2024-03-26-The Self is Emergent

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole. Wikipedia

This amazing phenomenon can be seen everywhere in nature, in particular, with humans and animals! The flowing of massive flock of swallows or an immense school of fish and migrating herds of wilderbeest are visual examples of this. More complex are a hive of bees caring for babies, making honey and defending their hive, and forest ants foraging, killing meticulously and thoroughly while sacrificing themselves say, for the army to cross a creek. But, separate a few of them from their sisters and brothers, they will just listlessly move naround in circles and die. They do not have an individual existence, nor is there an independent existence of the queen or the hive or hill.

Humans too are prone to this behavior when social interactions get frequent and intense, such as in crowds, social unrest, walking along a crowded sidewalk, group singing where discordant voices synchronize and harmonize and in falling behind a dictator. This happens at a surprisingly short time and with no predictability.

What should however also be understood is that human (animal) bodies and brains are not a single identifiable entity either. They are an emergence from the interactions of trillions of cells; each category like the classes of bees and ants, which come together to form a specific function and dont know or do much more, only responding mechanically and (bio)chemically to stimuli. The skin cells form the anthill of the human body and underneath the cells and their parts are incessantly busy, not aware that there is a so called consciousness, an ego and a self that has emerged from them. The neurons create memory and the cortex cells analyze and construct and create an illusion that there is someone sitting in the head doing these actions. If I were to take a hundred cells of different kinds from my body, place them in a petri dish, I would realize that there is no me in there and see that the cells will just act like single cell amoaeba or individual ants separated from their hive and die in a few hours or less.

Those of us who are too vested in our pride, ambitions and entitlements should ponder this. There is no I in our Identity. The identity with its hopes and fears are just an image on a digital image consisting of trillions of cell pixels.