linked to from: #E1.3. n_C3_Societies.php included as #C2.
Societies are fundamental. Constructed by both allies and predators, they are the builder of complex organisms and their means of survival. For those in our kingdom, they are the focus of our environments, providing the frame of meaning through which our ontogenies develop. Our bodies themselves are societies; we evolved as co-operatives of cells rather than dictatorships of brains. Only half the cells in my body have my DNA — the other half are bacteria, without which I would struggle to survive. I is a unique alliance of animal and bacterial cells, my identity an illusion, a necessary emergent quality that every BEING must have.