The Marvelous, Thinking Fractal That Is Us

Take a break from whatever you’re doing to consider just how amazing it is that we exist simultaneously as a collective of intuitions, as individuals, as members of teams, organizations, nations, and as a small part of the natural world — all folded into a marvelous, thinking fractal.

I had a weird thought.

Thinking Fast and Well

Thinking happens at the level of neurons, synapses, and neurotransmitters at approximately 10 quadrillion (10 million billion) bits per second within each of our heads. That’s pretty cool. What’s even cooler is that this thinking happens at multiple different levels of abstraction that allow slower, more deliberate thinking to keep an eye on the faster, more reactive thinking.

For example: we can think from part of ourselves (like the angry part, or the professional part, or the sad part), we can think as a whole person, we can think as a member of one of the many teams and institutions we belong to, or as a citizen of a country, or as a single cell within the entirety of the human race, or even as a part of the entire natural world and universe beyond. Each level of…