Nervous System Mastery: Remembering we are greater than the sum of our parts
I have given a number of talks recently about the concept of self in relation our biology. The amazing engagement, comments and questions from the audience ensure the topic has no boundary. Memory, imagination, sensory data, time, safety and energy all take centre stage in both my talks and in my writing. But in this piece I want to introduce some lesser known elements that push the boundary even further.
Ditching the superiority complex
Lets start with evolution, where else ? :)
Our crazy, contradictory, fast paced world is human centred, literally, we completely believe the whole world works around us. As a species we do have a superiority complex and show little humility. At a macro and micro level we could benefit from frequent reminders that ALL life ( i.e. animal, plant, fungi and bacteria) we live with today can be traced back to a single cell organism from approx 4.2 billion years ago, known as LUCA ( Last Universal Common Ancestor).
LUCA was able to copy itself which ensured its genetic line continued but each copy was not perfect….this meant minuscule faults, mutations occurred with each new generation, enabling evolution to flourish, giving rise to not just human and animal diversity but the variety of fungi, plant and bacteria.
The power of symbiosis
Now symbiosis originates from Greek for ‘living together’ and represents a close, long term biological interaction between two organisms. Here are some examples:
Mutulism both benefit: a plant uses sunlight to produce sugar via photosynthesis and shares this ‘food’ with the fungus. The fungus creates a vast labyrinth around or inside the the plant roots enabling the plant to absorb water and vital minerals like phosphorus and nitrogen from the soil.
Commensalism - one benefits but the other does not: barnacles on a whale, free ride to a new food source.
Parasitism - one benefits to the detriment of the other: ticks on a dog.
Human outsourcing….perhaps not
Don’t forget we have symbiotic relationships, for example, the trillions of microorganisms that support digestion, educate the immune system and produce essential vitamins. If I ditch the human superiority complex for a moment this relationship is mutualistic, not dictated by us - the bacteria is provided with a residence and nutrients. In fact, consider fungi more generally it isn’t just a genius distributor of essential resources. It collectively has the power to alter human minds, repair bodies and avert environmental disasters. Fungi certainly has been around a lot longer than us, is winning at evolution and probably looking at us thinking jeez this lot have a lot to learn!
Just as there are many kinds of human ‘natures’, we would benefit from remembering we are only viewing ‘intelligence’ through a human lens. This maybe a philosophical argument but without the rich wonder of many living things there would be no human species. As we watch the climate heating to dangerous levels and rivers drying up while AI data centres and fossil fuels continue to flourish, do we have the intelligence and the will to challenge our own short-termist behaviour ?
Evolution literally means unrolling or opening, derived from the Latin prefix e- (meaning “out”) and volvere (meaning “to roll”). Perhaps, we have hit a bump in the road while rolling out, maybe, we need to start looking within more, respecting our entangled relationships with ourselves and the natural world around us.