driven toward the larger whole?

 we stumble toward Gaia

as I'm approaching my allotted life-span,

I increasingly wonder who I am,

what the self is,

what consciousness is,

where it all comes from, where it all goes,

there's a seemingly deep contradiction

in two forces that work to drive the cosmos:

1, entropy, dissolution, the collapse of the complex to the simple, and 

2, its powerful antithesis, the coming together, 

the building of more and more complex structures,

life upon the mechanistic connections of matter,

one cell organisms finding the way to multi-celled life forms,

the complexity of the human eye, of a forest,

communication is at the heart of life,

as one asserts and the other reacts,

and the world complicates itself,

the blueprint of DNA orders us,

cells message each other and respond,

trees send scent to activate neighbors' immune systems,

mycelia somehow coordinate the whole through the roots,

with decision-making collective and distributed,

communication pulls the simpler to the more complex,

I wonder if the universe somehow expresses itself

in a fundamental, ineffable reach toward connection, 

and toward the larger whole,

what many believe God to be,

the wholeness that underlies it all,

that aches for us to "get it" and act for the better,

all around us, it seems like we are testing this hypothesis:

like the distributed intelligence of an octopus

the Internet has no hierarchical brain,

instead the parts strive as themselves,

do they also strive to find and create a collective will

that can help us more fully deserve the gift of self?

I use and appreciate Wikipedia, and donate money to it,

for it works to enable the many to work as one,

our challenge as a species

is to enable all life to be as one,

we stumble toward Gaia to be born anew.

by Henry H. Walker

August  28, ‘24