Similarly, I've always thought of the body as a democracy of cells, of sorts. The larger emergent behavior only exists because of the collective behavior of the cells. Yet our consciousness is expressed on the collective level, never the cell level. We don't experience being a cell, because our body is made of trillions of cells. It's the "democracy" between the cells that produces the collective behavior.

And when one part of our body fights another part, it's painful. A body where all the parts are cooperating works best, but no one part of the body can have a monopoly over the other parts, or the system as a whole will malfunction, as seen in diseases like cancer.

Much like cops killing civilians they're supposed to protect, and then the civilians protesting... if your stomach is hungry but your brain tries to ignore it for too long, your whole body starts having serious problems.

I always think about this sort of thing when I'm driving on the highway and see all the cars, and think about how much it is like a blood vessel and all the red blood cells. The veins going to capillaries, going to cells. The highways having off-ramps that go to side streets that go to buildings. Even the word "cell" means "chamber or storeroom", just like a building.

As above, so below. Maybe even an atom has a circulatory system and we don't know it yet because it's too small. Maybe the whole universe has a circulatory system too, and we can't see that either because we're inside it and it's too big.

And maybe when our bodies die our consciousness doesn't disappear, but rather breaks down to cell-level consciousness, or molecular-level consciousness. Just lesser hierarchies, but still existing.

I love thinking about stuff like this, it definitely gives a different perspective on life.