Illusions. A Facebook page called Birds Gallery has a video of a huge flock of birds creating illusions in the sky.

There’s no flock, just illusions

There’s really no “flock.” That’s just a pattern we name and an illusion we think we see. Really, there are just individual birds flying next to each other. Each bird knows nothing about the overall pattern, yet the pattern forms. Is God willing the “flock” into existence? Are we seeing something that doesn’t really exist? Things exist- but is there “a flock”?

How many are there in this pattern? Ten thousand birds, a hundred thousand, a million?

Imagine 40 trillion things dancing and moving together

Imagine 40 trillion living things dancing and moving together, being born, growing, doing the work they’re shaped to do, and then dying and being replaced. Constantly, and over decades. The flock is an illusion, a cloud-like mass that seems to move and change shape. What kind of illusion could 40 trillion cells create?

There are about 40 trillion living cells in the human body. Their dance creates each us.

In your mind, you’re a person, a thing. But that’s just an idea. You’re the result of trillions of cells simply doing what they’re shaped to do. 

And those cells? Each one is an illusion in itself, the dance of trillions of molecules which are also just doing what they’re shaped to do.

In the right conditions, complexity emerges

In the blackness of space, there’s too little matter and energy for very interesting things to arise. In the heart of a sun, there is too much energy and matter. Yes, it creates a sun, a huge energy source in space. But there seems to be too much energy inside it for stable patterns to form.

Somewhere in between, there’s enough matter to be interesting and about the right amount of energy that patterns of things form and break apart. There’s flux, but also relative stability. The most stable patterns persist. And when there are enough interactions and yet enough stability, replicating patterns appear. And when patterns replicate, their numbers grow. When there are enough of these replicating patterns, they interact with each other and can form new patterns of patterns.

With the right range of conditions, complexity increases. Animals emerge. Humans emerge. Even consciousness.

Politics and accountability

What does this have to do with politics and accountability? Not too much.

Both are patterns we see, illusions. Is government wonderful cooperation that creates civilization? Or a horrible font of oppression and theft? Neither. It’s an illusion that we create.

We really do have the power to design and create the government of our dreams. If we do it together. And it’ll require at least a few people and some backing. Join me.