Being a minority within ourselves

Greetings!

Pop Quiz - considering survival, reproduction and count as factors - which group of species can call themselves the most successful species on mother earth?

Humans?

Bzzzzz (that's me hitting the buzzer that indicates wrong answer!)

This award goes to what we call as single cell organisms.

With the numbers that are in multiples of, multiples of, multiples of sum of counts of all other species put together, we can simply call them as rulers of earth...

(Apologies to the dictators of world who had deluded themselves to have concurred the world or felt that they can... Sorry guys, but you cannot even beat a bacterium... Go figure!)

These little(?) folks make up most of the life on the earth and it seems like the human bodies are simply swimming in their oceans.

But thank God, at least we have our bodies... or do we?

Research says that "There are about 100 trillion cells in a human body. However, even one tenth are hardly real human cells.  The human body is home of trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other tiny organisms." (Ref:  Review Article :"Role of Microbes in Human Health", Anil Kumar and Nikita Chordia - April 2017).



Whoooo ........does that mean I am not even one tenth of what I suppose myself to be?

Was my last anger tantrum a battle among the continents of microbes? Was my disease actually a dis-"ease" of a few trillion citizens in the body that has me as just less than 10%?

Hell, I am a minority within myself!!!

This is scary! There is only a minority of 10% within me (that is actually me) and what is left of this 10% is constantly battling out there (actually I should say “in here”) with 90%.

Oh my God! I have come to 10% now and how long it would take to go to 0% with the 90% getting troops from all over? And why are they battling me? So that they can live! And what’s so great in their life that they are fighting the remaining 10% poor me for it? Well most scientists would call their life as a single minded (and celled) pursuit to reproduce! And what is the pinnacle of such a pursuit? Getting split into two and dying!

Or, is it the other way round? Is there a great majority amongst that 90% which is letting me be so that we too can continue our lives?

If most of what I consider myself to be is them, then who really has done whatever it is that I claim to have done? Who really has protected me (when I thought I am protecting myself and others)? And what if that 90% of my body consists of a large set of good minions (or “micronions” to be more accurate)? Perhaps this 10% remaining me  has survived because a great percentage of 90% is wishing me well and protecting me!

In their microscopic but trillion-celled social view, perhaps, to them we too (i.e. our cells) seem like just doing the same as we see them. Probably they see this 10% group-of-cells (that is us), as leading a life trying to reproduce and ending up splitting in this endeavour...

But here I am, doing something more... like trying to grasp the magnitude and implication of this scientific fact, and blogging...

And here you are, reading my blog and contemplating about it, debating it in the neural networks within your islands, where you too are less than 10%...

We humans are definitely more than just a bunch of cells trying to reproduce, splitting up and dying!!!

What if, they too, in their intelligent consciousness made up of trillions, contemplating about the purpose of these scantily spread small islands (called as human bodies), which is a rather recent phenomenon in the histroy of single celled organisms?

What if they are debating about what to do with this recent 10% minority cells that live on the islands that we call as "human" bodies?

Well, I sincerely hope that, like the greatest among us humans, the greatest among this trillion-trillion-trillion-cell consciousness will also follow the motto "Live and Let Live!".

Sincerely Mine!
Anand Kulkarni

Comments

Unknown said…
Really deep and different thought, angle to look into this. It's again end up where science and spiritual both are required to lead to lead the answer.
I always think that small and big view - earth is big for us but in Galaxy, earth is just dot. And same when we talk about species, probably we are also that small species within a body of someone to which we called universe....... Human keeps on fighting for his wish but when it comes as question of global survival issue, all comes together to defeat it (this is what probably also happening in our body-90%-10%cells).
Lot of thoughts around this... But one last comment, this thought is good candidate for movie.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
GCDeshpande said…
Great article Sir...makes us think in a different way..
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Whoisanand said…
This reminds me of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Anitya :)
Monday, March 30, 2020
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