Life, etc

I'm taking us off on a tangent. And my ultimate destination is... well, I'll keep that to myself.

I.
My initials are D.H.S. and I am 33 years old. Here's what I think.

Human beings are a kind of super machine -- self-replicating, self-healing, self-everything. We also have a sense of self-recognition, which, in turn, begets a curious sense of self-awareness. Which is to say, an awareness of the existence of a "me". But for all that, we still don't know everything about ourselves. I think it's possible that we can't ever know.

In fact, even before we become aware/tuned in/turned on, our stem cells are already at work. They're endowed with programming that allows them to act independently of our consciousness. We don't control what they do, they just do it. In fact, we aren't even present at that point yet. At that stage, all that's there is a group of stem cells bunched up in a protective casing of some sort. The stem cells' own programming gives them an awareness to position themselves according to a sense of up, down, back and front to create arms, legs, spinal cord, intestines (and so on), which will eventually become "us".

At a certain point in that body-building process, we suddenly become plugged in. Nobody knows when it happens because we don't have the technology to track it. Besides, we don't have a proper working description of it, much less observe it. What is "it"? It is life.

So back to what I was saying. Now the stem cells have built my body and I've come to life. But by whose programme was I built? It's not mine in the true sense of the word. I don't possess my programming; in fact, it would seem that the programming owns me.

I know where the programming comes from. Half of it came from my mother, and half from my father. And if I trace it back long enough (I think this is right, I'm not sure), I'll reach Lucy. The programming that I've inherited, or more accurately, the programming that built my body and allowed me to live, is built out of bits and pieces switched and swapped across continents and across time. If anything, it is the programme that's really in control.

(To be continued)