A materialist greets the day: 3 pounds and 86 million neurons

Sometimes in the morning as I wake up I’m aware of the matter that forms me. It’s about 186 pounds at 18 feet above sea level in Port St. Lucie, Florida, planet Earth, where I live. As I stand and walk around, I realize I’m seeing and sensing the world around me in this body, whose matter was formed in the gush of birthing stars. All those elements composing me at this point in space weigh about 186 pounds.

But I’m looking to lose a few.

What I see through my eyes is light bouncing off other matter, also birthed in stars. We won’t go into photons and stuff, though. Today I’m interested in the matter.

Although matter is just energy in another form.

I feel gravity holding my bare feet to the floor as I make my bed, naked (because I sleep naked). And gravity is all part of this. Gravity is the space-time stuff that forms the arrow of time for me. As I walk around naked, thinking of making a pot of coffee.

And my bare feet on the floor have no trouble holding up my 186-pound body (fortunately, as I’m acutely aware of those who can only dream of standing on two bare feet). I’m 186 pounds because of the matter under my bare feet, this planet I’m on. The matter of the entire Earth does that gravity space-time thing and holds me to the floor.

Those 186 pounds of mammal, made of matter birthed in stars, has evolved on this rocky planet since the moment life first appeared. I have no idea when that was. But I know the Earth is ~4.5 billion years old.

And the 3 pounds of matter that is my brain-harboring around 86 billion neurons-sees the morning light streaming into the room, into the house. The old coffee pot that will be replaced soon. And I wonder, as hard as the hardest matter, when and why and how I came to be.

Because here I am. I am here with you now, a living, breathing man. I am not artificial intelligence. I’m a mammal, who thinks he’s a being. A consciousness. Made of matter birthed in a star.

Dead matter. Very much alive.

So how do you start your day?

Originally published at http://kcroes.wordpress.com on March 17, 2024.