One of the fundamental problems that scientists face in tracing the origin of life is encapsulation. As a self-conscious bag of water, organic molecules, minerals, and symbiotic life-forms like bacteria, you certainly recognize the importance of a skin that holds all of your physical components together, including those just mentioned unicellular hitchhikers. Gee, even a pin-prick that breaks your encapsulation is dangerous; we can’t let what’s inside randomly flow outside. And we take every precaution, save for intentional body piercing, to keep that outer layer intact.
In short, a membrane that encloses organic molecules is essential to life as we know it.
It seems that the materials for life, famously described in Carl Sagan’s oft-repeated phrase “star stuff,” have from early on in the universe lain all about awaiting (teleologically speaking) encapsulation: Organic molecules are ubiquitous. They appear in carbonaceous chondrites—carbon-containing meteorites that have collided with Earth—and they lie in interstellar clouds as far away as TMC-1 at a distance of 400 light-years and even farther in a distant quasar at 11 billion light-years. * As of this writing, however and regardless of how abundant that “stuff” is, it is apparently encapsulated in only one isolated place: Earth. All those abundant organic molecules floating around “out there” are, as far as we can tell, un-encapsulated and not even close to being self-conscious, self-replicating self-protecting beings. But we’re still looking optimistically because we find hard to believe the notion that in the abundance of organic molecules life formed in only one place.
How the stuff of life—those organic molecules and amino acids—became encapsulated has been the driver of many experiments, starting with the famous 1952 Miller-Urey trials that involved the constituents of the presumed early-Earth atmosphere. In that experiment the scientists subjected methane, water vapor, ammonia, and molecular hydrogen to electrical sparks (a source of energy). Many such experiments have demonstrated that the organic constituents of life do form abiotically, but they have not uncovered a definitive mechanism for their encapsulation that can be tagged with a “Eureka moment.” That failure to artificially encapsulate in the lab (some attempts have been marginally successful **) a self-replicating life-form in the manner that seems some 3.8 billion years ago—give or take a week—to have naturally led to YOU is a good argument for how special you are—even though you might have had self doubts during your teen years that your personal encapsulation was special as you fretted over a blemish on your encapsulating surface.
As commonsense tells us, having a protective skin isn’t just necessary for keeping things in. It’s essential to keep unwanted things out, especially in a universe of dangerous and even lethal penetrators, such as viruses, bacteria, and bullets. Unfortunately, our protective layer isn’t a foolproof guarantee against a breach. The assault on skin has a counterpart in the assault on Self. As a conscious aggregation of star stuff, you have more than your physical components to guard. Like the body, your Self is frequently under attack by non-material “penetrators” that can be as pernicious as viruses, bacteria, and bullets. The weapons of society, such as ostracism, defamation, and insult mark the current Age of Hate and Anger, an age of vicious attacks from both known and unknown agents. Whereas the Self has always had to defend against gossip and defamation from nearby “penetrators,” it now has to defend against attacks from afar that arrive unexpectedly like an incoming cyber-asteroid. The “skin” of the Self is under almost constant siege.
There is an obvious way to keep such penetrators outside the encapsulated Self. Isolation. No interaction with any being outside the Self. But in a world of about eight billion other bags of organics and inorganics driven by necessary interactions, total isolation is difficult to achieve. One can stay off social media, but not off going into public at some time. Clouds of organics intent on malice enshroud much of the planet and threaten the protective skin of every Self. Interactions with those who would penetrate that skin are ultimately unavoidable. Just as bumping into another enclosed body can bruise the skin, so bumping into another Self can bruise the Ego so deeply that it bruises the Id, where like mold in an old basement the bruise can turn into a growing obsession. Grudges or insecurity result. Being thin-skinned is hazardous. If one penetrator pricks the thin-skinned Self, that Self weakens. Yet, although Self might be porous, it doesn’t have to be permeable to all penetrators.
There is no single defense mechanism against a universe of potential penetrators. That’s the first lesson a Self needs to consider. The second lesson is that the Self doesn’t need to constantly tend to its walls of defense. A tiny pinprick here or there isn’t necessarily a wide breach. That which lies on the inside can coagulate over the wound until time heals the membrane. Every Self already has the encapsulated ability for automatic healing.
If isolation is impossible on a world filled with other encapsulated organics that inevitably run into one another or aim to pierce Self’s secure membrane, then what can the individual encapsulated organic do for protection?
Consider:
Maybe some simple advice applies. We wash off that which can harm us. That which comprises most of what we are—water—is an actual external protectant against what we are not. When attacks from penetrators that we cannot ward off occur to our secure Self, we need a cleansing as well as a healing. An Ego so bruised that the wound runs as deep as the Id requires some aid, not a simple bandage of trendy self-awareness fad. That aid could be daily meditation. It could be a wider perspective. The teen sees only the pimple, the adult sees the entire face and its expression.
Getting a perspective on the Self’s position in the Cosmos is an effective defense. Perspective provides an undeniable protection against a world of nonmaterial penetrators. It can start with a simple recognition: Organics are ubiquitous in the Cosmos; encapsulated conscious organics are ubiquitous on Earth. Those organics “out there” simply reveal that the “stuff” of life is inescapably present and part of “what is.” Those encapsulated organics nearby are inescapably present and part of “what is” here. Whereas the Self seeks to encapsulate, it is, in fact, a rather porous entity and at least partially permeable. But it doesn’t have to be permeable to all attacks. It can choose to ward off the pin pricks and backstabs by focusing on what’s inside in the context of all that is outside.
As usual, I give you this point of departure without having the wisdom to give you more. May your encapsulating membrane protect you against all would-be penetrators.
*https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.787567/full Michel Guélin and Jose Cernicharo (2022) Organic Molecules in Interstellar Space: Latest Advances
**Supramolecular chemists have dealt with the issue of molecular self-assembly and molecular folding. Biochemists have also worked on encapsulating organic molecules. The list of publications both directly and indirectly relevant to the subject of encapsulation is gigantic. If you want to pursue the subject, you could find many starting points. The Miller-Urey experiment has been altered and repeated since the 1950s but even earlier Haldane and Oparin suggested in the 1920s that UV light could have acted as an energy source for the encapsulation. The work on encapsulation continues in many directions, including Dappe’s “Encapsulation of organic molecules in carbon nanotubes: role of the van der Waals interactions.” J Phys D Appl Phys 2014;47:083001.
In short, a membrane that encloses organic molecules is essential to life as we know it.
It seems that the materials for life, famously described in Carl Sagan’s oft-repeated phrase “star stuff,” have from early on in the universe lain all about awaiting (teleologically speaking) encapsulation: Organic molecules are ubiquitous. They appear in carbonaceous chondrites—carbon-containing meteorites that have collided with Earth—and they lie in interstellar clouds as far away as TMC-1 at a distance of 400 light-years and even farther in a distant quasar at 11 billion light-years. * As of this writing, however and regardless of how abundant that “stuff” is, it is apparently encapsulated in only one isolated place: Earth. All those abundant organic molecules floating around “out there” are, as far as we can tell, un-encapsulated and not even close to being self-conscious, self-replicating self-protecting beings. But we’re still looking optimistically because we find hard to believe the notion that in the abundance of organic molecules life formed in only one place.
How the stuff of life—those organic molecules and amino acids—became encapsulated has been the driver of many experiments, starting with the famous 1952 Miller-Urey trials that involved the constituents of the presumed early-Earth atmosphere. In that experiment the scientists subjected methane, water vapor, ammonia, and molecular hydrogen to electrical sparks (a source of energy). Many such experiments have demonstrated that the organic constituents of life do form abiotically, but they have not uncovered a definitive mechanism for their encapsulation that can be tagged with a “Eureka moment.” That failure to artificially encapsulate in the lab (some attempts have been marginally successful **) a self-replicating life-form in the manner that seems some 3.8 billion years ago—give or take a week—to have naturally led to YOU is a good argument for how special you are—even though you might have had self doubts during your teen years that your personal encapsulation was special as you fretted over a blemish on your encapsulating surface.
As commonsense tells us, having a protective skin isn’t just necessary for keeping things in. It’s essential to keep unwanted things out, especially in a universe of dangerous and even lethal penetrators, such as viruses, bacteria, and bullets. Unfortunately, our protective layer isn’t a foolproof guarantee against a breach. The assault on skin has a counterpart in the assault on Self. As a conscious aggregation of star stuff, you have more than your physical components to guard. Like the body, your Self is frequently under attack by non-material “penetrators” that can be as pernicious as viruses, bacteria, and bullets. The weapons of society, such as ostracism, defamation, and insult mark the current Age of Hate and Anger, an age of vicious attacks from both known and unknown agents. Whereas the Self has always had to defend against gossip and defamation from nearby “penetrators,” it now has to defend against attacks from afar that arrive unexpectedly like an incoming cyber-asteroid. The “skin” of the Self is under almost constant siege.
There is an obvious way to keep such penetrators outside the encapsulated Self. Isolation. No interaction with any being outside the Self. But in a world of about eight billion other bags of organics and inorganics driven by necessary interactions, total isolation is difficult to achieve. One can stay off social media, but not off going into public at some time. Clouds of organics intent on malice enshroud much of the planet and threaten the protective skin of every Self. Interactions with those who would penetrate that skin are ultimately unavoidable. Just as bumping into another enclosed body can bruise the skin, so bumping into another Self can bruise the Ego so deeply that it bruises the Id, where like mold in an old basement the bruise can turn into a growing obsession. Grudges or insecurity result. Being thin-skinned is hazardous. If one penetrator pricks the thin-skinned Self, that Self weakens. Yet, although Self might be porous, it doesn’t have to be permeable to all penetrators.
There is no single defense mechanism against a universe of potential penetrators. That’s the first lesson a Self needs to consider. The second lesson is that the Self doesn’t need to constantly tend to its walls of defense. A tiny pinprick here or there isn’t necessarily a wide breach. That which lies on the inside can coagulate over the wound until time heals the membrane. Every Self already has the encapsulated ability for automatic healing.
If isolation is impossible on a world filled with other encapsulated organics that inevitably run into one another or aim to pierce Self’s secure membrane, then what can the individual encapsulated organic do for protection?
Consider:
Maybe some simple advice applies. We wash off that which can harm us. That which comprises most of what we are—water—is an actual external protectant against what we are not. When attacks from penetrators that we cannot ward off occur to our secure Self, we need a cleansing as well as a healing. An Ego so bruised that the wound runs as deep as the Id requires some aid, not a simple bandage of trendy self-awareness fad. That aid could be daily meditation. It could be a wider perspective. The teen sees only the pimple, the adult sees the entire face and its expression.
Getting a perspective on the Self’s position in the Cosmos is an effective defense. Perspective provides an undeniable protection against a world of nonmaterial penetrators. It can start with a simple recognition: Organics are ubiquitous in the Cosmos; encapsulated conscious organics are ubiquitous on Earth. Those organics “out there” simply reveal that the “stuff” of life is inescapably present and part of “what is.” Those encapsulated organics nearby are inescapably present and part of “what is” here. Whereas the Self seeks to encapsulate, it is, in fact, a rather porous entity and at least partially permeable. But it doesn’t have to be permeable to all attacks. It can choose to ward off the pin pricks and backstabs by focusing on what’s inside in the context of all that is outside.
As usual, I give you this point of departure without having the wisdom to give you more. May your encapsulating membrane protect you against all would-be penetrators.
*https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.787567/full Michel Guélin and Jose Cernicharo (2022) Organic Molecules in Interstellar Space: Latest Advances
**Supramolecular chemists have dealt with the issue of molecular self-assembly and molecular folding. Biochemists have also worked on encapsulating organic molecules. The list of publications both directly and indirectly relevant to the subject of encapsulation is gigantic. If you want to pursue the subject, you could find many starting points. The Miller-Urey experiment has been altered and repeated since the 1950s but even earlier Haldane and Oparin suggested in the 1920s that UV light could have acted as an energy source for the encapsulation. The work on encapsulation continues in many directions, including Dappe’s “Encapsulation of organic molecules in carbon nanotubes: role of the van der Waals interactions.” J Phys D Appl Phys 2014;47:083001.
RSS Feed