Could stars be organisms?

[corey-devos]

One of the reasons I love doing the Ken Show, is I get to ask Ken some really strange questions sometimes. Such as this one, from our latest episode.

It’s a question I haven’t been able to get completely out of my mind, for some reason. And I am not sure I was 100% satisfied with Ken’s response! Would love to know what y’all think.

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Several episodes ago we talked about the different kinds of subtle fields and energies associated with different kinds of holons, and even social holons. So one question I have is whether it is possible for non-living matter (atoms, for example) to form “living systems” that are capable of generating subtle energies that the atom itself is incapable of producing?

For example, I have a certain science fiction scenario in my head, where we eventually learn that stars are truly “living systems” that share many rudimentary properties of life — nutrition (atom-smashing), respiration (solar cycles), excretion (electromagnetic and particle radiation), growth (life cycles), death and reproduction (both via supernovae). I am having fun imagining stars to be a similar holonic level as the most basic single-cell prokaryotes here on earth, with their own etheric fields. Basically, atomic organisms — giant single-cell proto-organisms made of plasma that eat atoms and shit light. Organisms that reproduce by dying — which then became the very first thing that nature decided to fix (“let’s maybe start by separating Eros and Thanatos”, said the Universe).

Which would make stars the most fundamental organisms in the universe. And just like the gravity field a star generates will influence the emergence and physical self-organization of planetary bodies in its system, in this scenario I like to imagine stars generating an etheric sable-energy field that also influences the emergence and self-organization of living bodies in its system. Which would make the probability of primordial life emerging throughout the universe much more likely, all feeding on both the electromagnetic and etheric energy of its parent star!

Which would mean that, after the Big Bang, as soon as the conditions arose, the most basic living systems emerged — stars. And those living systems in turn exert a morphogenetic influence and increase the likelihood of other living systems emerging within each of their neighborhoods. The living universe kickstarts itself, right from the very beginning. When we look at a galaxy in the night sky, we’re not seeing a collection of dead lights, but a community of living organisms.

So I guess my question is, is it possible for social holons to display properties that are so much more complex than its individual members, even to the point of generating/conducting higher forms of subtle energy than its individual holons can? Might this be why we see such staggering complexity in things like ant colonies, which no individual ant is capable of? Is it possible that a social holon can be magnitudes “more intelligent” than the individual holons that compose it?

[Kensho]

I suppose that is what a human body is if we look at its constituent parts, there is some emergence, the sum is greater than its parts. Otherwise we’d be a 190lbs pile of liquid goo. I guess the questions would be how could we know? How could it be proven or disproven? What exactly do we mean by alive?

Bruce Damer, the guy who has the leading orgin of life hypothesis/theory, that life originated in hotsprings, defined life as things that made the improbable more probable. They are like probability machines. An iphone is a highly improbable thing. But for super intelligent aliens, it would be very easy to make, for ants, impossible. I’m paraphrasing what he says. He calls it the PIM model. Probability shaper, interaction network, memory system.

So a sun, I guess we would have to know what it was choosing to do vs not do. If you could simulate it trillions of times, would it do the same thing over and over, and would the resultant forces upon the rest of the system be the same? Maybe the energies are so subtle that we could never know what kind of decisions it was making. Maybe it just looks like a thing because gravity is pressing it together its just quintilltions of atoms smashing into each other via gravity. Maybe all those atoms experience some form of stress and love, and at that scale decide not to cme the earth. I dont know.

[LaWanna]

Sounds like someone’s gamma brain is working overtime Notch it up half a hz and you’ll probably find the answer yourself Corey.

With your last paragraph, I thought: isn’t this what the (meditative-type) integral we-spaces ala Terry Patten and Craig Hamilton were hypothesizing? I also thought of shamanic stories and literature describing fantastic occurrences in communal ceremonies, particularly among the Lakota/Sioux, in which the conglomerate entrained energy of the group was/is seen as necessary for the fantastical (and ‘real’) events to happen. Like with an ant colony, people within the group have different roles, so to speak, and the shaman gets the major role, but the social holon or group itself is the “generating/conducting” instrument.

As for your science fiction scenario, I thought of the phrase “as above, so below,” sometimes called the “law of correspondence,” which apparently derives from the Hellenistic figure Hermes. It has historically been used in different philosophies, science, religion, and also astrology and the occult in general, and is reflected in symbolism in diverse cultures (e.g. one hand pointing up, the other down; or two triangles with points touching, one up, one down). The author of something called The Kybalion, early 20th century, wrote about the law of correspondence; this is one line: “…all that is included in the Universe emanates from the same source, and the same laws, principles, and characteristics apply to each unit, or combination of units of activity, as each manifests its own phenomena upon its own plane.” (Wikipedia) So ant colonies and star systems, according to this person, would indeed be quite similar, although they are manifesting “their own phenomena upon their own plane.”

The other half of “as above, so below” is “as within, so without.” I think humans have done a better job with the second half of that than the first.