Elephants have very thick skin. People don’t. Probably that is the reason that elephants don’t get upset when someone calls them heavy, says their noses are long, or their worldview limited. Well, that might not be entirely true. Although elephant skin can be as thick as 1.5 inches, elephants still feel something like a person’s hand or an insect. So, even this most thick-skinned creature can react to any affront to its integrity as an isolated individual.
Skin encapsulates us. Cultures do so, too. Seems that we’re always “inside something.” But what’s the alternative? Even blob-like amoebas have an outer membrane. Having no enclosing membrane definitely endangers the integrity of a living entity. Without an outer covering you would just ooze out of yourself on a cellular level. How would we recognize you, Puddle? Being enclosed is a necessity of identifiable life-forms. Otherwise, someone might say of another, “Her presence somehow made itself known at the party.” Or, “I would call him a peripatetic professor, but instead of walking as he talked, he simply enveloped the entire lab, and his lecture seem to emanate from everywhere in the room.”
As conscious beings, we also encapsulate ourselves mentally and emotionally. And we don’t take kindly to intrusions into our emotional space or mental constructs. We usually don’t find pleasure in someone’s breaching the walls of our mental membranes. Those ideas in there have to be protected, don’t they? That worldview has to be sheltered from penetrations by ideas that contradict beliefs and concepts.
Touchy, aren’t we? Maybe encapsulation is the only avenue for individual existence. Inventing an enclosing membrane was a necessary step for the formation of life, wasn’t it? All those organic molecules couldn’t do much if they could simply wander away from one another. “Hey, where are you amino acids going? We’re trying to organize here. Pay attention. Okay, everybody stay inside and line up by chemical bond type.”
It’s that way with how we think. Encapsulation. Put a membrane around our thoughts. Put one around our emotions, also. Encapsulated as a whole and in our parts. Every cell an independent, yet codependent entity brushing up against the next cell. Every thought an independent, yet codependent concept brushing up against our own diverse thoughts and the thoughts of others. Our emotions doing the same.
Skin. A conscious entity in an identifiable place, and no matter how thick the membrane is, we feel, like the largest land animal, the slightest touch as though it puts our integrity in jeopardy. After experiencing cuts both large and small, we know that our theoretical and emotional membranes, even those as thick as an elephant’s skin, are not impenetrable.
Skin encapsulates us. Cultures do so, too. Seems that we’re always “inside something.” But what’s the alternative? Even blob-like amoebas have an outer membrane. Having no enclosing membrane definitely endangers the integrity of a living entity. Without an outer covering you would just ooze out of yourself on a cellular level. How would we recognize you, Puddle? Being enclosed is a necessity of identifiable life-forms. Otherwise, someone might say of another, “Her presence somehow made itself known at the party.” Or, “I would call him a peripatetic professor, but instead of walking as he talked, he simply enveloped the entire lab, and his lecture seem to emanate from everywhere in the room.”
As conscious beings, we also encapsulate ourselves mentally and emotionally. And we don’t take kindly to intrusions into our emotional space or mental constructs. We usually don’t find pleasure in someone’s breaching the walls of our mental membranes. Those ideas in there have to be protected, don’t they? That worldview has to be sheltered from penetrations by ideas that contradict beliefs and concepts.
Touchy, aren’t we? Maybe encapsulation is the only avenue for individual existence. Inventing an enclosing membrane was a necessary step for the formation of life, wasn’t it? All those organic molecules couldn’t do much if they could simply wander away from one another. “Hey, where are you amino acids going? We’re trying to organize here. Pay attention. Okay, everybody stay inside and line up by chemical bond type.”
It’s that way with how we think. Encapsulation. Put a membrane around our thoughts. Put one around our emotions, also. Encapsulated as a whole and in our parts. Every cell an independent, yet codependent entity brushing up against the next cell. Every thought an independent, yet codependent concept brushing up against our own diverse thoughts and the thoughts of others. Our emotions doing the same.
Skin. A conscious entity in an identifiable place, and no matter how thick the membrane is, we feel, like the largest land animal, the slightest touch as though it puts our integrity in jeopardy. After experiencing cuts both large and small, we know that our theoretical and emotional membranes, even those as thick as an elephant’s skin, are not impenetrable.
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