16 July

Did you know that bacteria are immortal? But also, interestingly, one type of cells in our bodies is immortal too - cancer cells. This to me is where everything we think we know could be thrown wide open, if we questioned some of our assumptions: - that multicellular organisms like us are more complex than single-celled organisms (I think that's backwards) - that big things are more complex than little things (also backwards) - that cancer may in fact be not so much anti-life as eternal life, trying to exist in a mortal body - that our bodies are (simple) societies of (complex) micro-organisms, and like all societies the compromises are what make us mortal; all agreements or compromises are finite, and - time doesn't pass from past to future. Eternity is where bacteria live, and our bodies are momentary adventures of these bacteria, with our deaths not the end of time, but just a re-arrangement of bacteria.