Ramblings of a Villain

Convergence

Where do you end?

Do you realize what you are?

The question of you, of what makes you, well, you is one that everybody will have to ask themselves at some point of their lives, and the answers can be most mystifying.

Surely you have your own perception of you, your own definition. You are what you make, you are what you do, you are what you know, what you were trained to be, who surrounds you, your relations, your nationality, your ethnics. Soldier, son, young, married, lockpicking hobbyist, asian, person, human.

Define yourself as you will, but you are not you. You are not one. You have no control whether you are. You do not get to decide where you start, where you end.

You are a composite.

You are many, and you exist as many on many levels.

Not only in this human level that you think you are - the you that is a person. This is where your consciousness is, the level you are most aware of, but it is only a part of you. You are so much more. Disarm yourself.

You are the parts that compose you. Your limbs, your form gives you the shape of humanity, but your humanity trascends shape, and only exists on this level. Your body is not made of humanity. You are composed of parts, a machine, a system designed for persistence, continuity and permutability.

A collection of organs attend to the task of keeping you alive. Your heart pumps, keeping the blood flowing, collecting oxygen from your lungs and delivering it efficiently to the far corners of your body. We transform energy into energy and foreign matter into native matter to keep mending the parts of the machine, over and over renewing, actively repairing the you are that you are until the inevitable final malfunction.

You might be inclined to argue that you are not your body. Your body is replaceable, its parts interchangeable with others. You would be inclined to think you are your mind.

What is your mind?

You think as a consciousness, but what are you?

A network.

A lattice work of billions of neurons, their relation to each other, the connectivity, and the pathways that they make.

You do not think of being neurons. A single brain cell does not make a mind, it does not make you. You are many. You are the result.

A neuron does not think. It is only a vessel for electrical charges and discharges - were this neuron able to think, would it question itself being one? Being what it is? Would it realize it is not one, but many as well?

You are many, and you are made of many.

Disassemble yourself further.

The cells in your body are composites of even smaller composites. Acids and proteins.

Look deeper.

Oxygen, water.

Deeper.

Carbon, hydrogen, magnessium, iron.

Deeper.

Gluons, quarks.

Our understanding of composites does not go much further. Perhaps you could infinitely keep looking deeper and deeper, but that is a realm detached of yours. Your mind is not here. You can be made aware of these things, but you will never live on this level.

You think you are a person, made of systems serving systems serving systems serving systems.

You are a system.

And the purpose of every system is to serve the next.

Assemble yourself. look in the other direction.

You are not alone. You are one in many.

There are other humans around you, equally complex, each equally minuscule. You have a task.

Enforce, attend, carry, repair, diagnose, terminate.

No system acts by itself. You exist only when you interact with other systems. You need a network.

Friends, family, colleagues, clients. These are directly connected to you. Others are stranger, you may only perceive tangentially, briefly, but you cannot exist without them.

They each serve a purpose. They each offer a service. They each serve the system. You are aware of them and you need them to survive.

Together you make more.

You are one of many making more.

Culture.

A village, a town, a city, a capital. Livehoods entangled together growing larger with the passage of time. Multiplying and building more habitats.

Culture does not exist on its own. It is a result, the combination of many.

It separates, designates other cultures as hostile or benign in order to ensure its own survival. Builds, adapts, transforms. It exists.

One of many, made of many, to make many.

Civilization.

You cannot interact with it individually. A human is not civilization - a network of cultures makes civilization. Another layer.

Look further.

Cultures band together to make states.

Further.

States band together to make nations.

Empires.

Unions that span the length of the globe.

We can go no further, not right now.

But we will.

Because this is the fundamental truth of the universe - that one will make many, and many will make one.

We call it convergence. The self-weaving fractal pattern that you are, in all the levels of you.