Plato and Slime

1200 words, 6 minute read

Ok, yes, we do have our issues with Plato and we haven’t been shy about sharing them on this site. But associating Plato with ‘slime’ is way over the top! Except it isn’t, because as we’ll soon see, ‘to be slimed’ is a very high honor indeed!  

Take a look at the Epilogue Plato attached to his best known Dialogue, The Republic. It tells the story of Er , a mythical character who returns to life. 

Plato presents a complex theory of reincarnation. It includes everything you’d expect from a box office blockbuster: cross species metempsychosis, karma, free will, chance, necessity, and fate. 

But Plato’s doctrine includes one feature that, if not unique, is at least less common. Souls get to choose how they will be reincarnated. One’s ‘reincarnation destination’ is not a reward or punishment or the fruit of one’s spiritual accomplishments. It is simply a choice, not an unrestricted choice, as we’ll see shortly, but a choice.

“No daemon will cast lots for you; rather you shall choose your own daemon (fate).”

This choice has its special conditions. Before you choose, God conducts a lottery to determine the selection order. God has prepared a variety of destinations (e.g. human, pig, tree, cell) for the reincarnating souls; and within each general ‘destination’, no two specific ‘situations’ will be the same. 

You have elected to be reincarnated as an owl…but in which tree in which forest and with what attributes? You can’t design your destiny, but you can choose it from a wide variety on offer…unless, of course, you’re the last to choose.

“Let him to whom the first lot falls pick first the life to which he shall be chained. Virtue is not relevant here; each soul will share in virtue according to how it values it. All blame belongs to him who chooses; God is blameless.”

Note: Everyone wants to be #1 but getting the #1 pick in God’s version of the NFL draft is not necessarily an advantage; the temptation to choose ‘beauty, wealth and power’ over ‘wisdom, virtue and humility’ often proves irresistible. A spot somewhere in the middle is probably best. But what if you’re at the end of the line?

***

God could not have been nicer…or more apologetic. Yes, I was last in line and, yes, I was terrified. What fate could be so horrible that millions of souls passed over it on their way back to Earth?

“There’s only one option left. I’m afraid you’re going to have to live out your next lifetime as Slime Mold.”

I don’t know how much you know about slime but, spoiler alert, I could not have been more thrilled! If I couldn’t be the next Einstein, or Salk, or Joyce, or Matisse, I could be very happy being slime.

I gave God a parting hug and a heartfelt ‘Thank you’. You should have seen the look on his face. (I guess he was used to souls screaming and writhing, hoping against hope that they might avoid the inevitable.) It’s not everybody who gets to surprise God! Even his famous omniscience failed him in this instance.

So that was a double red letter day for me! I get to live out my next lifetime as slime and I got to put one over on the ‘Maker of Heaven and Earth’. God’s serving but I’m up ‘love 30’. 

***

Anyway, what’s so good about being slime? Well, how about the intelligence of Deep Blue, the wisdom of Solomon, the virtue (potentially) of Mother Theresa, and a lifetime pass to Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth? Are you in?  

Slime Mold is a single celled organism. Unlike most unicellulars, it can have a diameter of as much as a foot and is often easily visible to the naked eye. As Slime Mold, my life – like your life now, dear reader - centers around the Gastronomic Imperative: Eat as much healthy food as possible, avoid environmental toxins (e.g. salt, sunlight), and minimize the expenditure of precious energy.

Randomly, I explore my environment. When I encounter a food source, I build a conduit to that spot and I mark it in my ‘memory’ for future reference. Gradually, I map the food sources in my neighborhood and weight them according to their ‘resource density’. 

As I’m mapping, I’m also building my network. I need my network to deliver the most food in the shortest period of time with the least possible expenditure of energy. In just a few hours, I’m done, and my network is operating at 91% to 96% efficiency.

My orienteering skills are second to none. I can build a map of neighborhood food sources as fast or faster than any supercomputer, balancing all the relevant variables. However, the computer generated network will be 100% efficient; the best I can do is 96%. Bummer? We’ll see about that…

Example: If there are 25 food sources in my neighborhood, and I (slime) have to optimize my result across several variables (e.g. volume of food, distance from center, energy cost), I will need a few hours to complete the task. It will take a Supercomputer at least as long (it has to sort through 10^32 possible configurations). Of course, the computer’s result will be as much as 10% (100/91 = 110%) more efficient than mine. 

Can we turn vice into a virtue? My tolerance of deviations from optimum of up to 9% allows me to adapt much more quickly to future changes in the neighborhood (gentrification). When change does occur, no matter how slight or how temporary, the computer has to perform its multi-hour calculation all over again, from scratch, every time. The energy burden alone is unsustainable.

I, on the other hand, can usually make any necessary adjustments in a matter of minutes. I never start from scratch…ever. I always build on what I’ve built. 

Change is almost never ‘catastrophic’ – why should adjustments be? A modern supercomputer may be smarter than me, but I am much, much wiser. Slime carefully conserves the past and builds on it; computers have no past to build on.

Ok, intelligence, check; wisdom; check. What about the potential for virtue and the promise of perpetual youth? According to Karen Alim, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University:

 “Slime molds…are sensitive to aspects of each other’s behavior. They will approach others that have access to food, and avoid (burdening) ones that are starving or stressed…” Check.

“They also prefer to approach young individuals… (when they) fuse with a younger individual, it’s as if they’re young again.” Check.

Peer pressure can be a terrible thing. When your friends are all coming back as entrepreneurs and celebrities, artists and dictators, peregrine falcons and killer whales, you’re embarrassed to tell them you’ll be slime. That’s ok, be humble, don’t gloat, even though you and I know that you will be smarter, wiser, more virtuous, and more youthful than any of them. 

***

The Jungle (1942–43) by Wifredo Lam depicts elongated, mask-like human figures fused with sugarcane, leaves, and animal forms, creating a dense, claustrophobic tropical environment. The bodies appear neither fully human nor fully plant, suggesting spiritual transformation and the inseparability of identity from landscape. Philosophically, the painting reflects on colonial history, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and the tension between exploitation and cultural resilience, presenting nature as both witness and participant in human experience.