space is the place

In order to expand our abilities to conceptualize beyond our experience, we must rreexamine how we think about thinking.

While our world’s specificity and
complexity increase exponentially, while global technologies flood the
disciplines with new possibilities, while overcaffeinated producers and
consumers frantically chase their own tails in a desperate attempt to
catch up, inquiry into the deeper essence(s) of living beings is
napping in the backseat. Descriptive theory and metaphysical whimsy have been conquered by
the canon of empirical analysis, statistical research and scientific observation, and
questions of essentialism have been deemed idealistic - and therefore
useless - by a competitive world doctored by hyperutilitarian logic.
Heed the need for speed, they say: there is no room for daydreamers
here. 

I tread carefully upon the intellectual middle ground between
essentialism and pragmatism; while attempts to provide universal
explanations for phenomena strike me as haplessly constrained by
context & incapable of accurately articulating an “objective” truth
about an infinitely complex world, I can’t subscribe to a purely
concrete, mathematical worldview. Empiricism is too narrow to yield
truth. Scientific observation is but a snapshot depiction of a puzzle
piece of the world, from a certain perspective at a certain point in
time; the cleavages of puzzle are ever shifting, and when one puts it
together it never looks the same twice. Scientific analysis cannot
fully account for an ever-evolving world. Even the most well-researched
subject adapts, evolves, changes as everything changes. Political
science is an oxymoron: Politics is not a science, it is a social
experiment, a process which has not reached its end, and there are no
quantifiable results to measure. There aren’t even standard units. No
theory yielded by statistical analysis can account for the inevitable
variation, mutation of its subject material. A scientific argument is
steadfast in its claim to authority, but lacks imagination. It is about
as spontaneous as yesterday’s milk. Indeed, universalist and empiricist frameworks - the two main historical methods of describing
existence and rationalizing the living world - leave much to be
desired. The former is too broad and subjective to be meaningful, and
the latter, in true utilitarian style, is too specialized to shed light
on exceptions and mystical possibiltiies. 

My dissatisfaction with these two methods of reason - which dominated
my university coursework - was my ticket aboard a radically tangential train of
thought. I stumbled over considerations of a more enlightening approach for
descriptive thought - that is, one which does not systematically catalog the content of human
life, but rather explores the nature of human ideas of life itself,
endowed with wonder and whimsy. Deciding to steer clear of the
epitome of academic old-white-man circlejerks otherwise known as
metaphysics, I opted to inwardly meander down a genealogy of sorts;
better to explore the winding snail trail of its changing meanings than
jump to conclusions. Slow and steady wins the race. As Stephane
Mallarme tells us, “to define is to kill. To suggest is to create.” 

Life, and life itself - that is, the (human) concept of life - is
incredibly narrow. Obviously an individual’s perception of life is
necesarily limited by their condition and experience, but that’s not
quite what I’m getting at. I’m speaking of the human conception of what
separates living beings from inorganic material. What makes a thing
more alive than something else? Perhaps the ability to reproduce? Or
the capability to adapt to one’s environment? The potential to engage
in purposeful activity? Wikipedia that shit. Our favorite bastion of
democratic information claims that life is a characteristic of
organisms that exhibit the following phenomena: Homeostasis (the
ability to internally regulate temperature), organization (being
composed of cells), metabolism, growth, adaption, and response to
stimuli (in any form or manner). But there are already some holes in
this definiton. Consider, for example, worker ants and bees. They do
not reproduce (for reproduction is the queen’s domain: a royal pain?)
yet they are no less alive than their matriarch. Hybrid animals like
mules and ligers cannot self-reproduce either, yet still they are real. 

This seven-sided definition of life seems even more shortsighted when
one ponders the possibilities of Extra-terrestrial Life. Though Earth
may be the only planet in the universe known to harbor life, it’s only
logical that life, in some shape or form, exists elsewhere. We are but
chance (or, depending on what you believe, not-so-accidental)
combinations of specific molecules that endow us with the ability to
perform the septagon of phenomena described above; it is statistically
probable, even inevitable that such a chance combination appeared
somewhere else. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Just look at
the evolution of life on earth. Our complexity is the product of the
lack of direction in evolutionary processes, of the accumulation of
fortuitous accidents, rather than the product of design. We are derived
from similar compounds, bacterias, base materials, yes. But through
variation and a couple of misadventures along the way, living organisms
have proliferated into a diverse buffet of biomass. A sentient schmorgasbord, with something for
everyone (and friends for dinner!) 

Who’s to say that this happy little accident didn’t or couldn’t
occur somewhere else? After all, certain theories (exogenesis,
panspermia) hold that life originated elsewhere in the universe and was
subsequently transferred to earth, via as meteorites, comets or cosmic
dust. Imagine those galactical nomads, fresh off the boat, only to find
themselves party to another voyage, this time around the sun. Welcome!
Thank you for choosing Planet Earth! Please enjoy your flight -
cocktails will be served shortly. 

Enthusiam for extraterrestrial life is not limited to
astrobiologists and conspiracy theorists. The search for life beyond
life on Earth has been the subject of countless scientific studies,
novels, sketchy government projects, movies, and theories of varying
persuasion. Contemporary author Tom Robbins believes that
hallucinogenic mushrooms came from star systems far away, their spores
durable enough to endure the long, strange trip through infinity-and
beyond! Alternative historian Michael Tsarion claims that the history
of the world stems from an alien visitation before the biblical Great
Flood (as expounded upon in his dauntingly comprehensive 22-DVD,
60-hour masterpiece Oracles and Origins.) 

But were we ever to cross paths with an extraterrestrial life form
(a true alien encounter!), how would we recognize it as a living being?
The seven criteria of earthly living beings are not given a priori -
they are retrospective descriptions of living beings based on
observation of our existence. We cannot assume that they will
automatically apply to beings created elsewhere and possibly under
radically different conditions (chemical climates, pressures, etc.
etc.) Though life as we know it is carbon based, it is not unreasonable
to speculate that silicon-based or hydrogen-based life forms have the
potential to exist. In all living beings code for instructions is
embedded in DNA or RNA, yet there may be other genetic systems possible
that we just don’t know about. The real Milky Way doens’t have its
ingredients listed on the wrapper. The sheer vastness of the universe -
and with it the matrix of possible combinations of elements and
variables - leaves us with little guidance for our predictions, leaves
us constantly guessing. It is probable that when we do encounter alien
life it will possess characteristics different from, beyond the seven
we currently acknowledge; we can only hope that our imaginations will
be liberal enough to realize their significance, and that we will be
able to appreciate the life inside the foreign forms. 

I am able to conceive of my own death, but I can’t imagine the world
without myself. So too is the human race shackled by its own
subjectivity, staring at the stars (how I wonder what you are…) yet
completely unprepared to identify whatever it is that’s out there. Of
course, the difficultly of imagining entirely new life forms isn’t
entirely our fault; in fact, it illuminates the neurological limits of
the human intellect. The brain’s memory bank, comprised of accumulated
perceptions, is the basis of knowledge and any cognitive activity in
which it’s employed. When the brain forms mental images - even when the
images are spontaneously generated - it draws from bits and pieces of
these preexisting perceptions. Seemingly-original images are but
unrecognizable combinations of past visions. The imagination is simply
a collage of the magazine clippings of memory, with volumes and volumes
to draw from. The form may change, but the base content stays the same.
Creativity, in the truest sense of the world, is an illusion. We cannot
produce ideas that are not somehow rooted in our known reality. 

This would seem to suggest that the search for extraterrestrial life
is a lost cause: alien life may not embody immediately recognizable
characteristics of terrestrial life, yet our pithy brains can’t handle
enough imagination to expand our definition of life. We can only hope
that our potential visitors, acknowledging the infiniteness of human
stupidity, meet us in the middle and give us a sign, some hint of their
organic nature. It’s equally possible that such an encounter will never
take place because of different atmospheric or climatic requirements
for the cultivation of life; perhaps we cannot coexist with other life,
at least not in the same place at the same time. If not our bodies,
maybe our eyes, our brains can’t handle the blinding luminance of the
knowledge of ethereal beings. Unraveling primal mysteries carries a
dangerous stigma. Genius is associated with madness. Once you’ve seen
the devil, you’ve seen the ultimate truth - and you are forever insane
to the mortal world. Every mobster’s favorite death sentence: you know
too much. 

But I digress. There is a reason behind asking all these questions,
and the reason lies in the fact that there are no answers. If there’s
one thing we’ve learned from the failures of the Enlightenment, it’s
that trying to come up with universal explanations for phenomena is a
lost cause. Postmodernism’s emphasis on the reality of social
complexity makes Hobbes’ and Locke’s attempts to essentialize human
nature appear juvenile and desperate. We must scrutinize with equal
rigor the endeavours of the scientific community to create an
all-encompassing definition of life. Life is a many-splendoured thing,
and it would be a crime to stifle it by squeezing it into a categorical
box. Best let it run free and flourish, grow wings and take on
dimensions of its own. Voltaire is right that doubt is an unpleasant
condition. It is human instinct to systematize existence; it is our
ability to do so that has brought us where we are. But certainty is
absurd, and all of our “answers” beg dozens more questions. We must
accept the unknown along with the known, for it is a necessary
condition of human experience. We may never know what extraterrestrial
life is, but that also means that we will never know what it is not.
And it is the latter, that blank canvas, that begets wonder - the
inspiration for knowledge. 

Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, spent his
entire life theorizing about synchronicity, the (limits of the) psyche,
and archetypes. He broke with intellectual tradition by forgoing the
tendency to rationalize his studies with self-justifications and
contrived conclusions; he was humble enough to admit that all he knew
is that there were things he didn’t know. And that is all we really
need to know, he said: “Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light
but making the darkness conscious.”