The Wonder-Inspiring Power of Knowledge
A story about wonder & maggots.....with nuggets of knowledge into consciousness, and the hierarchical structure of organisms.
A short-form video version of this post is here, or below:
I was sitting in my room, on my laptop, probably working on some top-secret project, when I heard my mom’s regular afternoon shout:
“BRUNOOOOOO! VEN ACA!!!!!!!,” she said. 1
“YA VOY!!!!!!,” I shouted back. Then I put on my sandals and hurried downstairs.
When I arrived at the kitchen, thinking she was going to yell at me for forgetting to wash 1 of the 20 dishes that were in the sink that morning, she instead told me there were some disgusting-looking worms in our trashcan.
After the relief of not listening to another lecture about leaving dirty dishes, I went to the trash can to see what the fuss was about.
When I got there, as soon as I opened the lid, I got a good whiff of rotten food, and a couple of seconds later, I saw a fat white maggot crawling on a plastic bag, leaving a trail of slime behind.
What was my reaction? I smiled uncontrollably.
I was so cheesed up, that when I got to the kitchen, I was still smiling. When my mom saw me, she was confused. “Why the heck are you smiling?” she asked. “Wonder,” I said. “What? They’re disgusting,” she replied.
I didn’t say a word after that. I just kept smiling.
I didn’t bother to explain to her why these “disgusting” maggots (in her eyes), gave me incredibly intense feelings of wonder and awe. Not because I couldn’t explain it, as if the wonder-inspiring power of maggots were some ineffable mystical knowledge—but because I would’ve had to give her a 10-minute lecture about consciousness and the organizational structures of living systems before she could even begin to see what I could see.
But you, my friend, get the chance to hear my 10-minute lecture.
The Two Wonders of A Maggot
There are only two pieces of knowledge that transformed how I saw these maggots, and in the rest of this letter, I’ll explain them to you.
I hope that with this knowledge, the next time you see a tiny worm or insect, you too will be filled with wonder and awe, instead of disgust.
1. Consciousness: A Tiny Conscious Being
The knowledge of consciousness can increase your wonder & awe for any one of the many creatures that exist in the world—even a maggot.
What is consciousness, you ask? Well, the answer is easier than you think. We can be sure that human consciousness at least, includes thoughts, emotions, sensations, an observing awareness, and a subjective point of view, through which all of this is experienced.2
In this very moment, you feel sensations. The shape and color of these words, the sound of a fan, the warmth of your butt, the smell of morning coffee, and the taste of scrambled eggs. You may also have some thoughts. A verbal thought in the form of spoken words, like, “Wow, I like Bruno’s newsletter. He’s so awesome.” Or a visual thought in the form of a mental picture, like you imagining what the maggots looked like as you read the story.
Importantly, all of this is also experienced through an individual focal point, a first-person perspective, a point of view. Everything you experience occurs inside your focal point of consciousness. No one can peek inside it. It is private to you. It is in this private focal point that your life unfolds, like a movie on a screen.
When it comes to insects, like maggots, they too have a subjective perspective, sensations, and emotions, but no verbal and visual thoughts.3 They can see, hear, taste, and smell, just like we do, through their unique sensory organs. It seems bizarre, but they too can feel frightened or happy, depending on whether or not you’re trying to stomp them.4 And, they even have a private focal point, through which they experience their little insect life.
This means that even that tiny maggot experiences reality from its unique point of view. If you were to “step inside” its viewpoint, you would know what it feels like to be a maggot. As it crawled on the plastic bag, you’d feel the plastic beneath you, smell the rotting food around you, and even sense the light of the sun with one of the light-sensitive cells located around your worm-like body.
Here lies the wonder.
The fact that it too, has a unique perspective on the world. A private window, through which it experiences life. One which we could only imagine what it may be like. But the fact that it is like something, is incredible.
The fact that it WOULD FEEL LIKE SOMETHING TO BE THAT TINY BEING.
“An organism is conscious, if and only there is something it is like to be that organism—something it is like for that organism.” - Thomas Nagel (“What It Is Like To Be A Bat”)
2. An Organism’s Structure: A Universe Inside A Maggot
If we all had super-mans x-ray vision, we could see through every living organism, into the entire universe that exists within them.
Every organism is a structured system, made up of different sub-structures. Like a building, they have different levels to them, each one building on the other. These levels of hierarchical organization come together to make up what an organism is, indeed, what you are.
From subatomic particles to atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems—all of these sub-structures come together to make up an organism. So, while an organism is one thing on the surface level, if you look inside it, it is trillions of other things.
It is, in essence, an entire walking, breathing universe.
Concluding Remarks & Practical Exercise
This story tells us something very profound.
It is not only the absence of knowledge, that is, mystery, which breeds wonder & awe, but paradoxically—knowledge does too.
If you know how the world works, the most seemingly mundane things, like a flower or a maggot, can stand out as something miraculous.
So, remember to keep on learning about the incredible world we live in. The more you do, the more wonders you’ll see.
As a parting exercise, next time you go out on a walk, I encourage you to imagine that it would feel like something to be any one of the beings that you encounter on your walk. From the tiny ant that crawled on your leg, to the vulture that’s soaring above you in the sky, to the squirrel that’s scurried by you to hide its acorns.
Also, try to conceptually see through each organism you encounter, realizing that it contains different levels of hierarchical organization, literally trillions of substructures, from organs, cells, molecules, to atoms. It is an entire universe.
Hope you try it. It is something I love to do, which always fills me with wonder & awe.
See ya in the next one! Stay curious and keep learning about the wonderful cosmos :)
Translates to “BRUNO, COME HERE!!”
There are some other features like the “Unity of Consciousness,” but we’re not going to get into that here. Perhaps in another letter where we explore the defining features of consciousness :)
I once discussed this on the first episode of my “Conscious Curiosity” podcast, at around 1:27:00. If by “verbal thought” we just mean hearing something in your mind, in the form of your own kind of language, then perhaps whales and dolphins can hear their communicator clicks and whistles make in their mind, whenever they recall what a member of their pod said. Most non-human animals have the brain structure necessary to have visual thoughts too, so like us, many can picture things in their mind—even your dog.