A Trail of Ideas

A certain slime mold[1] spends its life as a single-celled organism. They move through moist soil and fallen leaves hunting down and eating bacteria. While food is plentiful, the mold cells divide to produce offspring which take up the family business. When food becomes scarce because of environmental changes or overpopulation, the mold cells sense the environment will not support them. This triggers a major behavioral change. The cells end their individualistic lifestyle and begin banding together to form a multicellular organism. This organism develops complete with skin and various sensory organs as well as the capacity to move and react as a singular body.

[3] We see this moldy band of slime siblings as a ‘slug’.[4] The slug is a collection of mold cells that are moving in search of a suitable place to transform once again and spawn specialized seeds (cells called spores) which are tailored to spread and survive through a period of what would be the equivalent of a famine or some other environmental or social disaster in human culture. Once the slug finds a suitable place to produce spores, it changes again. It begins by sacrificing parts of the community of cells to form a new organ called a stalk, [5]  and still others to become reproductive structures[6] that will cultivate and release spore cells into the environment. The spores scatter and if the environment allows, they spawn new mold colonies that begin the process of hunting and eating bacteria again.

Let’s examine the thought processes and behaviors of social bodies like cultures and communities in humans. We see the same principles of behavior expressed in the slime mold’s life cycle replicated in human social behaviors. Individual cultures transform under perceived threat to become less individualistic and draw into themselves. Banding together to form differentiated social organs and to move as a unit. To accomplish these various survival behaviors It also sacrifices portions of its now collective body so that a remnant can have a better chance to survive intact and go forward in time.

From this perspective, nation-states can be seen as the behavioral offspring of tribes just as slugs (from a certain perspective) are the behavioral offspring of previously individuated mold cells. The same biological tendencies we see in a slug searching for a suitable location to release spores, we also see when social structures are under perceived stress. Many more parallels can be drawn to illustrate the way biology and sociality echo a consistent theme of self-similarity combined with variations on that theme, the theme being to nourish and defend the integrity of a coherent community of relationships in the context of environmental opportunities and threats. When we look at human and other animal social aspects through this biological lens, a clearer perspective opens up to understand the difference between the theme, and the variations on the theme. We can get a clearer image of the biological foundations of what motivates the different trends we see in our own lives and times as well as some of what makes our history and potential futures tick.

The parallels between biological entities with complex life cycles and sociality identify biology and sociality as fraternal twins – variants on the theme of aggregating multiple strategies aligned around nourishing and defending a coherent structure in the face of environmental opportunities and challenges. When human ancestors ventured out of the trees and developed hunter-gatherer cultures, this was probably in response to an environmental change that necessitated that innovation. An innovation that is as old as the mold becoming a multicellular creature.

From this perspective, we can also see how individual and group world views emerge about the necessities of environmental demands. It could also be noted that some of the sacrificial themes that have peppered many religious worldviews throughout the ages may be simply an intuitive expression of the recognition of these sacrificial biological necessities for survival that emerge. The point is the roots for the kinds of things we do socially can be traced back to a time before symbolic words ever graced the human lips, much less played a role in defining human culture to any degree.

The theme running through all of biology is the development of attributes to nourish and protect itself as a coherent entity. The manufacture and application of proteins by way of DNA-RNA and the various other cellular machinery, the development of various appendages and sense organs, specialized teeth, claws, sexual reproduction, the development of multicellularity, and sociality are all variations on this same theme. Human culture is perhaps best viewed as a byproduct of this overall biological tendency more so than as some independent driver of action. In an attempt to carry on the delicate balance that biology depends on in the context of environmental diversity, cultural ideologies may be nature’s way of symbolically codifying what it takes to cope with survival – to nourish and to defend. It might be unsettling for some of us to face, but from a certain perspective, human culture is both as fantastic and as mundane as the slime trail of a slug.

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[1] dictyostelium discoideum

[2] Escherichia coli among other bacteria

[3] A molecular messenger called Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (Cyclic AMP) and another substance called differentiation-inducing factor, coax the cells to become specialized to serve a function in the context of the slug body.

[4] This stage is called aggregation which forms what is called a motile pseudoplasmodium, also known as a slug.

[5] Called a “fruiting body”

[6] Called spores.