There’s a little fish called the bluestreak cleaner wrasse. It’s small. A touch bigger than a river minnow, with a brain the size of a few rice grains. It’s as cute as it sounds.
And yet, incredibly, it can recognize itself in mirrors. When researchers mark its body, it’ll try to scrub off the mark after seeing its reflection, a hint that it knows it’s looking at itself, not just another fish. Which may mean it’s self-aware.
But why would a small fish need to be self-aware? Well, why would we need to be self-aware?
Consciousness may not be a sacred spark. Rather, it might be a tool, a glitch, or a parlor trick we evolved to make sense of things. There’s a reason other animals get by fine without the big brain and level of self-awareness we have. Biologically, our brains are risky (babies take longer to develop) and are expensive (they’re heavy and torch a lot of calories). Your brain can veer into futile territory, make you question your existence, cause you to write essays about small fish and consciousness.
Surely other animals have evolved toward consciousness, or gotten there, then slammed the brakes when it proved to be a drawback. The bluestreak cleaner wrasse might have the right balance. A pinch of self-awareness, but not enough brainpower to write manifestos about its place in the cosmos.
Meanwhile, here you are. A cursory assembly of senses that strives to build its credibility through a remembered history, a sense of continuous identity. It’s convincing enough that you buy it most of the time. But not always. No, sometimes you end up here, unsettling yourself by melting the constructed nature of the self.
But there’s a way out. Some upside. If you can just enjoy the magic trick of life without obsessing over the sleight of hand, without trying to catch the card up reality’s sleeve, you can appreciate how wonderfully unlikely your existence is.
Think about it. Stars exploded. Atoms scattered. Earth became in the Goldilocks zone of the Sun. Red hot chemical accidents made life, life slopped itself onto land. Whatever slimy creature preceded us won. Kept winning. Sperm kept hitting eggs until the results became you. And now here you are, a miracle, a golden alchemy, a plucker of wedgies.
Whether you believe in Creation or creation, you’re made of primordial dust. As Epictetus put it, “A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse.” There is a grinning skull beneath your skin. So memento the fact that you will mori.
Taken too seriously, life just evaporates. That’s the cosmic joke. And it’s funny.
“A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse.”
~Epictetus, via Seneca, Letters On Ethics (Book)
“Strange, isn’t it? To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors utterly forgotten?”
~George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo (Book)
“The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw!”
~Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (Book)
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
~Confucius
“The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.”
~Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (Book)
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
~Steven Weinberg
“Rawlins asked him in his bad Spanish if there was a heaven for horses but he shook his head and said that a horse had no need of heaven.”
~Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (Book)
“For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on.”
~Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (Book)
“Your body doesn’t contain a single atom you were born with — so what gives you your identity? It’s a pattern of information, not a physical thing.”
~Greg Egan, Axiomatic (Book)
“You’re asking how a watch works. For now, just keep track of the time.”
~Alejandro, Sicario (Movie)
