The Strange Order of Things summary

What bacteria can sense and what you can feel at any given moment are likely to seem worlds apart. Yet how those bacteria react to their perceptions and how you react to your emotions are both tied together by something called homeostasis.

You can think of homeostasis as an instinctual desire for balance or equilibrium, and it’s a fundamental part of every living thing. In fact, it’s considered the driving force behind the internal processes that have kept all organisms surviving and thriving since day one.

To quickly recap: our evolutionary story goes back to single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, that could only sense and react to events of a physical or chemical nature. And for a while, life was limited to purely mechanical reactions like these.

But then simple organisms developed a nervous system. This was followed by the development of mental processes. These two things combined to produce the feelings we have today. But what was happening with those early, simple organisms? What were those first primitive feelings like?

As we can see, our capacity for imagination and mental imagery evolved in tandem with our capacity for feelings. When we pictured images in our mind’s eye, they were accompanied by feelings – and the more vivid the image, the more intense the feeling.

The reason there’s such a strong connection between mental images and feelings is that we tend to apply both as a response to the experiences we have. This places those experiences on a spectrum of quality, from pleasant to unpleasant. In other words, our feelings create qualitative experiences.

At any moment today, you might have a flood of images going through your mind. You could even think of these images as playing out on a giant movie screen in your head. But the impressive thing is, we’re aware that our mind is both the projector and the audience.

This awareness is known as consciousness, and it allows you to act as a spectator of the world around you as well as of your internal world.

When you think of culture, you might think of the theater, or of museums full of artwork. But human culture is so much more. Indeed, it encompasses all of our inventions, ideas and creative accomplishments.

There are some people who believe that culture’s driving force, the engine that brought us both the first wheel and the latest spaceship, is our intellect, pure and simple.

In some ways, we live in a time of unprecedented comfort and health. Science and technology have reduced mortality rates and made it easier to travel, access knowledge and experience all the world has to offer.

But despite all these advancements, there is still a sense of crisis. Rather than enjoying life, many live in a state of constant distraction, with happiness levels on the decline in some areas. Looming over us every day are threats to our survival, including climate change, cyber warfare and the menace of nuclear weapons.