in parentheses

Social Science as we know it today (in our corner of the world) consists of a collection of observation-based theories that give ‘reason’ and organization to the ways in which human beings interact with other human beings in the stratified ‘cosm that we call ‘society’. Suppose we apply the ‘hard’ sciences to our daily lives, our interactions, choices, movements, the directions that we seem to gravitate towards, our natural inclinations, our ‘gut feeling’…

Yes: we are animals. Therefore, we behave in manners that satisfy an urge. Not just the simple sexual, carnal or ‘savage’ urge but a behavior occupied by the motivation to further our individual (and then collective) nurturing. And in our world, we nurture ourselves in multiple dimensions: we set and hold principles, we disagree, we agree, we create art, we read books, we have loyalty to a cause, we direct ourselves and our actions to what we want. We generally choose what satisfies us and/or what we know will bring us satisfaction.

Imagine people as a conglomeration of their components (components that essentially behave just as we do but on a microscopic level). Imagine the human as merely a macrocosm of every single atom that bonds to form him or her. Imagine if the nature of each atom were amplified and represented by the nature of a human being, a society and the world population. Each of us attract, repel, eat, search, shy away, aim towards: blah.

Is this not what occurs on the molecular level?

Are not the smaller, microscopic systems within us arranged in a manner in which their activities satisfy all that which ‘pleases’ them? Yes: they are merely surviving and behaving in ways necessary for ‘continuing’ their lives. As complex as a human being is, the amount of different ways to ‘continue’ life could be characterized by a number that approaches infinity. As microscopic beings have a variety of responses to the changes and stasis of their environment, we humans act upon that very same biological phenomenon in an interestingly hyper-extensive mode full of reality television, the internet, culture/lore, questions, war, love: we react to our environment in ways as complex as our anatomy.

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Whether it be losing an electron or gaining one or partaking in the natural gregariousness of people – whether they be australophitecines, habilus, erectus or sapiens – systems and entities in our natural world that we label as ‘the living’  follow a certain pattern ::: a pattern that reverberates from the basic atom to a cell to a mammal to the United States of America to the International Monetary Fund. May the Holland Tunnel be a vessel, a component of a coronary-like circulation system. May the Shake Shack be a watering hole in the savannah. May our skyscrapers be merely steel versions of canopies peering over the jungle roofs. And may our legs be the cilia that propels the movement of cells from one place to another.