So we just got through another Autumn family virus. And it got me thinking (something always gets me thinking!)
I reckon a single human entity is not actually a single human being. If you can get your mind around that idea and honour it, you might be a step closer to living happily and prospering.
Firstly I will rather enjoy arguing that a single conscious entity is bigger than a human, and a human single genetic entity is not a useful idea. Then I will talk about the human entities of which I am currently part.
I leave open the question of how big a human entity is - but there is a video of the brain worm at the end if you wade through my long words and references.
Post a comment and let me know what you think. (About time somebody posted a comment about something.)
One consciousness? That depends. I'm not going to start on the extent to which an individual might be in control of their consciousness (thinkin of Mother Courage here, although The Matrix also counts)
and assuming that a person is more or less conscious, I propose that a single human is not a single unit of consciousness anymore - not since widespread literacy and certainly not in this age of the net. Psych research is gradually starting to catch up with folk knowledge & mysticism, selected references below.
Our personalities are very context-driven. (Start with Thinking Fast and Slow, and then cherrypick his reference list.) Mirror-neurons pick up the vibe from others and adjust your mood to match, your body and posture will mimic people you like, and cause some involuntary actions (ever wanted to yawn when others are yawning? Even blind people yawn when someone yawns in front of them. Go on, have a yawn, You know you want to yawn. Even reading this has made your mirror neurons decide to want to yawn.)
We go to great lengths to please selected people around us (those we love and those with power), anticipating and imagining what they might want us to do and feeling compelled to please. That's how a boss can get others to put their effort into his(!) plan instead of their own, and how Kim Jong-Un (or his dead grandfather) can organise a nation-wide hierarchy of army guys to kill any dissenters without actually giving more than a vague head-nod.
The things we choose are not normally our own choices (The Decisive Moment, among others), otherwise marketing wouldn't work. With the exception of a small proportion of early adopters, 80%-90% of our choices are habit, most of the others involve copying someone else. Watch yourself for a day and see how many of the things you do you actually choose.
As a species we have gradually been externalising memory, first through speech, then handed-down stories and songs and legends, more recently through printed word and god-knows how the internet will change our brains and memories.
Many people describe a type of profound ease and joy when conscious decision making is made in concert with someone else. When you are in love, it is especially powerful: "I feel like I know exactly what he's thinking".. "It's cool, we finish each others' sentences'... 'It was like we had one mind'... Sports coaches strive to get their teams to act as a single consciousness, because a soccer team or a sailing crew acting as one wins against another just as good but with a fractured mind. Good players are often not selected for a team if they don't fit into the mind.
One DNA string for every component cell? I don't think so
Most of your cells are 'your' DNA. But not the following:
Plus, we accept that creatures which are genetically identical can be separate entities, like bacteria or Wollemi Pine trees or starfish and anemones
- so what's the big thing about DNA defining the edge of an organism?
One autonomous self-sufficient unit? No.
In solitary confinement, a person has to work very hard not to go insane. Children deprived of loving contact grow up very very weird - as the Romanian orphanages of the 1980s showed us. It's common to other primates too. Just check out Harry Harlow's monkey experiments and be thankful that most universities would probably not provide ethics approval anymore..
So how might a family be a coherent human entity?
Now since the nuclear family is one of my least favourite artificial constructs, how else might we define a single human entity?
I reckon a single human entity is not actually a single human being. If you can get your mind around that idea and honour it, you might be a step closer to living happily and prospering.
Firstly I will rather enjoy arguing that a single conscious entity is bigger than a human, and a human single genetic entity is not a useful idea. Then I will talk about the human entities of which I am currently part.
I leave open the question of how big a human entity is - but there is a video of the brain worm at the end if you wade through my long words and references.
Post a comment and let me know what you think. (About time somebody posted a comment about something.)
One consciousness? That depends. I'm not going to start on the extent to which an individual might be in control of their consciousness (thinkin of Mother Courage here, although The Matrix also counts)
and assuming that a person is more or less conscious, I propose that a single human is not a single unit of consciousness anymore - not since widespread literacy and certainly not in this age of the net. Psych research is gradually starting to catch up with folk knowledge & mysticism, selected references below.
Our personalities are very context-driven. (Start with Thinking Fast and Slow, and then cherrypick his reference list.) Mirror-neurons pick up the vibe from others and adjust your mood to match, your body and posture will mimic people you like, and cause some involuntary actions (ever wanted to yawn when others are yawning? Even blind people yawn when someone yawns in front of them. Go on, have a yawn, You know you want to yawn. Even reading this has made your mirror neurons decide to want to yawn.)
We go to great lengths to please selected people around us (those we love and those with power), anticipating and imagining what they might want us to do and feeling compelled to please. That's how a boss can get others to put their effort into his(!) plan instead of their own, and how Kim Jong-Un (or his dead grandfather) can organise a nation-wide hierarchy of army guys to kill any dissenters without actually giving more than a vague head-nod.
The things we choose are not normally our own choices (The Decisive Moment, among others), otherwise marketing wouldn't work. With the exception of a small proportion of early adopters, 80%-90% of our choices are habit, most of the others involve copying someone else. Watch yourself for a day and see how many of the things you do you actually choose.
As a species we have gradually been externalising memory, first through speech, then handed-down stories and songs and legends, more recently through printed word and god-knows how the internet will change our brains and memories.
Many people describe a type of profound ease and joy when conscious decision making is made in concert with someone else. When you are in love, it is especially powerful: "I feel like I know exactly what he's thinking".. "It's cool, we finish each others' sentences'... 'It was like we had one mind'... Sports coaches strive to get their teams to act as a single consciousness, because a soccer team or a sailing crew acting as one wins against another just as good but with a fractured mind. Good players are often not selected for a team if they don't fit into the mind.
One DNA string for every component cell? I don't think so
Most of your cells are 'your' DNA. But not the following:
- Bidirectional cell transfer through the placenta. A proportion of your cells are your mum's DNA. And if you are a mum, you carry cells from all of your children. Longevity of these cells is not easy for me to find in Google Scholar, ie they might all have been filtered out through your liver by the time you're 10, or you might carry tiny specks of your grandmother and great-grandmother, like a bottle of homeopathic water.
- Gut flora. Symbiotic partners - but Google is pathetic here. Some other symbiotic pairs of organisms are regarded as a single organism - bluebottles or man-o-war, photosynthetic lake jellyfish, while other systems of organisms seem to be symbiotic together - ever thought much about hippos?
- Identical twins.
- Cancer cells and non-reproducing spontaneously mutated cells.
- Stuff that you think of as part of you but isn't actually composed of cells: plasma, hair, toenails etc.
Plus, we accept that creatures which are genetically identical can be separate entities, like bacteria or Wollemi Pine trees or starfish and anemones
- so what's the big thing about DNA defining the edge of an organism?
One autonomous self-sufficient unit? No.
In solitary confinement, a person has to work very hard not to go insane. Children deprived of loving contact grow up very very weird - as the Romanian orphanages of the 1980s showed us. It's common to other primates too. Just check out Harry Harlow's monkey experiments and be thankful that most universities would probably not provide ethics approval anymore..
So how might a family be a coherent human entity?
- A single immune entity. Amy gets some of my immunity from my breastmilk. Josh brings home an enterovirus from childcare and gives it to everyone in the house plus selected grandparents. We all suffer together - aches, bad moods, sleepiness - and then we get over it and carry whatever immunity we've earned for roughly the same length of time.
- Resources shared and distributed for maximum common benefit: money, food, rotating responsibilities and opportunities for sleep-ins between grownups.
- Communal mental health - when one is struggling, the whole family is affected. Google family therapy or human systems - I'm getting tired and running out of cross-referencing enthusiasm.
- Common plans, goals and ambitions, We all carry artifacts of our parents' fears and ambitions - and we pass our own on to our children.
- Temporary separation of family members causes discomfort, reunification is a nice feeling. The death of one would cause irreperable (but not necessarily fatal) damage to the coherence of the organism.
- At various ages and life stages, when an individual has left a family group, the urge is very strong to find a way to join or form another family group.
Now since the nuclear family is one of my least favourite artificial constructs, how else might we define a single human entity?
- Neuroscience and the Amish think 10 <people<150 is about right. Less than 10 is hard. At 151, the Amish split a community into two. Also, it seems to be the maximum paleoanthropological community size, perhaps due to hygiene and waste disposal issues. Or war. I'd be happy with this as a rural or pre-industrial-revolution definition. Of course a decent hierarchical structure (eg. military chain of command, Russian Duma governance etc) might expand this.
- Some subcommunities can be coherent within a city. Cultural or ethnic minorities stick together, professional groups are often coherent (certainly everyone in rail knows everyone else!), and how about musical groups, organised crime, sports communities, goths, and gamers.
- Consider a human entity as analogous to tubifex worms in a sewer - a seething mass of varying numbers of separate bodies appearing to move in concert. Gotta love Youtube.
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