Birth of Self-Awareness - Revised

Posted by Pinhole at 2/8/2008 4:52 PM
Categories: Science, Humor, Philosophy, History

Undoubtedly, one of the most influential occurrences on planet Earth took place in what later came to be known as the ‘Cambrian’ period. Life was simpler then. Really. A lot simpler. And Dom was a simple jawless fish. As Fate would have it (if one believes in that sort of thing) Dom also had a simple aneurysm.

But, Dom didn’t know he possessed this medical anomaly. Dom didn’t know he was getting a headache. Dom didn’t know it was the Cambrian period. Dom didn’t even know he was a jawless fish. And because no one had looked up, or noticed the stars and planets, or understood their relation to each other and the sun, or had broken down that information into what seemed to be logical increments and utilized it in an attempt to provide the illusion of structure to the transience of what would later be called time; and because no one had yet applied this abstract concept, like a fine veneer inlayed with sophisticated, prejudiced, ill-conceived, and often conflicting theories and dogma, to past events, Dom also didn’t know it was Thursday and he was late for his Kiwanis meeting.

Entire futures were placed on hold, waiting for a small vessel to pop in the tiny pseudo-brain of an obscure, but lovable, jawless fish. When the miniscule vessel in Dom’s jawless head finally burst, a bizarre new world opened itself to him; and try as he might he couldn’t close it again. After the initial flash, if Dom had possessed any such thing as consciousness, it would have been precisely at this point when he would have lost it. Luckily, he was able to completely skip that step and merely ‘come to’.  “'Come to’ what?”, you might wonder. Dom certainly did, with more than a slight air of panic.

He also wondered where all the water had come from, and why he had thought of it as water. He wondered why he was there. He wondered if he now had purpose, though purpose was a foreign concept; concept in fact was a foreign concept. He wondered about this Kiwanis meeting thing, and if he was late would he miss out on refreshments?

All of this took place in the course of a few seconds, and the last thing Dom wondered was why he was floating belly up near the top of the pool.

Alas, before Dom headed for that big Kiwanis meeting in the sky, he had already procreated and loosed this gene upon the world. Generation upon generation Dom’s progeny gained more and more awareness of their surroundings, until they finally reached the point where they were absolutely sure they had no idea how they could possibly fit into this giant puzzle.

Surprise guests often show up loaded with baggage.  “Awareness” arrived with ‘ego, arrogance and unconscionable singularity’.  Apparently, it forgot to pack ‘the subtle difference between responsibility and capability, the shift in nuance from instructional guidance to control, and the leap from superiority to realizing and securing its proper place within a previously established system’.

There is likely much more to this tale, but right now I feel a headache coming on.





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