Heroes Not Zombies

This leaf is beautiful. When you look closely you see the incredible, fine web of thin fibres which make up its skeleton. With some leaves you can see this delicate, underlying structure when you hold it up to the sunlight, but with others the green of the leaf is too dense and you aren’t aware of this amazing support system which lies inside.

For me, the idea of a web, of a net, or of a network is fundamental to my understanding of reality. It’s a pretty simple concept at heart – it’s simply nodes and lines – connection points, and connectors.

Our bodies are like this. We are made up of trillions of cells which are all interconnected. Each cell a node, each relationship between one cell and another, a path, or bond, a connector. We function as whole beings emergent from this hidden structure of a network.

Our brains are like this. The specialised nerve cells we call neurones form intricate, flexible, ever changing patterns of connections, of nodes and connectors.

Our circulatory system is like this. Our lungs are like this. All our body systems are interconnected like this.

Our social networks are like this. Each of us is a node in a world-wide net spreading across continents, and back over generations of ancestors.

We might not see these nets very clearly on a day to day basis, but we can draw simplified maps of them – in fact, there is even a name applied to such maps now – “connectomes’ – diagrams of vast webs of connections.

I love all of this.

I love the beauty of the webs and nets. I love knowing that every one of us is connected through infinite interconnected webs like this.