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I AM LARGE,
I CONTAIN MULTITUDES
Taking inspiration from (and oversimplifying through my single-minded lens): Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Meditations on First Philosophy, The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, The Illusion of Conscious Will, The Mushroom at the end of the World: The Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, The Phenomenology of Perception &The Second Body
First body – Ego/Perceived Edges The ego, purely perceived and thus our only conception of (singular) reality. A consciousness that suffocates within embodiment. The thinking thing supposedly exists in firing synapses, and hopefully that which will return to Goop Soup rich with learnt knowledge to feel held once again.
Second body – Flesh/Dirt Meat that breathes, encapsulating, and fuelling the atmosphere. The bodies of microbes, viruses that fuse to our DNA. Fundamentally, the earth’s crust, and from a further distance, a dull star. Our true body. Connected and birthed from decomposition: a simple elevation of mud that Is eaten by mushrooms – it is the mushrooms. It is the dirt, it is the sky, it is bones, it is metal.
Collective body – God
We arise in the position where the essence that makes us a thinking thing – a consciousness, a collection of thoughts - is given anatomical control over a body. This body itself is constituted of millions of microorganisms – tinier bodies. The DNA that carries supposedly ‘human’ genetics is itself conjoined with viruses. However, a matter of scale reduces the crossings of these life boarders to an unnoticeable smallness. Our ego reduces our world perception to align with the scale of the flesh body – outside of this we claim abstraction. We design scientific fact around this single perception – hypotheses centric research encourages a reduction of knowledge purely to the proof of assumptions: To discount planets, we reduce our definition of life to the breathing, fucking, and shitting of what we understand. How selfish of us to define of our highest valued commodity (life) in reflection of our own image - to use this definition as a tool of repression against those it excludes. When animals fit too closely with the human definition of life, discussions of ego arise – the truly human thing.
We think of our bodies as individuals simply because they are piloted by a consciousness that can only hear its own thoughts. But the true physical body does not have such simply defined boarders. Imagine yourself leaking into the earth. A structure of flesh that will decompose, grow, be consumed, be flesh again. The body is a temporary elevation of dirt, in constant flux and transformation.
Change the scale of observation and the mind is met with an uncomfortable level of abstraction (perhaps reduced anxiety if this observation is practiced through psychedelic substances, but otherwise), terrified of finding similar shapes and curves and patterns in galaxies as atoms, undeniable similarities between mycelium and neuro-connections – I am not unique, I am not special. The natural world preaches community and yet, we cower from abstraction – the true force that threatens the borders we’ve put on what constitutes existing.
Medicine has rushed ‘human’ evolution. Through consciousness, we create our own Darwinism, Evolution(2) means living long enough to witness change. But a consciousness structured on categorisation evolves(2) without acknowledging universal guidance: Kills planets. It must be common among the stars… perhaps the reason we don’t see much intelligent life is because they killed their planets, killed themselves before finding a new rock to colonise, having learnt now what not to do. Maybe the galactic life cycle is as follows: birth of planet, primordial soup, intelligent life, global warming, death of planet. Would that ease our guilt? Make us feel less bad if everyone else was doing it? It’s a pretty human thing to be compliant.
Our dependence on language is the implication of a culture restricted by categorisation. As we decide this object’s border, bestow it with a word, make it consumable; we reduce the object to its concept: implemented meaning, cultural meanings, ironic meanings, etc. Words scream their lacking quality. The gaps in sentences beg us to search for deeper meanings. I can never say what I feel. And thus, a culture built upon language – a subconsciousness moulded by language – forever curses its inhabitants to be misunderstood. Categorisation is a catalyst for single sided thinking, for rage. We destroy natural connections as we pine for simplicity. And once we categorise an object, a life form, a gender, we use this word to repress, control and destroy anything that strays from our dictionary definition.
I beg the question – is the subconscious structured like a language because we use language? Are we egocentric because the word ‘I’ separates us from the whole? If we discussed ourselves as merely a pixel in a screen, would we think ego-centrally? If we didn’t use language, would we observe objects as objects? Or would they simply be with everything else?
Should we communicate with images? - perhaps we wouldn’t see each ‘object’ within the image as singularities that compose a scene. Perhaps we should just see the image – what emotion it strikes in us… I’m reminded of discrepancies in translations between languages - the acoustic versus electric meanings that are gifted to words when spoke in different tongues. Please let me be understood. Perhaps it was not the separation of mind from body that was problematic, but the separation from both mind and bodies respective place within community. Capital’s encouragement of hyperindividualisation encourages the blissful ignorance of existing in reduced (flesh body) scale. Helps us observe the body as a tool, a worker – a cog in a well-oiled machine. We see their body. We do not see our body, nor a reflection (an extension) of ourselves. We see our (singular) mind, we do not see the mind as a collective, dripping from the same Goop. Could these realms truly be separated? If our body is not truly separated from the crust of the earth, is it not certain that this voice in my head is birthed from the collective (infinite) mind.
I admit I have considered the reality of my dreams… A parallel existence oversaturated and overwhelming. Perhaps a minds process or the reaching (leaking) into fleshless 4th dimensional space…. As made apparent by recent photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope, all of time is happening all at once.
Though space is the restrictor for a second dimensional being, we know that space can be moved through. To exist as ‘third’ dimensional beings, we are gifted manipulation of space, our perceived reality is restricted by time. In 4th dimensional thinking, time fluidity cannot only be seen but can be manipulated. And thus, our time has already happened, started again, circled, repeated. To acknowledge that all of time is happening at once is to prove fate. To question our definitions of agency – admit that free will is an illusion as the brains predicts the flesh body’s action, begging for this complex machinery to make sense.
We categorise ourselves by the definition of 3rd dimensional beings, though our consciousness (singular or not) does not feel time consistently. The time felt in a minute, shortens as we get older, cursed only to run faster towards an inevitable (ego) death. The second body (us as the earth) is restricted purely to exist in 3 dimensions. But may we consider consciousness the leaking of 4th dimensional residue into the second body. Restricted and taunted by flesh boarders, craving the understanding of its mother gum. Let me return to Goop – to God.
We are aliens, we are shapeshifters, we are hermaphrodites, we are cyborgs.