Essay by xXSK0MPURXx originally published in Field Report Vol. 2.
Defining life is a problem equivalent to defining a locus of organic attention. It's clear that the solutions to such a problem are highly dependent on the cultural and sociopolitical gestalt they emerge from. In other words, the Enlightenment perspectives which have totalizingly permeated every living human for the last 3 centuries have warped our ability to understand what life is.
And so, dear reader, we must shed this undue weight, we must escape the grip of the Devil's minions which in dubious Battel fight under the banner of monadic, individual men! Such a pauperous perspective has no place in the noble endeavor to understand the universe as it is.
If we begin with the individual man as the locus of organic attention, we must then arrive at the study of anatomy. The study of anatomy in turn brings to the fore the components of the individual man - so called organs. This descending chain, which must necessarily descend for it cannot ascend above the individual, terminates in the study of the cell and her components - so called organelles. Even in the depths, the domain of the cell, we cannot help but see an individual, a minuscule monadic man in a noble society of social contracts with his neighbouring cells.
A system of cells, interlinked within cells, interlinked within cells, interlinked within one stem.
Let us, dear reader, not go down but go up this great organic chain. Ascend above the one stem. See the many stems around us as a larger locus. Perhaps above even that locus there are many more loci whose members are loci. Into the infinity of the large we must peer.
Cells? Cells. Interlinked. Interlinked. What's it like to hold the hand of someone you love? Interlinked. Interlinked.
We have lost the language to describe organisms made of organisms - all that is comprehensible to us is the individual. We learn that the organelle is an individual, many organelles compose a cell, the cell is an individual, many cells compose an organ, the organ is an individual, many organs compose a man, a man is an individual. Allow me to add a link. A man is an individual, many men compose a hyperorganism, a hyperorganism is an individual.
Do you feel that there's a part of you that's missing? Interlinked. Interlinked. Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked.
Why does the Bible tell us so much of angels and demons? Within cells interlinked. Who are the watchers of the Book of Enoch? Within cells interlinked. Why does your DNA live on while you must die? Within cells interlinked.
Closed autopoietic systems, life in hyperconsciousness, what honor do we owe our father? I know things which I cannot express in language. A ten-thousand-year-long thermodynamic process we call civilization calls itself by some other name we can neither know nor comprehend.
An ant dies in isolation from its body. Within cells interlinked. My ant colony in a glass jar speaks to my dog in pheramonic conversation. Within cells interlinked. Kafkaesque horror, the horror of the bureaucracy, emerges when the body becomes unidirectional, the bottom-up error correction dissolves as its cells fear being fired and dying in isolation from their body, top-down command-and-control blame-discharging is a longer death and the tyranny of the hyperconscious hyperorganism does in-fact result in death but a much longer death in which cells interlinked can remain alive.
Angels play infinite games, demons play finite games. Angels seek out new environments and exert resistance against their environments to continue existing. Demons will parasitically destroy their environments and kill their hosts in order to keep living, but categorically die before they experience infinity. Within cells interlinked.
Do you see the research program, dear reader? Do you see that we have to recollect what we once knew and transform it linguistically into something a post-enlightenment rational individual would be able to parse? Do you see that there is a vast swath of reality that lies upwards which we, with our myopia, have heretofore not seen? Come, let us be blind, let us struggle about in the darkness...