The conscious electron!

Some physicists and philosophers want to ascribe consciousness to elementary particles, most of the time they do this to make light of a situation where these particles behave bizarrely. But we seriously do not believe electrons have consciousness, at least in the way we understand consciousness in our daily life. But if you take a whole bunch of particles, hadrons and leptons, mesh them up and create some organic cells you would get some thinking gel. It's almost like saying if I take some electrons in my clasp and shake them up and down, they will radiate. They would not only radiate, they would also start to think, but they would not know that they are electrons. We are made of electrons among other things, but we do not know we are made of electrons. What is that thing that comes out of inorganic senseless and consciousnessless matter? It's not tangible, it almost seems to hover over the material that gives rise to it. Some people call it a epiphenomenon. This phenomenon seems to have a separate quality from the matter it was created, but if you take the matter away the phenemenon itself disappears.

Without this phenemenon we would not be able to perceive the world. The world would essentially be an unknown realm, dark and without any real meaning: stars would be born and stars would be dead through spectacular fireworks, there would be firworks, but there would be nothing spectacular about it, because without any color and illumination interpreted through a conscious mind the entire universe would work in a regime that can be expressed in physical equations, but would remain totally intangible otherwise.

Our senses determine what kind of world we choose to live in. We see only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The visible wavelengths are longer than the interatomic distances, hence our bodies seem to be solid in appearance. The electromagnetic force provides a barrier against penetration, hence we can sit on a chair and cannot go through walls. The colors of the world are entirely a function of our brain's interpretation. But that's how evolution works. If it did not work we wouldn't be sitting here and trying to write a blog that really does not serve anybody's purpose. If we know nothing makes sense and we simply robots with will, free or otherwise, what keeps us, humans, going. The answer must be in biology. Our cognitive process, made entirely out of electric signals, tries to make sense of the world. The electrons have risen and together they contemplate their fate, their purpose. When they cannot make sense, they rationalize. The collective electronic signals have to make sense of all our adaptations, however accidental they might be (over which the electrons have no say) and they would come up with philosophy, art and religion, and sports!

Of stamps and Grace Kelly

Young girls and boys, who do not collect stamps, would never know the thrill of touching that foreign coarse paper with print spellling out strange country names and pictures that harken back to a wondorous world that lies beyond reach. The stamps are orange, purple, grey and green. But in these internet days of instant communication, stamps are archaic. They do not evoke that mysterious foreignness of exotic landscapes, electric trolleybuses, airplanes, faces of kings and queens and dictators. It's passe. The kings and queens and dictators are also gone.

And that brings me to the story of Grace Kelly.

When I was a young boy, my father encouraged me to collect stamps. There used to be a small stamp shop in Dhaka near the New Market that was run by a middle-aged balding man who wore glasses. The shop was on the second floor of a triangular shaped building and was appropriately called The Stamp Corner. I cannot imagine how a person who in traded stamps could survive in Dhaka then and even now.

The first time we went to the shop, the stamp seller opened a notebook where each page exhibited a set of stamps dediacted to a particular theme. The stamps were beautiful. That was when I saw the set from Monaco. A king and a queen adorned the stamps. The store-keeper said, "This is the Prince of Monaco...," and my father finished, "and this is Grace Kelly."

To this day, I remember the face of the stamp seller. He was in awe of my father's knowledge of this Hollywood star who gave up her film career to become a princess. She was famous in America, but nobody knew her in Dhaka.

I don't remember if we bought that stamp set on that day, but much later, almost thirty-five years later, in California, I came into that wonderful stamp set from Monaco again. By then my father had passed away.

Shortly afterwards I had an opportunity to visit Monaco. The tiny principality was nestled precipitously within the mountains that looked over the Mediterranean Sea. Grace Kelly had also died - in a terrible motor crash in the mountains. As I walked the pavement of Monaco and made a pilgrimage to Monte Carlo, I remembered how my father awed the Dhaka stamp seller almost forty years ago.

And today, on this Saturday summer evening, when I saw a rerun of Rear Window on TV, I saw Grace Kelly for the first time.

A spider without its web

I encounter this spider everyday. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes later, whenever I go for a shower. I see it in the bathtub, near the drain. It's not that it waits for me, because everyday it brushes with death. Everyday, I don't see it at first. Everyday, I turn on the tap and the spider starts to scurry away from the water and that's when I notice it. But after a few energetic steps the spider loses its strength and confidence and the flood threatens to overcome it.

That's when I step in. I offer it a safe passage using a tissue or a piece of paper. She climbs on board and gets a ride out of a life-threatening situation into the dry land of the bathroom floor. This happens everyday.

Philosopher Thomas Nagel writes,"What is it like to be a bat?" I say, what is it like to be a spider?

I don't know.

But this I know - a spider without it's web is a vulnerable creature. It allows me to play God or Nero.

In summer time, our house gets invaded by Argentine ants. There is massive retaliation against those hardworking creatures. How does it feel to wipe out thousands of members of a collective whose only crime is to seek food and water? Not very uplifting, I say.

But sometimes I would follow one enterprising ant and its thirst for life. An empathy would evolve. And I would grant him life and invariably this thought would arise: this is how a god must feel or better yet, this was how Emperor Nero might have felt!

Why Malachite?

When I was very young, I saw a book that had a very deep green cover - it was designed after cut and polished malachite. It was a Russian fairy tale book, translated into Bengali - it was called The Malachite Basket, Malachiter Jha(n)api in Bengali. I don't remember the stories in the book, but I, to this day, vividly remember the green color spread over spiral patterns.

Coincidentally, the first time I saw malachite was in Russia - erstwhile Soviet Union - in erstwhile Leningrad, in today's St. Petursburg, in erstwhile Petrograd. I saw malachite in the Malachite Room of the famed Hermitage. I don't remember anything from the Hermitage other than a green malachite table from that room.

That's all I can say about malachite other than to say it has copper and carbonate in it.

Something from childhood remains mysterious even though you might not have much association with it. And to this day when I am asked to name a favorite stone, I say malachite without thinking for a second.