“What is the purpose of my life?” said a neuron.
It was a cerebral neuron located in a tangle of neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area that human scientists say is important for executive functions, including decision making, social cognition, and writing blog posts.
Let’s call that neuron “Fred.”
I’m here to tell his story.
Or perhaps I’m here to tell her story: Fred has not gender-identified yet.
“Please use feminine pronouns,” offered Fred, or someone or something on Fred’s behalf, with nuance uncommon for a neuron. Or perhaps common. Do I really know?
But I digress.
Let me continue Fred’s story.
Fred’s life was unexceptional—for a neuron in the prefrontal cortex. Everything happened the same, day after day. Fred was part of a large group of neurons, and all followed the same routine. You might call it “listening and talking.”
Fred listened to nearly 10,000 other neurons. She processed the information they provided. From time to time, she’d share information that might be said to summarize what Fred had learned. Thousands of neurons listened to what Fred shared and did likewise.
Fred had no concept of time, but if she had, she’d have known she’d been doing this for years.
And, God who created the concept of time, has revealed to me that Fred had been at it for a bit over 77 years.
Thank you, God!
So perhaps Fred, the subject of this story, was not a random neuron. Probably Fred was a neuron in my brain.
This makes total sense to me.
I hope it makes sense to you.
But once again, I digress.
Which brain Fred is a part of is interesting, but not essential to Fred’s story. Fred’s existential question and its implications are what matters here.
And Fred’s existential question, if you want to call it that (“and I do,” Fred has volunteered,) is similar to questions asked by billions, trillions and even more neurons during the period since the evolution of the universe first produced neurons.
And let’s not forget the existential questions asked by glial cells: the oligodendrocytes, the astrocytes, the ependyma, and the microglia.
Nor forget the somatic cells, bacterial cells, virii, atoms, and even quarks that long preceded neurons.
“What’s the purpose of my life?”
“What’s the purpose of my existence?”
“What’s the purpose of existence?”
“And while you’re at it, what’s the purpose of non-existence,” offered something that did not exist.
“What isn’t is far more prevalent than what is. For everything that is, there is an infinite number of things that don’t exist!”
Indeed.
But, yet again, I digress.
Like many of us, Fred had been doing the same things, mindlessly, for years before asking her existential question.
And as sometimes happens, Fred’s desire for existential understanding was transformative.
Neurons around her took up her question: “What is the purpose of my life?” and its variants.
“What is the purpose of my existence?” Some asked.
“What is the purpose of existence?” Others asked.
And even more fundamentally: “What is purpose?”
And finally, in a silent crescendo: “What is?”
“What is?”
The question hung in the metaphorical air and appeared on the literal page as a hand holding a pen scribbled it in a notebook.
Then the question was repeated.
“What is?”
It moved from the page to you (are you still with me?) through a series of transformations.
From page to voice. From voice to mobile phone. Through more transformations to a server somewhere in the world—who knows—in service of something called Otter.ai, that transcribed an early version of this—barely recognizable now—into digital form.
Then more transformations, where it appeared in a text file, to multiple literal configurations of electrons and quantum domains replicated across servers and storage farms and eventually (and what does eventually matter, since information is timeless?) downloaded to computers and smartphones and turned into photons that are or will be or have been processed by neurons in other brains.
Fred’s “What is?” reverberates through a tiny portion of the cosmos.
And then what?
And then, the world that had disappeared as Consciousness created this bit of nonsense, appeared again in Consciousness.
Or disappeared as Consciousness read this, or hear it, appeared again in consciousness.
Welcome back.
My purpose, my reason for existence, was to write this. Yours was to read this or hear this.
And now it’s time to go our separate ways, move on to our greater purposes.
Thank you Fred, for the inspiration.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
No comments:
Post a Comment