Death of a Blepharisma or Dissolution of Ego

The following was meant initially for a Facebook post but nah, I don't want to burden any "friends" with trying to parse what's written below. I have more respect for their time to do such a thing. Also as you can probably tell, I haven't written much in a while after getting my bike; it's been a game changer. My downs seem less in number though almost as bad sometimes. This is why I've always sympathized with Cobain, namely in his lyrics "I miss the comfort of being sad". When such a mood is more constant you're more prepared for it. But I'm so glad I got a bike since it's reinvigorated my life so much and the existential issues that make me ruminate on things I can't control have subsided some. When riding I feel like a child sometimes as riding motorcycles goes all the way back to my childhood. Anyway, I'll now resume the regularly scheduled program.

 

I recently came across this video, which I uploaded before adding Aphex Twin's wonderful Aisatsana song with a slower tempo and suiting I'd think, which lead me on to a fascinating youtube channel called "Journey to the microcosmos". To think there's a whole weird world that lives beneath us and we're usually so oblivious to its cultures, apt word I'd say. I was only vaguely interested in biology in school but it didn't help that I felt so impressed upon by the bureaucracy and tyranny (at least in my eyes then) of the educational system as well as my anxiety and lack of focus that most formal learning just felt revolting and machinistic to me. Maybe a Pavlovian response was induced, learning==discomfort, which became so ingrained that it made a long-lasting and stubborn impression upon me that lasted well after school.

But videos like this make me think about the vague thermodynamics of it all, a subject I've had a brief flirtation of interest with in the past but too ADD that I never got very deeply involved in it. So why does it fascinate me? Because I like to know how things work. If I don't then it tends to give me anxiety just knowing I'm dependent on something which I can't know the reliability of or be able to fix. And so what science, when posed with trying to understand life itself and potentially more, can answer that question better? Thermodynamics, if you ask me. Another reason it draws me is because it's the science that encapsulates both man and machine or biotic and abiotic, the micro and macroscopic and the living and the dead. Through its scope, life is basically the product of the sun's energy, and to a much smaller extent, Earth's geothermal energy, dissipating itself in the most efficient way possible given the complex filters through which it's processed. The elemental complexities of earth, much different than planets we know less intimately, dictate complex dissipative forces which we know as life. These complexities create a marriage of chaos and order which gives rise to life. Life exists with a fine balance of both, they're both mutually complementary like Yin and Yang. And from that knowledge I can hopefully derive what I view as a beneficial outlook, if not for me but others because sometimes survival of an individual organism isn't always complementary to the survival of the colony. 

I think thermodynamics can offer a more objective and pure view of things, pure being free from bias of the ego. Incidentally, some sciences or subjects therein require that you leave your own ego behind to such degree that I think there is some danger of an existential crisis, see the documentary Dangerous Knowledge (2007), but being paid with financial and social reward to feed the ego can probably help with mitigation as well as being somewhat mentally stable, though the latter is probably the foremost issue with the four subjects in the documentary. I've also encountered this existential danger with religious learning while trying to seek too far beyond the self, I say just to preempt someone blaming the prioritizing of science over religion regarding what some may see as existential issues when facing those subjects. When the ego leaves the self to much extent, that's when there's a danger because some ego is needed to nurture the physical self so you get a breakdown or lack of cohesion as in the blepharisma video only represented more like an internal ideological communication breakdown. So back to the microscopic note and scale, I think humans and humanity could also be seen as one (somewhat) cohesive organism of smaller organisms cooperating to maintain its evolutionary or thermodynamic niche that it requires to proceed through the dimensions of time and space, to survive. Now are we so much different than a bacterium? Oh, but what about consciousness you say? Eh, let's not get into consciousness and my somewhat panpsychic views, that'd be a long discussion. 

But I can understand that some may see this as a sterile or spiritually vacuous outlook though I don't see it that way. I think science has a sort of spiritual reward to it sometimes but admittedly it doesn't and can't explain the greater whys, only the temporal hows of life. And in defense of science again, it can definitely bring enjoyment and for me I'd say almost as much as the arts. As Richard Feynman discussed in one of his famous interviews, to paraphrase, artists enjoy the mystery and beauty of an unopened gift like the painting of a flower while science enjoys the unboxing, the excitement of finding out what's in there and how it works, the disassembly of the art and unravelling of the flower. Both give enjoyment and richness to life. The art in service manuals you could say is a happy medium between the two, well, if you're both artsy and technical like me even if I'm not good at being either. 

Anyway, I found the video inspirational, kind of sad too, so thought I'd share even though I didn't mean to write a book here. Now why can't I just post normal stuff like everybody else without over-analyzing everything to death (relevant phrase)? I swear, I'm not this verbose and talkative elsewhere in real life or on the internet other than my blog, should've posted it there instead. I just have times when I don't have much to say, which is most of the time, but when I do want to say something, I'd rather say it all in one go while I'm feeling talkative. So I'm not sure I have a real point to this post, it's just meant to share something I thought would be interesting. Even if no one reads this, it doesn't and won't matter to me, the alternative or you could say ulterior motive of posting to the blog is to just write what's on my mind, a sort of cleansing or therapeutic effect that I'd say is somewhat effective at calming me. 

In true blog tradition I'll append a music video. I've been listening to Bon Iver a lot recently so here's something relevant, Volcano Choir's 2013 song Comrade, a "collaboration between Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and members of Collections of Colonies of Bees" according to Wikipedia.