There is a famous and right sentence of the philosopher René Descartes: "I think, therefore I am!"
The act of thinking gives us the certainty of our existence, even if it's so ephemeral, but not less important or uninteresting. The "thinking" makes us realize that we are unique individuals, each one of us. However, it also gives us the misleading impression that we are separated from all the others, from everything else, as if we didn't belong to what surrounds us. The air I breathe is part of me? Or, perhaps, only when it's inside my lungs, and later, when I release it, it's only part of the "rest"? In what moment could we make this separation? Is there this separation? I don't think so.
Our brain is a very powerful tool that was shaped by natural selection throughout hundreds of millions of years of biological evolution. A very useful tool, by the way, that supplies us with information about the world that surrounds us, guiding us in the ancient art of survival. It enables us to perceive and to simulate the nearby world by helping us solve the daily problems and also, on the other hand, many times making us deceive ourselves and letting us be marionettes of our own fantasies.
If we stop to think about it, we can verify that the subatomic particles form atoms, the atoms form molecules, the molecules form substances, and these ones form, in last instance, our bodies. Bodies formed by carbon, iron, calcium, potassium, hydrogen, sodium, glucose, water and many other things. A body is nothing more than an accumulation of atoms organized in certain way. Are we separated from the environment just because, in some space intervals, some atoms interact more strongly with each other to form our bodies? Does our skin make us immune from external influences? Of course not, because one of its functions is to recognize these influences and to deal with them. Even if corporal borders do exist, interactions still occur, which are as vital as the very deluding separations. We receive and give something back, both to the environment and to each other. And thus, we also give our contribution to the universe that we think is not part of our body, as if we were not part of it too. What a mistake!
This thorough cosmic connection, which unites all of us in levels too tiny to be discerned, was somehow irrelevant to our evolution. The daily problems that our more primitive ancestors had to solve to stay alive didn't have variables such as the size of an electron nor the light speed, and that's why it's so hard to us conceiving such measures. We are too rude to catch and to perceive such particularities. We had to learn how to live in a middle world of sizes not so big and not so small, with middle speeds, having bodies that are in half way between an atom and a star. Thus, it isn't incomprehensible that we are not able to perceive some details of life which are apparently insignificant, but very important ones and that end up showing us that to think that the others are somehow separated from us is a mere, rude delusion. You are part of me, and I am part of you, since we influence each other's life, even if we don't realize and it's in an apparently insignificant way.
The act of thinking gives us the certainty of our existence, even if it's so ephemeral, but not less important or uninteresting. The "thinking" makes us realize that we are unique individuals, each one of us. However, it also gives us the misleading impression that we are separated from all the others, from everything else, as if we didn't belong to what surrounds us. The air I breathe is part of me? Or, perhaps, only when it's inside my lungs, and later, when I release it, it's only part of the "rest"? In what moment could we make this separation? Is there this separation? I don't think so.
Our brain is a very powerful tool that was shaped by natural selection throughout hundreds of millions of years of biological evolution. A very useful tool, by the way, that supplies us with information about the world that surrounds us, guiding us in the ancient art of survival. It enables us to perceive and to simulate the nearby world by helping us solve the daily problems and also, on the other hand, many times making us deceive ourselves and letting us be marionettes of our own fantasies.
Waterfall by M. C. Escher (1961)
If we stop to think about it, we can verify that the subatomic particles form atoms, the atoms form molecules, the molecules form substances, and these ones form, in last instance, our bodies. Bodies formed by carbon, iron, calcium, potassium, hydrogen, sodium, glucose, water and many other things. A body is nothing more than an accumulation of atoms organized in certain way. Are we separated from the environment just because, in some space intervals, some atoms interact more strongly with each other to form our bodies? Does our skin make us immune from external influences? Of course not, because one of its functions is to recognize these influences and to deal with them. Even if corporal borders do exist, interactions still occur, which are as vital as the very deluding separations. We receive and give something back, both to the environment and to each other. And thus, we also give our contribution to the universe that we think is not part of our body, as if we were not part of it too. What a mistake!
This thorough cosmic connection, which unites all of us in levels too tiny to be discerned, was somehow irrelevant to our evolution. The daily problems that our more primitive ancestors had to solve to stay alive didn't have variables such as the size of an electron nor the light speed, and that's why it's so hard to us conceiving such measures. We are too rude to catch and to perceive such particularities. We had to learn how to live in a middle world of sizes not so big and not so small, with middle speeds, having bodies that are in half way between an atom and a star. Thus, it isn't incomprehensible that we are not able to perceive some details of life which are apparently insignificant, but very important ones and that end up showing us that to think that the others are somehow separated from us is a mere, rude delusion. You are part of me, and I am part of you, since we influence each other's life, even if we don't realize and it's in an apparently insignificant way.
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