New Rules of Engagement

Two ideas collide in my mind.

1. I read a leadership book titled 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' few months back. The message essentially boils down to... I actually forgot. But the title is more important for this post anyways.

2. Cell->Tissue->Organ->System->Organism. A rudimentary yet powerful description of how complex life forms are organized.

What do these two concepts have in common? The higher up you go in a natural organization such as life, new emergent properties, with new rules of engagements appear. 

Let me elaborate for my less-biology-inclined readers:

Consider a muscle cell. It is an independent entity that can modulate its length and load in response to external signals. But it can't quite accomplish a meaningful work on its own. Together with cells of its kind and other cells that support its basic functions, such as eating and excretion, it forms a formidable muscle tissue. The muscle tissue relies on the muscle cell's nature. But it also is governed by new rules such as synchrony of action among its member cells and new kind of external signals. 

Level up.

A set of tissues with a unique spatial organization and bundle will now give you an organ - say the heart. Now you can actually leverage the unique functional and spatial organization of various tissues to accomplish something, for example pump blood. A heart muscle cell can not pump blood. A heart tissue can not pump blood. But a heart can pump blood. New level, new function, new rules of engagement. 

But a heart that is not integrated into an elaborate network of blood, vessels, and lung pumps nothing to nowhere. Behold - the circulatory system. New level, new function, new rules of engagement. 

For the circulatory system to have a meaning, you need other organs and systems requiring blood. This integration gives us the organism - you and I. An independent, conscious, blogging entity. New level, new function, new rules of engagement.

Now consider this: Do you worry about how much blood you need to pump in the next 30 seconds to continue functioning optimally? Does the lateral elasticity of your right ventricle's muscle tissue worry you a lot? How about the rate of translational gene suppression in one of your white blood cell that has just crossed to your left toe? If you answer yes to any of these, please pm me! We need to talk!

What we learn from this beauty of nature's organization is that each higher level operates in its own realm with rules of engagement distinct from those below. This principle applied at every level of organization gives us a harmonized, beautiful expression we know as a human life. 

We know the circulatory and nervous system must work together for you and I to go about our daily lives. But we don't spend our day mediating the two systems. (Sure, they mediate each other but behind closed doors.) Similarly, whether I like you or not heavily relies on interactions between our personalities, not on whether my prefrontal cortex likes your prefrontal cortex (though those who like to dissect things may disagree with this, but they are always besides the point).

To sum up: as you level up, you can not just get by the old rules of engagement. You need new rules of engagement fit for the new functionality that emerges at the new, higher level. And the new rules of engagement at a higher level are not directly relevant for the rules of the lower level, they are just good enough for their level. 

So why have I beaten the crap out of the bush, like a good habesha does, with all this biological non-sense. (I am tempted to answer this with an Amharic proverb "ነገር ከስሩ ውሃ ከጥሩ" but let's stay on course.)

The short answer is because it is important for the current political climate. WTF?!??

In fact it is important for all human affairs! 

You see, individually, we are incredibly smart, kind, compassionate, and moral beings. Ahmm... I mean more or less, right? How about collectively, as a human society? Here the answer may vary across the entire spectrum of possibilities depending on where and when on earth you are. But in my opinion, the right answer is - we can not know! Because you and I are not human society - we are individual human beings one step below the societal level of organization. However hard we try to codify and define rules of engagements for our societies with constitutions, national and international laws, culture and customs, etc, it operates on another level of socio-biological organization, on a realm beyond you and I. You and I are what the circulatory system is for Jake, what the heart is for the circulatory system, what the muscle tissue is for the heart. 

Our society is made of us, but it is not us; it is a different entity, a level up. It has new rules of engagements which at times appear irrational to us - such as why one group of humans enslave many millions of others because of their skin color, or maltreats half of its entity for their sexual specialization, or mass murder one another in a scenario called war. 

[Do you feel that I am mixing up biology at the wrong place? Well, everything that concerns us is Biology! As an additional point, consider the level above society - ecosystem. Every group of organisms on earth belongs to an ecosystem. It exists because of the ecosystem and to serve the ecosystem. Without the ecosystem of ancient East Africa c.a 3M years ago, you wouldn't be here to read this blog and there would be no politics to discuss. We can also consider planetary systems, which lie above ecosystems. There is no way you and I would be here today without that asteroid which wiped out the dinos 60M years ago. Clearly these higher levels affect us across time and space with their own rules of engagements. Society, which similarly affects and comprises us, rests above our level in this grand organization.]

This does not mean we can not understand how society functions as we are below it. (We can, because Science!). It also does not mean we are not responsible for society because it is above us. (Yes we are, because Duh?) What I mean is, we can not explain society simply by 'human' rules of engagements, such as our intelligence, sense of fairness, love, etc. Such frameworks, besides not fully explaining society, only cause us pain and suffering as we witness societal events that trigger severe cognitive dissonance and shake up of our framework of reality. Or they cause pitiful self-aggrandization as if the sheer intelligence of you and I built this civilization. In either case, it is futile.

Of course, you and I are goal driven creatures who live for a meaning. And perhaps there is a meaning and purpose for our lives. There are things that you and I can do to see a kind of society that we think should exist. As many great men including Chomsky and MLK rightfully deduced, the arc of society's moral universe is long and bends in a certain direction towards which each of us can and do exert a little traction. 

But our intelligence and actions are only parts of society's 'mind'. The past, the future, lions roaming in Kenya, bears feasting on salmons in Alaska, a butterfly flapping its wings in Wyoming, dark matter cruising through Times Square may all be part of society's rules of engagement. 

May be not. 

Who knows!

Unformed Connections

After a long hiatus, I am rediscovering my passion for writing and newly aiming to continue channeling it through this blog. Since my last blog post, I started a new life in the city of New York. A lot has been and will be said about this city. For me, it is a place of chaos, growth, independence, excitement, opportunity, and so much more. 

It is also home to over 8 million humans! Impressive, right? Not just because of the sheer size of the number - after all there are many cities with greater population sizes. What makes New York unique is the extent of diversity held within its 8 million humans. They come from all corners of the world, all walks of life, all sorts of ideological camps, and carry so many different identities. This is one of the top reasons why I love the city. Anybody can come here from anywhere and fell like it is home... or sort of. No wonder many great things happened in this modern melting pot, which, like many of its historical predecessors, has been at the forefront of civilization!

Now, imagine what a collective network of 8 million of the most diverse groups of humans can do! Yeah... hold that imagination!

Unfortunately, there is only one kind of network truly connecting the 8 million New Yorkers; it is called the Subway. Beyond the green and yellow and red and orange and blue and purple lines that run in its belly, New York is deeply divided along barriers of skin pigmentation, wealth, pedigree, religion, and more. My most shocking New York experience, which I still haven't gotten used to, is segregation. As if in need of a daily reminder of it, my apartment is located on the street that divides Upper East Side - the wealthiest neighborhood in the city - and East Harlem, which is, well one of the opposite. I prefer to call my street - the buffer zone. Few minutes of stroll along Madison or Park avenue crossing the buffer zone easily demonstrates my point. Almost everything changes drastically as one crosses the buffer zone - the accent, skin pigmentation, quality of the buildings, physical and visible mental state of the people, the kind of chain supermarkets and restaurants lining the streets, to name few. Although the buffer zone is a visible, everyday physical evidence of segregation for me, the problem is abound everywhere. Or at least it looks so for me, a fresh-off-the-boat, foreign, African, trans-cultural, black guy who is used to occupying foreign spaces, but is still amazed by New York's lines of segregation which he daily crosses.  

Young people of different races and wealth exclusively mingle among themselves in places that appear to exclusively cater for them. Inter-racial couple are a rarity, despite the fact that the city has substantial number of people of all races, the vast majority of whom claim to be color-blind (that actually explains overabundance of irritating motorists at zebra crossings!). There are subway lines that appear to run under the unofficial color lines of white and brown. There are jobs that appear to require membership of a certain cast, such as Starbucks barista (black and latinos), pizza delivery (latin immigrants), high-rise building security guard (blacks), and my own profession of science (whites and asians). Sometimes, I really wonder whether it is illegal to mix up a little bit in this city (even the hipsters don't mix up, but I guess that's their thing). Of course my observation is not all of New York's reality - and nothing is - but it paints a pretty close picture.

Based on my observation during the past year, the 8 million New Yorkers appear to occupy the same city, but reside in little confederates within the city. To make matters worse, the behemoth, intense, and fast-paced nature of the city pushes people to reside in their own lives. I heard many people complain how lonely the city can be and how hard it is to find meaningful connections. People feeling lonely in the most exciting city of 8 million humans! Dearth of connections in a city of 8 million individuals! 

I don't want to blame people. I believe most people are well-meaning individuals who rightfully attempt their best in pursuit of happiness and a better life. I get it -  as exciting and unique as New York is, it can also be too tough and challenging for many to consider, let alone engage with, anybody outside of their socially prescribed zone. Even if it isn't, people have a tendency to believe that their life is tough, their fight is fiercer, and they are on a mission far more important not to bother with this subject. 

Yet today, I can't help but wonder about what New York, and indeed the world, would be like if there were more connection, even 5% more, among its diverse inhabitants. Imagine all the countless nurturing friendships, innovations, transformations, trans-cultural insights, works of art, understandings, and generally new and super-awesome things that could emerge! But all are presently hidden in the unformed connections. At least until New York becomes more of a melting pot and less of a boiling pot of soup made from potatoes, carrot, onions, meat, broccoli, onions, macaroni, beans, mushrooms, and so much more that I don't even know!

Numeric Empire

Two women are sitting across my table and in the midst of an intense discussion. I don't know the exact content of their conversation as I can't understand Swiss German. But from the looks of it, it appears they are fighting... against numbers! Several papers and books of Elementary Algebra litter their table - a common scene at the Einestine cafe of the ETH, during high study hours. And that got me thinking about numbers...

Through the glass wall, I could see old and new buildings seamlessly standing next to one another, covering the visible landscape of Zurich. No doubt that an intense amount of numbers and mathematical principles were invested in their design and construction... if not for their elegance, at least owing to their proximity to the reputed ETH campus.  :) What is most intriguing is that these buildings, as well as pretty much every thing around me, are very static, very rigid, very predictable. But then again, they are products of very static, very rigid, very predictable (once you know the rules) entities called Numbers! Mathematics!

What are these mighty Numbers though? Are they real? I am sure mathematicians posses very highly elaborated perspectives about this concept. From my highly simplistic perspectives though, numbers, and mathematics at large, are as real as we want them to be. They represent the most effective way, to date, for us to collectively understand and manipulate Nature. But are they really the scripts of Nature? Can we envision knowledge and creation without the kind of numeric framework known to mankind at present? 

I think the necessity for numeric representation of nature is closely tied to the cognitive capacity of the human brain and efficiency of interpersonal communications. Bluntly speaking, the brain functions under the principle of experiencing its environment (learning), storing some pattern of the experience (memory), and responding to the environment based on these two (adaptation). For this process to succeed, it is very essential that the brain has a certain framework, a scaffold, a reference. It can't simply learn and form memories anew every time. Or it probably does not wish to, as that would involve a tremendous amount of resources. So, in time, it would settle to simpler options that build upon its past experiences, things it can easily cross reference to expand an already existing pool of knowledge. Indeed, this is a very efficient working strategy for an entity very much constrained in space, time, and resources... but, alas, all the lost new-learning opportunities! The brain must be quite a stubborn creation, and some people take this trait to the extreme :).

I think urge of the brain for a fixed framework also sticks out to some personal and societal traits. We learn about things and easily take it as a universal truth; it is just easier! - This is a computer. I wish to have a computer. So my future computer should be something like this. It would be extremely implausible for me if someone sells me some liquid in a jar as a computer, although it may be zillions of times faster than a modern supercomputer. - So probably the way our brains function predisposes us to a rather rigid behavioral framework. 

It seems there is a job opening for mathematics right here. Numbers are fixed (more or less) and can be arranged to represent our experiences in an extremely rigid manner. That saves our brains from confusion, provides a rule/reference which simplifies future learning/adaptation. At a behavioral level, this creates, propagates, and sustains consensus. That way we don't have to reinvent the wheel in every generation. We only improve upon it. Essentially the wheel in ancient Egypt and modern spacecrafts have pretty much similar design concepts. Is it possible that something very different - not circular, not rotating, not linked to a gear - could have been discovered had our ancestors' brains not got stuck in one design that they decided to keep and improve upon?

Besides its highly adaptive way of thinking, the brain also tends not to remember everything it experiences with 100% accuracy. It needs a codified representation of some of the important things it wishes to retrieve later. Even more crucial than this, brains can not communicate amongst each other with 100% efficiency... far from it actually. These factors further instigate the need for a fixed, highly reproducible, means of storing and sharing information outside of the brain. 

I believe numbers are a result, at least partly, of these factors, or rather limitations. And for the purpose they were created, they have indeed scored astonishing accomplishments. They literally have built a world of civilizations, means of concurring nature for the benefit of mankind. But I think we also came to take them too seriously. We believe that they are almost real. We believe whatever can not be represented, understood, reproduced within a codified numeric framework is unreal, an artifact. Any progress in our understanding of nature seems possible only within the realm of numbers and goes as far as numbers can push themselves. We made them the official, and sole, language of Science. I think it is good to have an official language, but multilingualism may have more advantages. 

I think, if something happens in this universe, it is part of the reality of this universe despite what we think of it. Its codification in some elegant equations only makes it reproducibly understood by our consensual brains, which for all we know could be collectively wrong. We need to understand that the thinking strategy that our brains opted out for has been essential for our evolution; but it is neither the best strategy, not the sole means of comprehending the universe. We need to be open to the possibility of a reality beyond numbers, but perhaps at the tip of our noses. 

The women sitting across the table are now gone. I guess they won the battle for today, but the war continues. Looking through the glass walls, I still see the buildings. After all, where would they go? But what if they actually could go somewhere? What if they are more dynamic, responsive, alive? Perhaps that is my biological dream. Yet life may have a lot to each us, to be less rigid and more adaptive. Perhaps someday, when science learns to think in other languages, perhaps learn from life itself, we may live in dynamic, alive buildings, and a more open and inclusive world. Perhaps then, we might see the huge ocean surrounding our tiny numeric empire.

Does a scientist believe in God?

When I was a third-grader, I discovered the idea that humans will return from dead at the end of the world and be judged for what they did on earth. That was a very fresh, fascinating concept! I could't wait to share this news with my mean gang of third-graders. I said to them 'Do you know that dead people come out of the grave after 1000 years (which pretty much sounded to me like the day the world ends) and be judged for what they did?!?'. The witty third-graders were not impressed. One of them said out loud 'Liar!, Liar! If that is true why didn't Emperor Menelik come out of the grave yet??'. That was a tough question, and the end of my third grade hearsay. At fourth grade, I realized that Emperor Menelik was dead for only 8 decades and I could totally have won that third grade argument. I guess I was a year late by then.

Since those early days of my encounter with science and religion, it has been very tough for me to separate my belief in God and what science says about him. Earlier in my life, I have been very religious and spiritual. I could easily have attributed every scientific knowledge as the design of God. I was religious and I was scientific. Or so I thought, until a storm of colluding ideas started perturbing my young mind. During my teen years, I had a discussion with a good friend of mine who was experiencing similar storms in his mind. But he seemed to have found some rest from this storm in what he called 'the realization', that there are multiple ways for mankind to discover and understand the universe: the scientific method, spirituality/religion, and the intuition of life or what he called 'psychology'.

This idea was stuck in me for years, but so was the storm. Later, as my scientific muscles grew stronger, I started asking myself even more uncomfortable questions. Meanwhile, my global sociopolitical awareness and personal life experience exploded in a manner I had never anticipated. The result was that I had to painfully discard some of my dearly held religious views. I came to understand religion as a sociopolitical tool that bases on an innate human trait for transcendence, and religious books as beautiful works of fiction. Yet, as every fiction draws from real life, so are these doctrines based on certain gem of truth in our (human) universe. As a matter of fact, some of the most uplifting and inspiring ideas that crossed my mind were associated with one or more of these religious books. It may be my personal bias, but I found deep intimate connection with the universe through spirituality that is linked with different religious traditions. 

Science, on the other hand, is a method - by far the best one - employed by humans to understand the universe. And I love using it. But I am also well aware of its shortcomings, that as a work of humans, it is not as pure, objective, and enlightening as we wish it to be. As an outsider to the western world, I could see how modern scientific discourse is significantly influenced, and at time biased, by western culture and historical development. It even surprises me to see an almost religious dogmatism in science - the way research themes are chosen, communicated through publications, or assimilated to the general public. Fortunately, the dogma is ever shattered by new findings and ways of doing science... only to be replaced with newer ones.

Yes, I do satisfy my curiosity about nature by learning more through science. Yet I know  that the scientific method is as good as the kind of questions that one asks and the tools readily available to investigate them (not to mention availability of grant money). And each of us possess more questions than can be answered with the science of our day. I for one enjoy exploring some of these überfragen through other channels, including spiritual inspirations and religious traditions.

I think it is unlikely that there is a judgement day, heaven and hell, or getting saved by your favorite benevolent character. As a matter of fact, it is unlikely that there is a single answer to anything. I think the universe is much bigger and deeper than we possibly would ever be able to comprehend. The truth is we are limited - limited by this fragile body and a still-on-the-making primate brain, limited by our ignorance, limited by our arrogance, limited by the superiority and inferiority complex we possess towards multiple world views, limited by time and space... Perhaps we would understand the universe better as our bodies and societies evolve further.... Perhaps not. Whatever the case, I believe that the reality of this universe is simply too big to be captured by one single view of 'God' or method of investigation. So I try to learn from every fool :)

RISK

People often talk about the importance of taking risks to advance and develop in life. Different people define risk and set its 'sane' boundaries in different ways. What is 'normal' for one is a 'too costly risk' for another. For one person, talking to a stranger is a risk, and for another, perhaps buying the wrong shoe…

Just a couple of days ago, I redefined risk for myself. Now, I believe that Life is Risk. To live is the riskiest thing one can ever do! Just imagine all the layer upon layer of work needed to produce a 70kg, 1.74cm walking and talking and thinking man from two cells not even visible for a human eye! Every single step is a huge risk in an inherently chaotic and entropy-loving universe! We all carry a tremendous amount of Risk, just by our mere existence; yet we choose to take it for granted and worry about risks such as buying the wrong shoe or talking to a stranger!…

How strange!

The Biology and Politics of Death and Life

One of the very basic lesson that the futile circle of life teaches us is that every beginning has an end, and with every end comes a new beginning. Death and life are two faces of the same coin we call life. Be it life of a human or a worm, a star or an ice crystal, there comes a time when it shall end and transfigures into something else. A plant blossoms and flourishes in the 'height' of its time. That flower becomes a seed, falls to the earth, rots, dies, and gives birth to a new plant. And so life continues.

Here one wonders: is death of the old essential for a new life to emerge? From a biological point of view, which seriously restricts the purpose of life to survival and reproduction, death is a crucial necessity for life. The only means an organism can sustain itself in an environment of constant change is by adopting change as its guiding principle. Given that life processes are driven by fairly hard-wired genetic codes, any adaptive change in life requires a corresponding change in genetic constituents of organisms. A changing environment can alter the genetic constituent of a single organism to a certain extent. However, most of these changes produce only subtle short-term functional consequences. Besides, their random and unpredictable nature means that, in the long-run, they end up more deleterious than useful to the organism. To produce a significant functional adaptation, they need to be combined, recombined, and selected over a long period of time. An efficient way of achieving this is through shuffling of various genomes, as is the case in sexual reproduction. This produces new organisms, with genes better adapted to the environment than their predecessors. However, this process is extremely slow. There is almost no significant adaptive difference amongst immediate generations. This might necessitate a rapid generational turnover, accelerating genetic reshuffling and potential emergence of adaptive traits. 

In such scenario, older organisms may not survive indefinetly. Limitation of all sorts of resources needed for survival means the newer, better adapted organisms survive, while the older less adapted ones perish. With population expansion, increase in inter- and intra-species competition, and other environmental pressures, the life span of older generations must have gotten shorter. In addition, there is a web of life connecting one life form in the planet with another, in life or death. Or perhaps there is another related reason why death became intertwined with life. Regardless of the reasons, death and life, as we know them, exist in an intricate and complicated balance.

So much for theoretical evolutionary biology. How does death factor in other human affairs? Humans kill each other when they don't agree on some issues at certain levels. Civilizations destroy each other. Ideologies fight and cancel each other at some point. What is the relevance of such death? Essentially, this also boils down to evolution. In a world of scarcity, competition and adaptation are the norm. Thus another human with competing intentions, resources, ideas, civilization, etc is a challenge to be tackled. Conveniently, death/murder is the most straightforward way of tackling a challenge that nature has thought us. Indeed, the easiest way of solving a problem is eliminating it.

But, one can only solve so much problems, and problems have a tendency of getting bigger and more complicated. In the mean time, we happen to be highly evolved, smart, and at times moral creatures capable of solving complex problems. Although this trait has not stopped humans from slaughtering each other after every disagreement, it buffered the savagery of death to a certain extent, and gave rise to  more complex means of tackling personal, cultural, societal, civilizational conflicts. It is fair to say that we have now reached a point where simple murder of a human contender is widely morally unacceptable. Instead, assimilating and enslaving the contender without necessarily and directly ending their lives became the norm. Of course, such assimilations proceed after the good-old physical dispute, and are often decorated with pretexts ranging from enlightenment to saving lost souls for the good lord. 

Today, we live in a globalized world, which is wealthier, happier, more democratic and civilized than ever before in human history. This, of course, is the view of the victor, the one that effectively assimilated global cultures, resources, politics, philosophies, and economies over the past centuries. To the benefactors of this globalized world, a new life is born out of the dead old system. This life is dear and wonderful. To the 'loosers', however, this might sound rather odd. Yet,in many instances, the assimilation was so successful that those who were defeated and lost everything to the victor do not even understand that they were robbed. In fact, they envy the brave new better world and make it the prize of all their endeavours. The unique thing about assimilation is that it always works best for the victor. However hard their efforts are, losers of the fight have no better fate than being better slaves. 

So, in a paradoxic coincidence, this brave new world of knowledge and prosperity  happens to be a time of great degradation too. Yet, as is true for our nature, death borders a new life on either side. 

to be continued...

Struggle and Life

This morning, while waiting for a tram to work and listening to a very nostalgic Ethiopian jazz piece, my life suddenly flashed before my eyes. It has been a struggle. I have known and passively accepted that for a while now. Instantly, a second thought crossed my mind - that life is a struggle. There are billions of people in a state worse than I am in, as far as the means of survival are concerned. These people also struggle daily. And there are those who have all the means and ways of life at their most convenient disposal, brought by luck or loot. These too struggle. It is difficult to imagine, but yes they do! 

Take a drop of water from a pond, put it on a glass slide, and observe under a microscope. You will see a microcosm of life, where little organisms are running around, searching for food or escaping a threat. Go to a savannah in East Africa, and you will observe a gazelle and a cheetah, a lion and a zebra, a hyena and a donkey, all struggling to survive. Life is a struggle for everyone, whether you are a bacteria, a lab mouse, a zebra, a cheetah, a poor world citizen, or a ruthless, greedy capitalist. Yes, life is a struggle.

 

Struggle, from molecular to species level, is what defines us as living beings. Against all odds of cosmic chaos, life emerged! It took hundreds of millions of years for the very basic forms of life to emerge on this planet. It took several hundreds of millions of years for those simple life forms to adapt, evolve and become more complex. Imagine what the world would have been like now if those archaic life forms had no difficulties to overcome. Or even better, imagine if they did not struggle to overcome all the difficulties they encountered on the way. You and I, along with all our close and distant relatives would never have came along! During all those hundreds of millions of years, life had to struggle. It had to find a way... a way to live! The planet froze and bioled, yet life found a way. The planet got flattened and reflattened by cosmic bombs of meteores destroying almost all life, yet life found a way! Struggle, it seems, is a way of life. It is what makes life what it is and what it will be. This holds true from a struggle for personal developent to the struggle of apes and mammals and vertebrates and animals and living things to persist as the entities that they are. Indeed, what does not kill you only makes you stronger! And a life without struggle is as alive as a non living.

 

Now, the most interesting question is: But why? Why does life struggle, aspire, strive to persist, to be more of its kind? Why, against all odds, does life want to struggle? What does it aim to achieve at the end? From a bacterium to a humble homo sapien, what is the essence, the ultimate goal of life?

Certainly, if evolution has brought us here, it will take us somewhere more complex,  unfathomable for our current intelligence. Are we, as living things, on a journey of some kind? A journey called for a higher cosmic glory? Or is life just another incidence in this mysterious universe, an incidence that just happened to struggle for nothing other than its own selfish desire to persist?

 

We as human beings may never be able to answer these questions.

Neverthless, these questions get us thinking, reflecting. They place our personal woes and concerns in a grander frame. They connect us to everything else, while simultaneously degrading our ego and teaching us humility. We put forth theories, explain the universe, conqure nature to our selfish desires. That is alright; it is the kind of life form that we are! (Perhaps we will pay the price for it sometime.) But when it comes to the real reason for life, its struggle, its ultimate journey, we are no better than the  many bacteria we carry in our intestines.