Biological Systems
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I've been thinking more and more lately about the limits of individuality. No one individual is more important than the human species as a whole. A person could roll the dice, be a murderer and murder any person that gets in their way, but there's no way that individual would be able to stand against the entire species-- and who would want to anyway? Then they would be all alone.
Any given interaction between two or more individuals creates a living biological system. (Technically even being alone is still being within the biological system of the Earth and the organisms' environmental tendencies. Being is always Being-With-Others *). Interaction with the environment changes the organism on a physical, material level. They are not separate. The body itself is an encapsulated, abstracted biological system impacted by its environment, including other members of the species.
Examples of this on a higher level include transference (one person's emotional state impacts another's), crowd dynamics (people act according to the social mores of others), and body language (body postures adapted according to the situation-at-hand **). The majority of the thoughts we think (if not all of them, as the thinker is part of the system) are due to the biological systems of our workplaces, our friends and our family.
So with this, we are no longer as independent as we would like to believe we are. Ideas of individuality and self-determination come falling down. We are the environment we inhabit: nature versus nurture does not even factor in. If nature is your genes *** and nurture is the environment you were raised in, you are only natural insofar as you are genetically determined, and you are only genetically determinate due to the environment of your parents and their (genetic) attraction towards each other. To speak of a determinate "nature" is to speak of the environment of your parents, and your parents' parents', going all the way back...
But, here we are as individuals!
So, what do you guys think? How much of an impact can one person make on the living biological system of the Earth, or of the town they live in or their workplace? How much of "us" is actually individual? Does it even matter? And what does this mean for our sense of self-- which flies out the window according to this interpretation?
- Is this what meditative Samadhi, as in Book 4, is? To have the organism Get Out through deep concentration?
** Check your current Asana
*** Genes are not necessarily rigidly predetermined and some can be changed from environmental factors (genetic expression)
- Is this what meditative Samadhi, as in Book 4, is? To have the organism Get Out through deep concentration?