Biology

My undergraduate studies were in Cellular Biology in the early days of electron microscopy. With a minor in Chemistry, I soon understood that I myself am a physical being, a composite of cells, which in terms are comprised of chemical compounds in formations determined by the Physics of this planet, formed by the physical forces of the Universe. An intricate, self-motivated, self-motorized machine, or organism. Pretty amazing. 

This early understanding made it clear to me that God was an invention of this machine. Not the other way around. Gradually, I realized that all our social and psychological conventions are group inventions. Like the homicidal robots in the "Terminator" films, our conventions can become our masters or destroyers unless we constantly redesign them. As a young gay man, whose organic machinery pointed me sexually in one clear direction, this became very obvious. My sexuality was part of my machinery, built in to its genetic and hormonal drive. Convention, devised by heterosexual machines who had won superiority by numbers and aggression, was life-threatening to me as an organism. 

Understanding something about the basic biology of life has shaped my understanding of my own body and its environment. When I look at any human being, I see another organism. The layers of convention and genetic mutation that form that organism's specific features become quite secondary. By knowing and modifying myself, learning and editing my own operator's manual perhaps, I develop more intimate understanding of other organisms. This is a biological approach to developing compassion through mindfulness of the real workings of living beings. It is a layer of my humanist practice.