16
thin
gs race off to the far corners of their new home in a cheerful hunt
for dinner. They never stop to think that they may be part of a
community whose corporate life is as critical as their own. They are
unaware that someday they, like their parents, will have to cluster with
their fellows in a desperate cooperative measure on which the future of
their children will depend.39
Another creature enlisted in a superorganism is the citizen of a
society called the sponge. To you and me, a sponge is quite clearly a
single clump of squeezable stuff. But that singularity is an illusion.
Take a living sponge, run it through a sieve into a bucket, and the
sponge breaks up into a muddy liquid that clouds the water into which
it falls. That cloud is a mob of self-sufficient cells, wrenched from their
comfortably settled life between familiar neighbors and set adrift in a
chaotic world. Each of those cells has theoretically got everything it
takes to handle life on its own. But something inside the newly
liberated sponge cell tells it, "You either live in a group or you cannot
live at all." The micro-beasts search frantically for their old
companions, then labor to reconstruct the social system that bound
them together. Within a few hours, the water of your bucket grows
clear. And sitting at the bottom is a complete, reconstituted sponge.
Like the sponge cells and the slime mold amoeba, you and I are
parts of a vast population whose pooled efforts move some larger
creature on its path through life. Like the sponge cells, we cannot live
in total separation from the human clump. We are components of a
superorganism.
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16
thin
gs race off to the far corners of their new home in a cheerful hunt
for dinner. They never stop to think that they may be part of a
community whose corporate life is as critical as their own. They are
unaware that someday they, like their parents, will have to cluster with
their fellows in a desperate cooperative measure on which the future of
their children will depend.39
Another creature enlisted in a superorganism is the citizen of a
society called the sponge. To you and me, a sponge is quite clearly a
single clump of squeezable stuff. But that singularity is an illusion.
Take a living sponge, run it through a sieve into a bucket, and the
sponge breaks up into a muddy liquid that clouds the water into which
it falls. That cloud is a mob of self-sufficient cells, wrenched from their
comfortably settled life between familiar neighbors and set adrift in a
chaotic world. Each of those cells has theoretically got everything it
takes to handle life on its own. But something inside the newly
liberated sponge cell tells it, "You either live in a group or you cannot
live at all." The micro-beasts search frantically for their old
companions, then labor to reconstruct the social system that bound
them together. Within a few hours, the water of your bucket grows
clear. And sitting at the bottom is a complete, reconstituted sponge.
Like the sponge cells and the slime mold amoeba, you and I are
parts of a vast population whose pooled efforts move some larger
creature on its path through life. Like the sponge cells, we cannot live
in total separation from the human clump. We are components of a
superorganism.
<< < GO > >>