“You” Are Five Layers. You Must Maintain Them All.
“You” are not one thing.
You exist at multiple levels.
These layers build on each other.
I think of them as The Five M’s:
Mitochondria
Meat
Monkey
Man / Mind
Mankind
Mitochondria (Cell Level):
“You” are actually a collection of about 30 trillion different cells, all with your genes, working in unison to create a human being.
(The count goes up to ~60 trillion if you count the additional 30 trillion non-you-gened microbes living symbiotically in your guts.)
To make this collection of trillions of cells thrive, you need to do Mitochondria maintenance:
Sleep is when they do most of their repair work.
Nutrition provides the molecules your cells use to rebuild and the energy to run the operations.
Exercise forces the cells to improve production and efficiency.
This might sound like banal advice after the revelation that you’re trillions of tiny organisms, but I think it’s a useful mental model. “You” often act in direct conflict with the needs of your fundamental building blocks.
Some new research suggests much of avoiding cancer and other chronic diseases comes from good mitochondrial maintenance.
Remember, you’re creating the context for the quality of your own construction. Maintain your mitochondria.
Meat (Animal Level):
“You” are an animal.
To survive and thrive, you need physical strength, flexibility, and endurance.
Maintaining your meat consists of things like lifting, running, being outside, being in the sun, and getting fresh air. These are things every animal does naturally and benefits from (but we often trick ourselves into not doing)
Move your body (strength, flexibility, mobility, cardio, etc)
Go outside (sunlight, fresh air, grounding)
Experience varied temperatures (sauna/cold)
Experience varied caloric intakes (fast)
Maintain your meat by straining muscles, stretching fascia, getting massages, (the right dose of) radiation, light exposure, experiencing temperature variations, etc.
Monkey (Primate Level):
“You” are a specific kind of animal – a monkey.
Monkeys are social creatures that cooperate in communities. They express physical affection for each other and often cuddle, play, groom, and tussle.
It’s easy to forget our monkey maintenance, but it is an important layer in our stack of selves.
Cuddle
Play
Contribute to others
Give gratitude
Receive gratitude
These all have direct chemical effects in the brain.
You want to feel safe, secure, and experience a calm nervous system?
Be sure you have done your monkey maintenance. Get in good standing with your fellow monkeys. When you’re not, something in you is on edge and can lead to paranoia, stress, and rumination.
Man / Mind (Human Level):
“You” are also a human being. You have a voice inside your head, creating this autobiographical past (identity). It also runs a constant fear-creation engine designed to keep you alive in a harsh physical environment.
It’s no surprise that we all have a hard time learning to manage our minds. They’re slippery bastards, and our instincts are often at odds with our ideals.
For thousands of years, we’ve been trying to figure out mind maintenance. We could lump religions, self-help books, drugs, and a lot in between into the “solutions for your wild mind” category.
How is your Mind Maintenance? Ask yourself:
What are your beliefs about yourself? The world?
Are you deeply attached to your self-image?
Is your sense of security easily threatened?
Are you aware of your emotions and able to control them?
A few practices that could be helpful for improving the condition of your mind:
Choosing your examples/models well (because you’re a monkey and “monkey see, monkey do”)
Meditation
Journaling
Therapy(?)
Education (in particular, maybe philosophy or literature)
Reading
God
Gratitude
Drugs
Brushes with death
There are myriad possible solutions here, or at least prescriptions. Though a successful treatment for one can be a poisonous hell-trap for another, so proceed with caution.
Mankind (Species Level):
“You” exist as an individual inside of the great human collective.
We have a sense of independence and identity, but You and I are each only one cell in the great hive of humanity.
Like the single individual cell in your left big toe’s nail, “you” do not have much power or ability to survive outside of the context you live in.
When we’re separated from other humans, we suffer.
How long would you survive alone on a desert island?
How long would you stay sane in solitary confinement?
You must be aligned on a species level.
You must know, deep in your bones, that you are doing the right thing for your fellow man.
I suspect this is why those who harm other humans often feel a rotting soul.
The hollowed eyes of war veterans. Internal angst is the punishment of a bigot. The self-loathing subconscious of an extreme environmentalist who tries to believe humans are a scourge.
So what can you do for “Mankind Maintenance”?
This I’m guessing at, but some sketched ideas:
Volunteer.
Tithe, donate.
Gratitude, especially for those different from you. The more different, the better.
Zoom out, and appreciate the thousands of generations of cooperation and innovation that separate you from a loincloth and a dinner of raw meat (if you’re lucky).
Appreciate that your daily survival relies on humans that you might dislike or even loathe (and vice versa.) God bless capitalism as an alignment mechanism.
Remember that we have philosophies, ideals, and goals that can align ALL humans to continue our progress and cooperation. Try to find some. Try David Deutsch.
Meditate on the potential of an alien invasion.
What did I miss? What did you expect to see here that you didn’t?
I’d say the “science” is least settled at the Mind and Mankind levels.
“Why?” is an interesting observation in itself. Maybe because they’re the newest problems, or because we’re closest to them.
This is just a mental model I use to encourage my reluctant mind to be a better steward of its cells. Sometimes we have to persuade ourselves to do what's best for us.
What do you think? Sane? Useful? Did I miss a level? A practice? What would you add?
P.S. I ate a cookie while I wrote this post. But it was an oatmeal cookie.
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