majority of the alien organisms inhabiting the human
body are beneficial. Some are needed for digestion; they perform functions such
as breaking down carbohydrates that would be otherwise indigestible.
Farts are not of our making. They are the gaseous by-product of
bacterial metabolism.
The human body has evolved to be inhabited, always was inhabited, infested,
populated and colonized by the non-human. Encapsulated within almost
every human cell are one or more mitochondria: bladder shaped entities suspended
in perfect symbiosis.3 From the human perspective mitochondria
serve us by creating adenosine triphosphate (ATP), molecular chemical energy, usable by the cell. Humans depend upon
mitochondria. From the mitochondrion point-of-view, they are served by
humans who provide the oxygen and glucose upon which the mitochondria feed.
Humans have developed lungs, guts, hunger and a bacterial environment
just so that the mitochondria can be supplied with nutrients.
That mitochondria, though co-dependent, are in the end different from humans seems
clear when we consider:
1) Mitochondria act as cells
within cells dividing in self-replication;
2) Mitochondria have their own
genome;
3) Mitochondria DNA resembles
bacterial DNA, not human DNA; and
4) Mitochondria are evolving
independently from humans;
We are not infected with mitochondria as infants playing on a dirty floor.
Mitochondria are there at the beginning, providing the female egg with
the energy necessary for reproduction.
C. The Emergent.
Molecules are formed by combining atoms in a new relationship. Molecular
relationships are a level of complexity that emerge out of the lower level
atomic complexity. Just so, life emerges, arises, animates from the lower
level molecular complexity.
Where does consciousness come from? It emerges out of biologic
complexity, but what biology. Descartes put the seat of consciousness in
the pineal gland, a small trans-hemispheric, endocrine gland in the vertebrate
brain. Some traditions seat consciousness in the gut or bowels.
Today most assume that consciousness is a transcendent pattern emerging out the
neural activity in the brain. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging maps
or correlates certain kinds of cognition with specific areas of the brain.
But beware the Post Hoc Egro
Propter Hoc; correlation does not imply causation.
Does consciousness cause the brain to fire as it does, or does the brain cause
experience as it is? Some experiments suggest that brain is as much as
seven seconds ahead of consciousness, 4 that consciousness is just
awareness of activity, that consciousness records but is not the creative force
we imagine. According to these experiments we are simply along for the
ride.
D. The Communal.
I approach the synthesis of this reverie with reluctance,
both because I find it to be a shock to my own self-importance and because I
know the weight of my conclusion will alight as a feather on balance with the
ponderous assumptions about our own existence.
The explanation for a reality that includes:
1. A
biological foundation rooted in a colony of members working with dissimilar
life forms in a symbiotic relationship,
2. A
mental experience which presents more as a plurality than a unity, and
3. A
correlation between nerve cell activity and consciousness,
is, I am forced to conclude, that I do not experience human
consciousness, I experience mitochondrial consciousness. I am agnostic about whether humans are
conscious or not.
I suggest that -
1. The
multi-perspectival nature of consciousness is explained by the fact that there
are trillions of mitochondria participating in the collective consciousness.5
2. The
source of the energy mapped by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the
activity of the neuronal mitochondria.
3. Mitochondria
are captive passengers in the human organism and it would make sense than their
consciousness would lag seven seconds behind host-made decision making.
4. While
we cannot help but to identify with the human host, we are essentially
witnesses to the primary action and lack the agency to express much more than
the Existential Response made central in the work of Viktor Frankl.6
The world we inhabit is a secondary world of the passive witnesses
to the unfolding history of humanity. The
identification with the bi-pedal humanoid is an illusion. We may scream and shout about absurdities and
misdirection of human existence, but there is little evidence that our human
hosts are listening.
5/23/13
Mike Mallory
