All enfoldings, invaginations and internalisations attendant upon abiogenesis are only so many precursors and ancestors to the later development of intelligence’s full-blown transcendental functioning. However: this is not to say they are therefore the same. It is not to speciously state their dubious ‘continuity’ — whether explanatory or descriptive, genetic or categorial. They resonate only in mutual dissonance.
Let us embark upon a phylogenetic fantasy.
In the early 1990s PepsiCo introduced a colourless form of its now infamous soft drink, which sold under the name Crystal Pepsi. Following from a contemporary marketing fad geared towards selling transparent or colourless editions of familiar products (initiated by Ivory soap), the proviso was that transparency would evoke in consumers positive notions of ‘cleanness’ or ‘clarity’. Crystal Pepsi, however, was a market failure. (The relentless juggernaut of nostalgia has recently resurrected it from limbo, however.) It seems, then, that in our fallen (capitalized) state we actually desire tartareous muck over any vitreous and crystalline elixir.
