In recent weeks, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to news and science reports about the clinical and medical research about developments in medicine and pharmacology. Many of these reports have a common thread: at some point the scientists, doctors and researchers admit that there is much happening at the cellular and molecular levesl within the human body about which they have little or no understanding. Bear in mind, these scientists, doctors and researchers are some of the brightest people in the world — all significantly more intelligent and better educated than I.
In pondering the limitations of our knowledge, I was struck by the significant disconnect between what’s going on inside of us at the cellular and molecular levels of our bodies and what we, as “senior management” of our respective bodies, understand about the work those cellular and sub-cellular entities do every day to keep us alive.
This gap got me thinking how our cells, mitochondria, neurons, electrons, quarks and leptons might view us as their bosses.
Replace cell and organism with organism and the Earth. How do we think of the Earth. That is how cells, had they thoughts, would think about us. We are their biosphere. Some more spherical than others.
There are ten times more free bacteria than human cells in our bodies. Thankfully, most of those bacteria are benevolent. It is actually the most evolved bacteria that are benevolent. You aren’t very fit if you kill your host after all. Using the same microcosm as before, we are not very well evolved as we are destroying the outer membrane of our own organism, Earth herself.