Our Big Plans

"Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test." –James

I got up this morning, rising with purpose. Everybody else had up and gone to work at seven in the Sunny Sunday morning, and I had the opportunity to sit silently in our Sunny Den and compose my day. Step by step, my needs came into focus. Things that need doing, distracted/tempered by things that have to be done first. It is the great Sunday question, and to think I feel like I am getting the hang of it! I managed out of the house and into K-dog where internet and the Times of New York are there with coffee and bagels. Just the place for everyone in my neighborhood who is getting or has the hang of Sundays.

Later on in life, I want to become the best public school teacher I can become in three years time, and then travel to some warm and mountainous place and learn the secrets of the earth and the methods of Animal Husbandry, and then build these masteries into a last-chance boarding school for urban emergencies. Okay? Now, I have little plans and I have big plans. Or maybe it is better just to say that I have intentions. Right? If things don't go according to Plan, then the plan has to change. But intentions are a more dynamic calibration–adaptable yet ever-present.

Mark the difference for me. Mark it, mark it.

It seems to put a maybe-satisfying spin on the boring old question of whether or not things happen on purpose. At least, for me, it makes me want to think about it again. Here is how I got from 'Sunday Morning Coming Down' to Intelligent Design:

Aside from the fact that everything leads me back to that discussion lately, and a multitude of things already written and said about dynamic equilibrium, I was just directed to learn a thing or two about Laminin, and it seemed like a very apt corollary. Laminin is basically a protein that ties our living cells to their non-living environments. (By 'our', of course, I mean animals; and by 'animals' I mean humans.) The non-living environment, also known as the basement membrane, is a network of proteins, fats and fluids that bind cells together. Just like our cells this extra-cellular matrix is made of Carbons, Hydrogens, Oxygens and Nitrogens, but unlike our cells, it does not have life unto itself. These proteins, fats and fluids are assembled by some cell and then used by other cells the way a city bus is built by some people and then used by others. In other words, our lives are completely dependent on the non-living materials we manipulate.

So laminin for example, does for the structure of a body what cement does for the foundation of a house. Dead, inert, but sturdy. Its familiar shape (see figure 1) has been invoked by many as proof of the awesome power of symbolic imagery, but for my purposes on a Sunday when thinking about purpose it is an example of microscopic tool use.

Humans are of course not the only ones who have realized that dead stuff makes a reliable home. Spiders make webs out of dead, gluey protein substances, beavers build entire lake towns with the leftover flotsam of a living forest. On and on, animal life is all about tool use, and the tools are almost always inert objects–nobody wants a hammer that gets up and walks out of the room. So laminin, collagen, keratin, melanin, and so on, towards a million billion in Life's little toolkit.

So cells use tools too. I guess the only reason this reminds me of determinism is that it is yet another reminder that Intelligent design and Random mutation are both self-disproving concepts when they are set as opposing viewpoints of nature. That is, while both of those arguments leave the details up to an ineffable or incomprehensible Other, it is nice to know that our human bodies are made in our own microscopic image. We are self-fulfilling.

One more time now: Life is not life without the nonliving things with which it surrounds itself, and I would someday like to conclude that Life can only be defined in terms of Death. But to pull it together, the difference between Making Plans and Having Intentions is close enough for me to the difference between a Life that is haphazardly melting into chaos despite its flailing and one that is purposefully carving a niche for itself and imbuing the rocks and stones with its awesome power.

You are not satisfied, but there will always be more to be satisfied later.