The Life Metaphor II

Suddenly there were wires routing the life form - where once everything was regulated by locality of the little organisms, by a sphere of influence, now every little organism connected to the wires could whisper, shout and otherwise effect some form of communication with others that it agreed with or disagreed with.

This, of course, caused the pre-existing regulation mechanisms afforded the organism to be challenged. The whole no longer was dependent on geography, aspects of the whole could now coordinate with each other quickly and do things - things that could be good or things that could be bad. 

When the regulatory mechanisms saw no bad things happen, nothing was done about this aspect of evolution. But when things the regulatory mechanisms saw as bad happened, they shut down parts of the new nervous system as they saw appropriate - because the nerve system was based in areas that they could control; it fed the system its nutrients and maintained it. Since the regulatory system controlled - and at times chose not to - the supplies needed to propagate and maintain this new nervous system, it could do these things. However, it did not mean that it did these things wisely: The first thing any organism or entity does is ensure it's own survival and at least some of the regulatory mechanisms actions were at least partially influenced by that.

And yet the other organisms - cells that make up mankind - weren't altogether pleased with the way the regulatory mechanisms were doing things. Some found them too slow to react in a time where everything happened faster and faster. Were they bad for the organism as a whole? Were they good for the organism as a whole? Were they productive in other ways to the whole, like muscle? Or were they instead fatty cells? To the regulatory mechanisms - mechanisms used to keeping things between certain limits - what they were was not as important as the fact as they were causing things to go out of the limits that they regulated.

Then there were the regulatory mechanisms that couldn't work with one another and yet the organisms regulated by them could. And sometimes could not.

And that's where we are now.

The question is whether the regulatory mechanisms can adapt quickly enough to deal with this new nervous system - metaphorically, 'growing a brain' - or whether the regulatory mechanisms will be replaced with new systems, not necessarily improved but necessarily evolved.

Image courtesy Flickr user fdecomite via this Creative Commons License. Click the image to see the original.