Endemism

The notion that the human mind, apart from specialized instructions, unconsciously gravitates towards mutualist functionality within Earth’s ecosystem.

Nature’s Mind

by m.a.6.10.246 min. read

We don’t know what to make of you just yet. Specifically, the part of you that views itself as a person without anyone saying it was necessary to do that. At the beginning of your life, an innate modality seems to have set this sense of presence in the driver’s seat and handed it the reins, forging this ‘you’ in the process. Despite our grasping at specifics, you are not a myth to us, we all very much believe you exist, largely without anything verifiable to back up the belief. ‘You’ are the renowned actor, proprietor and progenitor of our world. Everything we built around ourselves was made for the ‘you’ idea, making it clear we have believed in you for a long time.

Most of us tend to recognize another ‘self’ when we see one, to observe it seeking nutrients or enjoying something gives us an even more powerful feeling than recognition. We happily apply a number of generalities to most other life forms based on the experience of being this one, especially towards those who live in the ecosystem we do and are seen participating in its benefits. It doesn’t take a scientist to see that all animals eat like us, plants spread their leaves in the sun for selfish gain, and everyone’s babies cry more or less for the same reasons. These are concepts we are ready to understand. We are surrounded by types of ‘selves’ and every one of them seems to have needs.

All of this is good reasoning to take the idea of the self very seriously, and we do; believing wholeheartedly in the existence of ourselves and others without much evidence besides this shared personal experience we appear to be having. It’s worth mentioning that from what little data we have, it would seem the very format of conscious life is inviting us to draw a very big conclusion about itself. This consciousness is both the faculty we were given to view the data as well as the conditions this data first came in, so things are slightly shaky, but the conclusion I’m talking about is that ‘you’ are real. It might seem like a stretch to some, but it’s at least safe to say that you and many others feel and act real all day long.

There is no better starting point for objective definition than biology, but that’s quite a bit more fun to say than it is to really believe. Classic evolutionary thought dictates that ‘you’ are no more or less than that which physically makes you up. The mythicist that devised your latest global identity tends to balk at this idea, but it’s still at least partially helpful to conceive of yourself this way, even for him. To the mind of one who believes himself to be superior to all other lifeforms, a collection of nerves and organs may seem too indistinct to represent this feeling of ‘personhood,’ since those things are found everywhere else in nature too. After removing the superiority complex however, the physicalities that enable ‘you’ and all others like it become a sort of mysterious invention—but of chance and fate. Even more impressive, it is one entirely sponsored by real life physics, both known and unknown. If you find this word “miraculous” too impractical, it can be translated to something like “mysterious multi-modal producing interface”, “incredibly powerful bio-computation”, or really anything that tries to analogize its still unparsed function — and actually, however clumsily these replacements might sound, any phrase you produce in their stead with generosity towards what’s not known will retain the essence of the statement I’m making. Until we figure you out, you’re something of a mystery, and a really interesting one since it is shared between so many things and works so well. When it comes to life, a little bit of miracle is to be expected, especially at first. Regardless of what terminology we use to describe the phenomenon, it is the singular version—the self—that’s still the only way humans feel comfortable conceptualizing the ‘who’ that lives inside the body, since that’s how we feel, and trickily, this must be exactly how nature intended ‘you’ to act on behalf of the millions of processes that it’s actually made of.

Your senses are actually generated from an array of semi-independent biological machines, (for lack of a better word) and they all operate on ancient ecologically expedient mutualist principles.¹⁰⁴ These machines engage apart from your purview, but they’re as responsible for your wellness and livelihood as the singular ‘self’ feels that it is. Your organs have needs that are only fulfilled using lifeforms that grow in the environment, and even your highly sophisticated ‘self’ becomes dedicated to acquisition of these florae. In effect, you would not have a self at all without flora, these machines, or your paradoxical concept of singularity. Each of these technologies plays a role in defining you. To leave out the goals of your administrative self is half a definition at best, and to reduce you to a system of moving parts that simply simulate ‘selfhood’ is equally reductive in a different way. Whatever it is, it feels immensely alive, and results in affiliation with many other processes in nature that appear to be that very thing too. You may, of course, define yourself however you like, but for objective results, your biological mechanisms and the services they offer to the system you were born to are observable starting points for the beginning of any reasonable look into the endemism of your mind, provided we include all of you in the definition.

The primary problem with the modern world’s definition of you is what it leaves out, not what it includes. To really get somewhere with a definition of the un-augmented sapient mind you have to conceptualize yourself as one of the processes of nature and not just one of her members, then conceive that the mind which she outfitted you is fit to meet her goals. To leave out your systems’ inherent mutualist functionality is to ease yourself away from the only reality we can observe, and the only reasonable basis to define yourself apart from the social struggles you were handed.

It’s very hard to define a leaf apart from the context of the tree from which it grows, but as a vehicle for photosynthesis, the leaf’s presence at the end of the stem makes a lot of sense. Similarly, your brain has little use without the body by which it experiences its stimuli or sends its signals, and your stomach has no purpose if it’s not attached to needy organs that might discover they are hungry and signal you to seek out nutrients that befit their projects. You’re just like the leaf - neither parasitic nor paralyzed as modern messaging sometimes claims. Additionally, because you exist, we know that nature has some use for you, one that may be re-discovered in the mind it initially gave you. This biological context helps define you in a way that social standing, belief systems, and political affiliation can’t touch. If life is a superorganism, you would be one of its vital nutrient gatherers, and this is more of an activity than it was ever a job description or mindset. The native mind at its most simplistic demonstration is one that represents these goals, and doesn’t need to think it is something in particular to do it. It is one that, at first, simply observes its needs and seeks to fulfill them, just as the system intended. To begin our search for the native self, the person whose mind is synthesized with their body, your efforts towards personal wellness must be recategorized as nature’s envisioning of its own wellness. This recertification of your natural predisposition will immediately reveal the thought structures that mark the modern mind.