If I were a bacteria...

If I were a bacteria or a virus of the several hundreds of species that lurk inside the human body, I wonder what I would be thinking about my life and about my living environment. Now, most bacteria are primitive forms of life, they a merely a bunch of proteins centered around a DNA or a RNA sequence. They don’t have nervous systems nor do they have any kind of neuronal network. Hence, if they think, they must have a very primitive form of inferring about their life and their habitat. However, they resemble us in the way they struggle to survive and perpetuate their genetic heritage.
The human body is home to many kinds of bacteria. Most of these bacteria use resources from our own, but they provide back useful services. It is a fortunate symbiosis. Every once in a while, they seem to become too greedy, they multiply too much, they produce too much toxins or they consume too many resources. They become pathogens. Promptly, we wipe out some of them, with proper medication. Sometimes, we wipe out entire populations of bacteria. I am not sure whether bacteria know why this is happening to them. Maybe they tend to think it’s just an angry bacteria God, whom they let down. Or perhaps, they are aware of the negative impact they have on their habitat. Hence, most of the times, they behave nice towards their environment.
Now, if we are to zoom out the picture we can see a striking resemblance between the human specie and its natural host, Mother Earth. Of course, there are differences, but it is useful to underline the similarities.
Many will probably raise their eyebrow when faced with the hypothesis that Earth itself might have some sort of a conscience. But I ask: Why not? After all, what are we, humans? Just a bunch of particles held together into, its true, a very complex system. Have we been around for long, long enough to believe that we are one of the most advanced systems ever? Earth has been estimated to be around 4,6 billion years old. First organic life has shown up around 1 billion years ago. We, apes, have been around for approximately 2 million years. Now, if we think that we are intelligent entities, why on Earth, Earth itself will not posses some kind of intelligence? If you ask me, I’d say that its IQ could be “slightly” higher than ours. In a 4,6 billion to 2 million ratio. Or, to have the whole picture, planet Earth belongs to a species whose origins are far back in time, in the dawn of the Universe. This species had a lot of time to evolve.
Some might say that if this is true, then the non-stop circling around a star does not seem a very smart behavior from a supposedly very intelligent entity. Moreover, its inner systems seem far less complex than our beautiful human bodies. Well, I guess we can comprehend the behavior of our host, the same way bacteria understand why they are flushed with strange chemicals or, to put it simpler, why their host wakes up every morning at seven and goes to an office at nine. They probably don’t know anything about offices either. As far as complexity goes, even the comprehensible part of our planet, with is extremely fine tuned eco-systems, seems to me complicated enough to go well beyond our most advanced knowledge. Not to mention that we can only perceive a tiny part of the whole picture, the same way that bacteria perceive our bodies. And we don’t know anything about the planet’s “offices”. But if you ask me, I’d say that our planet, Earth, is quite young; he is child and he is in the elementary school now. The Sun is the young planets’ teacher. Solar radiation is a form of knowledge and when they will be educated enough, the young brats can start a serious office job. After, of course, they get “wasted” into cosmic dust, in their well deserved holyday.

This scenario is product of my fantasy, of course, but it is one possible scenario, born out of the limited knowledge I possess.

I would, however, be very careful with the amount of waste I produce. I just don’t want to produce a stomach ache to our generous, so far, host.