Today’s message is rooted in Adaptation.
The fascinating thing is, the idea had already arrived before Molly heard the word. She had been observing humans.
She had been wondering what makes them different from the other inhabitants of Earth. What makes a human being unique from an ant, a bee, a plant, a fungus, or any other living thing responding to the world around it?
But it was late… and she needed to unwind. She decided to relax with a guided exploration for her imagination. She knew she had clicked on the right video when the narrator said the word:
Adapt.
There it was. The thing she had already been observing had suddenly been named. Adaptation… And then came Spinoza.
Molly had heard of Baruch Spinoza before. His philosophy wasn’t exactly new territory for her, although she hadn’t realized how much of his thinking had already found its way into her own.
His phrase Deus sive Natura translates to God or Nature.
Not God standing outside Nature.
Not a separate being managing the universe.
Nature itself.
The whole unfolding thing.
The stars.
The Earth.
The plants.
The animals.
The human beings.
The thoughts inside them.
The causes behind those thoughts.
The entire infinite network of processes in which every individual thing is participating. The video she stumbled upon described Spinoza’s idea that human beings aren’t separate from the universe but expressions of it.
That sentence resonated differently for Molly than it might have a decade ago.
She has spent a long time exploring the idea of We Are One.
Perhaps too intensely at times.
The pendulum had swung so far toward unity that Molly had temporarily lost sight of individuality. Her boundaries became questionable. Her separateness became suspect. But now she was beginning to see something more nuanced.
Perhaps being an individual expression doesn’t mean being separate.
Perhaps a wave is still a wave even though it is made of ocean.
Perhaps Molly can have a boundary without believing she exists outside the whole. She can be an individual within Nature. A HUE-man being. A particular expression of something much larger. And perhaps adaptation is one of the ways that larger intelligence expresses itself.
An ant colony doesn’t have a tiny central brain directing every ant. A disrupted colony reorganizes through local signals. An ant encounters an obstacle and finds another route.
A bee can change roles when circumstances require it.
A fungal network can be severed and redirect its growth.
A plant can detect danger and communicate with neighboring plants.
A life doesn’t necessarily need to know the entire plan.
It responds to what is happening here.
That made Molly think about her own relationship with uncertainty. She likes a blueprint. She likes cycles. She likes understanding the pattern underneath the pattern.
She has spent years mapping time, astrology, lunar cycles, seasonal cycles, human behavior, civilization, consciousness, and the strange machinery of being alive.
She believes there is an underlying order to Nature.
A kind of code.
“In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
A structure unfolding at scales too large and too small for one human perspective to comprehend. But from inside one human body, that order can look like chaos.
Molly sees the obstacle.
Nature sees the entire system.
Molly sees the unknown.
Nature is already unfolding it.
And perhaps this is where the ant has something to teach the human. The ant doesn’t need to understand the entire universe before it moves.
The ant encounters the obstacle. It adapts.
Around.
Over.
Under.
Through.
The path changes. The mission continues.
Molly can make this process extraordinarily complicated. She can become afraid. She can become tense. She can imagine every possible consequence. She can try to predict what reality will do next. But whether she is afraid or relaxed, reality is going to unfold.
She doesn’t actually get to opt out of adaptation.
None of us do.
Time on Earth means changing conditions.
A body changes.
Relationships change.
Beliefs change.
Civilizations change.
Species change.
The planet changes.
The universe changes.
And every living thing participates in that movement.
Spinoza called the fundamental striving of a thing to persist in its existence conatus. The word gives Molly another way to understand adaptation. Life isn’t merely sitting around existing. Life is expressing itself.
Persisting.
Responding.
Adjusting.
Continuing.
Becoming.
The body doesn’t ask permission to age. A plant doesn’t debate whether it should reach toward the light. A species doesn’t hold a committee meeting before adapting to changing conditions.
Life moves. And Molly is life.
She is not standing outside the experiment observing Nature. She is Nature observing itself. That may be one of the strangest things about being human.
The universe has somehow arranged itself into creatures capable of wondering what the universe is. The same matter that became stars became planets, plants, animals, and eventually a woman lying in bed thinking about adaptation.
That thought isn’t outside Nature.
The thought is Nature, expressing itself through Molly.
Flashback to Working the Land Together - Circa 2021
And suddenly the word HUE-man takes on another dimension. Yesterday Molly was observing humanity as a peculiar mammal. Today she is connecting with the larger living system that mammal belongs to.
HUE is not a fixed identity.
Perhaps it is an expression.
A particular configuration of body, thought, emotion, experience, environment, culture, history, and awareness at one point in Time on Earth. The HUE changes because the being changes. And the being changes because it is alive.
Molly has spent nearly a decade exploring the shadows of humanity.
The conditioning.
The programming.
The tribalism.
The consumption.
The destruction.
The ways civilization can become disconnected from Nature.
As the thread continues from yesterday’s HUEman Being MeMoir. She has collected plenty of evidence for the theory that humans are savage animals who may very well destroy themselves. But today she wondered whether that perspective has also become part of the environment she is adapting to.
If Molly repeatedly perceives humanity as dangerous, selfish, doomed, and fundamentally screwed up...
what happens inside the human being having that perception?
Perhaps the worldview itself becomes another condition to which the body must respond. It creates a state of mind…
And maybe this is why understanding matters.
Spinoza’s philosophy, as Molly heard it today, offers a fascinating alternative to simply judging human behavior.
Instead of asking only: Why are humans so terrible?
Ask: What caused us to become this way?
That doesn’t excuse harmful behavior. It doesn’t erase boundaries. It doesn’t require trusting everyone. But understanding causation creates another possibility besides fear and hatred.
Observation.
Understanding.
Adaptation.
Maybe that is the hope Molly has been looking for. Not the shiny, everything-is-beautiful version of hope. Something sturdier. A hope that can look directly at the mammal.
The savage parts.
The selfish parts.
The fearful parts.
The programmed parts.
The beautiful parts.
The creative parts.
The curious parts.
And still recognize: This species is not finished.
The Universe is still Happening.
Perhaps humanity is adapting too. Perhaps the HUE-man being is not a finished product. Perhaps this strange creature is still learning how to be conscious of itself. Still learning how to cooperate. Still learning how to live within Nature rather than imagining itself above it. Still learning how individuality and interconnectedness can exist at the same time.
And perhaps Molly doesn’t need to figure out what humanity will ultimately become. She only needs to participate in her own adaptation. Like an ant finding its way around an obstacle.
To recognize the obstacle.
To honor the boundary.
To appreciate the other inhabitants of Earth.
To notice the patterns.
To keep moving through Time.
The ant doesn’t know where the path will lead. Neither does Molly. But the ant has something Molly is beginning to remember.
There is no requirement to know the entire route.
There is only the next moment.
The next signal. The next adaptation. And perhaps that is what Time on Earth really means. Not controlling the unfolding. Not predicting every turn. Not escaping the cycles of Nature. But becoming increasingly conscious that she is already part of them.
A temporary expression of an ancient process.
A HUE moving through a human body.
An Earthling traveling through time.
Nature experiencing itself from one particular point of view.
And today, Molly appreciates the company.
The ants.
The bees.
The plants.
The fungi.
The animals.
The stars.
The humans.
All of us adapting within the same unfolding reality. God or Nature. One infinite process. Countless expressions.
And Molly is one of them.
Still becoming.
And perhaps that is what Time on Earth really represents.
Molly has been exploring this idea through the Universal Time Cycles she uses in her Quantum MeMoir practice, writing and reflecting through lunar, seasonal, and personal cycles rather than treating time as a straight line marching from one moment to the next.
The Mind Maps give her a place to notice what is changing, what is repeating, what is emerging, and what she herself is becoming within it.
The more she pays attention, the more time begins to feel less like something happening to her and more like something she is participating in. The Mind Maps are simply a way of leaving herself little breadcrumbs through the unfolding.
A record of one HUE-man being, moving through Time on Earth.