A single-celled organism

3.7 billion years ago, deep in the bowels of a single-celled organism living in a sludgy swamp somewhere in the world, consciousness was born.

The details are hazy. We do not know of the species of amoeba that stumbled upon this incredibly important tool. We do not know of the circumstances that led to its realisation of the existence of the self, the other, and the environment. What we do know is that this enormously useful tool, buried deep in the effervescent activity of our ever-firing neuron cells has become the hallmark of our species, giving rise to nations, governments, religions, and cultures that have been the reason for our survival across epochs. 

Hi. 

It’s been a while. 

I hope you are happy and healthy. I hope that your mind, your heart, and your soul are an ecosystem of ideas, emotions, and perspectives that move you to be better for yourself and for those around you. 

It has been slightly more than 16 months since I wrote something. 16 months of difficult thoughts, painful conversations, and seemingly insurmountable challenges in nearly every area of my life. During these 16 months, I have hugged people. I have watched the sunset, taken pictures of snails, and made fun of my friends, all while revelling in the bliss of being alive. 

More than anything else, however, I have thought.

I have thought about existentialism and cultural relativism. I have thought about entropy and cognitive distortion. I have thought about all the reasons why Pepsi is better than Coca Cola. Most importantly, however, I have thought about the world. 

To be specific, I have thought about how much of our world is constructed by our minds and the minds of others. Nearly every aspect of our lives is governed by the cognitive world, through which we give power and meaning to the physical realm. The idea seems intuitive. Consider, however, the fact that the idea of mathematics being the medium through which the world around us is to be interpreted is rooted in the assumption that numbers are free from the lenses that cultures and beliefs place on other modes of study. Our minds have constructed an image of numbers as being purist and unrelenting in their pursuit of truth. Consider, alternately, government as a notion, and democracy as a principle. Both these concepts are grounded in the mentally constructed sentiment that people rule is the most legitimate way to run a country. Strip any of these seemingly timeless ideas of the power of the mind and you’re left with an incomprehensibly useless picture of the world as it truly is. Mathematics becomes a series of meaningless lines on paper. The government becomes a bunch of people sitting to make decisions about other people. 

Take the human mind out of the equation, and you’re left with the reality of reality, in its complete and utter meaninglessness. 

Two years ago, I wrote in ‘A terribly lonely species’ about loneliness. Specifically, I wrote about the need to embrace loneliness; to treat our loneliness as an opportunity to recognize our own incompleteness and to build on it. I wrote about the need to befriend loneliness - To make her your friend, to live comfortably with her, and to let her teach you about yourself. 

Two years have passed. 

“It seems so strange to say it–It feels like the 74th of May. But it’s true - Another year has passed.”

It is unlikely that you have embraced loneliness. However, my midnight epiphany this time is an invitation to embrace the power of your mind, and its capacity to empower or disempower. We are a cognitive species, blessed with the power to construct empires in our minds. Tragically however, it is a power that we have misappropriated, using it to give power to systems, narratives, and logics that oppress and subjugate us. In some countries, we have empowered perspectives that present ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities as offences to our collective conscience. In other countries, we have empowered institutions that allow the rich to get rich and the poor to become poorer. In granting the power of our beliefs to structures that don’t favour us, we have deprived human beings of this power. In favouring the maintenance of social and political strongholds that make the few happy, we have starved the many of their primordial right to exist freely and without fear.  

We have been commissioned by evolutionary luck to be more for ourselves and for each other. 3.7 billion years ago, it was impossible to imagine that a single-celled organism was being primed to be a vessel of what would likely become the most important tools possessed by any species on our planet. Upon us, today, the powers of consciousness, creativity, ingenuity, and imagination have been bestowed, with the expectation that we will use them to empower each other to be more.  

Perhaps it is time we heeded this commission. 

Sincerely, 

Muku.

PS: Merry Christmas. ❤️

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash