4 ms·
There isn't really any sort of distinct boundary between "you" and the "rest" of the universe.
by pipingdog 6y ago
There isn't really any sort of distinct boundary between "you" and the "rest" of the universe.
- lisper 6y agoI used to believe this, but it turns out not to be true, and in a very profound way. If you're a living thing, i.e. a self-reproducing system, then you have no choice but to draw some sort of boundary around yourself, i.e. the system that is doing the reproducing, and the "rest of the universe" which contains the resources you need to exploit in order to reproduce. These boundaries are manifest at multiple layers of abstraction: the membrane around the cell nucleus in eukaryotes, cell walls, your skin, families, species, city-states, nation-states. The boundaries may not be "distinct", but they definitely and necessarily exist.