Yourself?

Maturity

I was studying histology when I realized that differentiation at the cellular level is analogous to many processes that religion has explained the principles of. The maturation of cells, by this I mean progenitor cells dividing into daughter cells that are quite different in function, are goldmines of philosophical insight. Are daughter cells the same as the original cell? Has the original cell died, after "giving birth" to two daughter cells? Or is the original cell part of an unbroken lineage of cells, that includes daughter cells, and that they are all just one cell living in an eternal life. Are cells immortal by virtue of their infinite divisibility?

I was watching this Jacky Chan film (over the National day weekend) about him being reborn as some archaeologist who was once a Chinese general. He was confused about his dreams, (which told him about his past life as a general and this woman he loved very much) and sought the advice of a wise man (who runs this martial arts school). The man replied, (i paraphrase poorly) "When is life life? And when are dreams dreams?". And he said a few other things about how dreams must come from somewhere, physical experience or otherwise. And that whether it is truly impossible for there to be a link between two separate ages or lives, because the evidence is there in the form of dreams that there must have been some physical experience before.

We know that it is not impossible for life to bridge two separate times. In fact, the germ line cells do exactly that by being the seed from which we all come from, and passed down along the generations that are motivated to reproduce. However, we are often stuck on the question of is it the same life. Are we the same person? If we are, how come we don't recognize each other, we don't recognize that we are parts of the same person, or coming from the same source.

But I think we do. We are all part of this syncytium of people that have our lives planned out for us by the people who have come before. We don't emerge in a void. There are growth factors, inhibitors, basement membranes that tell us what to do, who to become, opportunities given to us, and knowledge passed down based on how well we master that knowledge. There is this constant selection, differentiation, subspecialization, maturation in a human existence.

Our bodies do the same thing. No non-germ line cell in our bodies last through an entire life time. As we mature into our role in life, the cells in our bodies do the same thing and mature. The flexible bodies we once had mature into a fixed stable state for us to do our roles. There is no point arguing that men are eternally free when our biology betrays the truth of the matter. Once our cells have differentiated, there is no going back.

So what does this say to me? This tells me that I'm probably in safe hands. That I live in a world where everyone around me is me. I am part of my environment as much as they are a part of me. This world is not out to get me, or to kill me, or to make life miserable for me as long as I'm not out to harm this world in any way. Even if I die, it is part of the process of maturation, of differentiation and growth. It is as the wheel of life (eastern philosophy). We are immortal and "trapped" in a cycle of death and rebirth.

We don't know if humanity is in a growth phase, in a maturation phase, or in a death phase. If we stay on Earth forever, we may grow, mature and die. But if we leave our planet and explore the universe, then we may be as an egg, that has a huge growth phase in front of us yet. Still, that bright future that I will never see bears the marks of my tiny hands because I have lived, and in living contributed.

posted by Downhere. @ 12:11 am