The other

A Story by Mike Defreitas

There's an implicit goodness in the world.

Implicit. Implicit in the connections made between disparate products.

What makes electricity happen? What makes it a connective property in the universe?

Things react, and in reacting, they connect.

So were told that from the beginning of time a big reaction happens. Big Bang.

The Universe unfolds until a jagged rock assumes its spheroid shape by the force of gravity on its surface.

Over time, it's pulled in orbit around the sun. And eventually, some chemicals meet up and start communicating.

They react and form attractions, until one day, an autonomous structure emerges: the prokaryotic cell.

Implicit in the universe, as attraction, has become explicit in a mind that is encrusted upon an older mammalian brain.

All animals connect. They connect to their environments and connect with the world.

Some stay to themselves (reptiles), while others form bonds.

Like the chemicals of old, a new connection emerges, but this time between physiologically separate body's.

The dynamics of life have moved from implicit cognition in sporadic autopoeisis, to minds that feel love.

But the flow is truly the same. From an impersonal history that almost seems fictional in light of human awareness.

Worlds unfurl, elements hidden find a place within the swirl. In simple connection, to assembly of many cells together (multiceullular) to forming colonies of connection (ants, bees) to simply surviving (reptiles) to the closeness of emotional connection (mammals) to a creature which experiences life through the world of symbols (humans). In these symbols, the whole past is represented and known through our knowing.

The ontology is changing, from 'one dimensional' to multidimensional. The connecting of cognition and body, of body with other bpdy's, with mind and the world about it.

The emergence of a metaphysics, perhaps implied by the dynamics of the swirling; the goodness of love; but explicitly seen: how love is situated 'outside' as the other.

The paradox entails opposing views. We enact the other in our doing. But it's always some farce. Yet, we need it, because without it all the rest of life is without meaning or substance. The other - the thought - the primordial self reflecting on itself. This happens in our engaging and it happens in our feeling of love.

It took a loving mother or the love of a compassionate other to introduce you to the feeling of love.

The very individualism of our body's paradoxically create the sensation and presents the reality. In fear, we feel our individuality. In love, we see and acknowledge the goodness of the world, and thus, the reality of the other.