Amoeba

I like to think of the amoeba as the building block of the animal world. Enough amoeba, enough blocks, and you have a human or a building. As far as life goes you’re supposed to be able to reproduce yourself and keep evolving. As such, amoeba are probably in the middle of life forms, somewhere between…say prions and top dog humans.

The nice thing about amoeba: the more you know about them the more “human” they seem. Prions, virus, algae, aren’t easy to feel kinship with, but amoeba, that’s a different kettle of fish. Amoeba do what we do – eat, defecate, avoid bright lights, know gravity can kill, prefer neutral ph, have sex (I would call it monosexual sex, not homosexual sex, as there aren’t two amoeba sexes) and best of all have well-meaning leaders, called head amoebas, who help organize the regular fellows into complex social orders (slime molds). Heck, about all amoebas can’t do, assumedly, is procrastinate since it is assumed they are of one mind (one cell).

I know, I know, any thinking person has to come to the conclusion that a minuscule amoeba, with no obvious brain, can’t have enough space to store all the things it knows. Then how the heck does it know what to do? I guess you would have to analogize with modern computer technology. The amoeba must have a non-stop connection to the big know-it-all in the sky, G—D, the universe’s cloud of knowledge. Heck, that fits right in with the Garden of Eden Story. One bite of the Tree of Knowledge fruit and bang, Adam and Eve got it all (although the first and only thing the bible mentions that they learned was that they were naked), all the knowledge G-d had. Some call that know-it-all, “intuitive know-it-all.”

Now, if this amoeba, like us, knows it all, what does the amoeba want out of this life? Must be the same thing we want. In fact, maybe this amoeba dreamed of becoming us to get what it wants and that is to know and fill the universe (or populate the universe).

Genesis, in the Old Testament, gives humans dominion over all that’s on Earth, but its G-d’s universe and ours too. Behind all that conquering of the universe has to be the belief that we, and the amoebas, will discover creation and figure out how G-d became the universe. Now-a-days it would be to figure out how G-d, the spiritual all, big banged himself, herself, itself into becoming all those stars and galaxies, full of gravity, mass, time and all that JAZZ.