Being Alive
It's worthwhile to base our understanding of the human condition on the brute and obvious fact that we are living things. "Being alive" involves participation in a vastly complex environment - sharing that environment with all living things. This is where to start - not the illusion of individuality. In this way, we cannot escape the most fundamental form of assimilation: participation in the drama of all life. Since Darwin, our idea about what it means to be alive has changed beyond recognition. It is fair to say that the old myths, based on simple stories about the human condition, have not kept up with what we now understand our situation to be. Especially in the West and the Abrahamic religions that are base on the fate of the individual "soul", the simple fact of our interdependence has been forgotten. The discipline of mathematics and physics can be applied to the science of life (biology) but few biologists, let alone the lay public, have been exposed t...