Guided by Instinct: Feeling Evolutionary and Political Patterns

Part 10/10 - The Single-Celled Organism: The Fundamental Unit of Life, Survival, Death and Rebirth

“You’ll be my Einstein, my Newton, my Galileo, and my Hawking”

- Sia, Diplo, Labrinth, LSD “Genius”

I began this series by stating that “we, animals, evolved from one single-celled organism” and it was always my hope and intent to succeed in linking our thoughts together in a manner that would connect us all the way back around to this beginning point again.

When I created this website (near the onset of the pandemic), my original purpose was simply to help replace hopelessness with hope for anyone in more desperate circumstances than I. To possibly aid others in the regeneration of their dying, lost and/or forgotten "dream cells" through writing and reflection. Because regretfully, I am someone who allowed “the dreamer” in them to die for a significant portion of my life which was a very dark and difficult time for me. It was dark because I stopped dreaming and it was difficult because I stopped believing. I stopped believing in both the goodness of myself and that of humankind and I stopped dreaming of a better world. More generally, I stopped caring about the earth and its inhabitants.

When I was very young, I loved to dream big dreams. Looking back now, perhaps it was the cosmic size of these dreams which set me up for demoralization. However, I do not regret dreaming those big dreams and would never discourage others from dreaming their big dreams either, unless I thought that their dreams would lead them down a rabbit hole, similar, to the one that I was led down.

For better or worse, I have always involved others somehow in my emotional highs and lows. It is one of my “unique”, selfish tendencies which likely stems from the “amour-propre” Rousseau warns us of in many of his discourses. The deeply rooted, excessive pride, which constitutes the basis from which all my many other flaws were/are cultivated. However, the difference between the sharing that I do now and that which I did before, is that I am sharing from the perspective of someone who is now attached to their identity. I am sharing from the perspective of someone who has finally made their soul/body connection who now also possesses the capacity for reasoned (focused) speech (when I am medicated). With that said, these days, I still generally choose to do most of my sharing through non-verbal outlets, like writing, as I have not yet mastered my new skill (“logos”) which I think will take a lot more time and practice to "master". And as I have mentioned in previous posts, writing is both a passion and an art form for me and have found it to be the most grounding form of self-therapy during the pandemic. And if Rousseau equated self-therapy with self-love then I, suppose this would be a self-fulfilling project born from “amour-propre”, by his standards.

However, in my defense, it was never my hope to gain friends, approval or popularity in doing this and not once have I stopped to consider how others may “see me” in relation to this endeavor. Not once, have I stopped to consider the opinion of others when sharing my convictions in this series and still believe that this is the manner in which political opinions ought to be shared. Not only is sharing one’s political opinions in an unguarded and forthright manner the most just way to share but it also leaves less room for misinterpretation. I believe this clarity allows for more pragmatic political debate because there will be a firm comprehension of the remarks shared, therefore, can be more easily refuted by anyone who wishes/seeks to refute them. This sets the tone for fair political debate in my opinion. Feelings, desires, and passions may fuel it, but reason should, at the very least, be feigned in the deliverance.

You may think these are pretty haughty words coming from someone who didn’t have the gift of reasoned speech for most of their life. However, even during my years of powerlessness, I did still always respect and admire this ability when I observed it in others during televised or real time political discussion/debate as a listener. One of my biggest (and fleeting) dreams during these younger, more powerless years, was to become a speech writer one day. In other words, even in my wildest, most imaginative, career-based dreams, I was still not the one delivering the speech firsthand because I already understood then, that my limitations would never allow for that level of liberation. However, this was my reality and this was still a very big dream from my perspective at the time. Cosmic even. To live through someone else who would be enjoying the firsthand experience of reasoned speech (I gift that I, myself, did not possess), a dream that was bound to whatever level of fulfillment I could somehow manage to gain from this future, secondhand experience of life, as I always did.

So, you see, the reason why I now have such high expectations for political expression/debate is because I have managed to surpass the boundaries of my original dreams. My biggest dreams. I get to have new dreams in which I am not only able to experience the enjoyment of reasoned speech firsthand, but I get to be the author, agent, and actor/narrator of my own political speech. And this is where the real fulfillment and freedom lies for me. It is a feeling of being in control of my thoughts, my being, and my perspective simultaneously. While many people might call this feeling "having an identity", I call it "cosmic bliss."

Subconsciously, I think that this website was created in an attempt to provide an inspirational space for rebirth to occur, begin to occur, or support the process of, and yet, paradoxically, the topic of rebirth is one that I have spent very little time thinking about until now, since my own “rebirth” occurred, very unexpectedly, in my early 30s. I am not hesitant to describe it as a “rebirth” either because I genuinely feel different on a very cellular level. Having said that, I still do not pretend to be the best source of information for questions relating to rebirth, death and the afterlife and encourage you, the reader, to seek out lots of other sources and resources to form the basis of your beliefs surrounding these topics or to validate your existing beliefs. I, myself, am simply connecting knowledge in a manner which can link us back to the significance of the single-celled organism in this series and what this organism can tell us about our own political evolution (individual and collective), our animal nature and the natural rights apparent to our species specifically.

The question as to where human life begins and ends is a sophisticated one. For centuries, it is a question that has inspired a vast degree of illumination due to the diverse variation of values and ideations that nurture these answers/beliefs. It is a question that is no longer limited to the opinions of ecclesiastical leaders either, as more and more humans are tending toward a “less faithful” approach to finding these answers relating to life, death, and the afterlife. I personally, see this as a good thing however, as I am inclined to believe that a healthy assortment of impressions is something that will always be important in this area, since the topic itself arguably provides the very essence of our political debates, which would cease to take place if it were not for life and death on earth.

Due to useless and stereotypical generalizations concerning the religious skepticism of political philosophers (which gets unfairly intertwined and confused with the principles of atheism), they are not typically the first ones to be sought out for answers to such questions. But many ancient political philosophers did in fact, have opinions on the topics of death and rebirth, and sometimes documented these reflections much like they did with their others. These reflections can be found more obviously within books like Metaphysics by Aristotle or more discreetly within books like Emile, or on Education by Rousseau who states,

"When the union of body and soul is broken, I conceive that the former can be dissolved while the later can be preserved. Why would the destruction of the one entail the destruction of the other? On the contrary, since they are of such different natures, they both are in a violent condition during their union; and when this union ceases [death], they both return to their natural condition. The active and living substance regains all the strength that it used in moving the passive and dead substance. Alas! I sense it only too much by my vices: [humans] live only halfway during [their] life, and the life of the soul begins only with the death of the body" (Rousseau 283).

However, since philosophy itself, somehow managed to become a very specialized field of study in Western societies, its overarching qualities have become somewhat forgotten (or purposely disregarded) over the years due to humans either knowingly or unknowingly benefiting/profiting from their (now rare) knowledge in this field or by those who are simply unwilling to acknowledge philosophy’s metaphysical presence in everything, everywhere.

From a scientific perspective, rebirth has never been an impossible concept due to the scientifically examined and proven cellular regeneration that is constantly occurring in our bodies. By nature, we are constantly being “reborn” because cellular change is part of our natural evolution as human organisms. Arguably, it is change itself, that is crucial to our happiness and perhaps most importantly, our wholeness. Simply stated, material items never have and never will bring us the the levels of fulfillment we naturally desire as humans because introspective change is the only type of change that will, or ever could, bring us true fulfillment. The more soulful type of change that helps us to feel complete (or completely whole). I do not even feel the need to defend this statement with supporting research or factual evidence because this is quite simply the only answer that feels right, according to my instincts and as I have stated before, matters of conscience do not require research quite frankly.

From my perspective, single-celled organisms provide a flawless representation of the "universal oneness" that exists on earth and in the universe. Moreover, the cycle (the life, the energy, the awareness, the adaption, the need to reproduce, and the death) of a single-celled organism seems to provide an almost effortless analogy for an animal's life cycle too, from birth/rebirth to survival to death to rebirth and so on. Extraordinarily, these cells contain every single thing they need to survive and thrive, similar to the way the universe (in its natural state) provides humans with every single thing that they need to survive and thrive. Single-celled organisms are very unique because they are cells which are continuously being replicated in our bodies, ever-replacing the ones that have died. Figuratively speaking, it is a steady cycle of cell "rebirth". Cells which hold so much life within just themselves, that they can even outlive death of the body itself.

However, in the case (or more accurately, the essence) of life, death and rebirth, logical reasoning can still only ever take us so far. Even with the thoughtful application of both quantum physics and existential theory, we are still left with many blank spaces that continue to be infinite, immeasurable, and unexplainable areas of exploration within this subject matter.

All I can really say with conviction, is that it is within our nature to want to seek these truths. That our natural (evolutionized) purpose is to be political beings, or more simply, "to be" and since our potential to develop reason and reasoned speech are the traits that are now, most distinctive to our species, it is only natural that we should want to express our beliefs and political opinions. Moreover, these opinions/beliefs are ever-changing, much like our cells, and this change should be celebrated and nurtured because this change is as natural as it is inevitable. Change relating to opinions/beliefs can be considered a form of adaption that is necessary for survival and sometimes our political perspectives must adapt to our changing environments and the change within each another. These changes are unique because we are each at a different point in our natural evolution (which is always changing) and so we should try to understand how these cyclical differences interconnect with each other ("universal oneness"). This variation allows for natural selection to occur, which is the natural system that drives evolution. This adaptability (or even simply the openness for adaptability) fosters the "oneness" of our species supported by the "universal oneness" that began with one single-celled organism (us, then) which later developed into multi-cellular organisms (us, now). And lastly, it is never wise to equate change with weakness. These changing opinions/beliefs evolve along with our own individual evolution (life cycle) on earth, which means that they will continue to evolve/change until our bodies die...and perhaps...even after that.

This is the beauty of life, survival, death and rebirth.

By: Heather Sakaki

Date: March 17th, 2021