Everyday Musings > Good Mutant

Designer Phillipe Starck in a chat on Ted.com spoke of evolution and the fact that the bacteria didn't know it was going to become us and we don't know what we're going to become. But we feel that perhaps evolution has stopped with us. And we're the final ones. He said we are all mutants and the game is to be a Good Mutant, rise from our narrow worlds and make our civilisations great. And if we don't deeply understand that we are mutants, we're completely missing the story.

To participate in the evolution cycle, he said, there are rules. The first duty he said, is vision. We use it for everyday existence, to see our personal area, avoid accidents. Then look up a bit more, and see people around us, have conversations. Sometimes look around more and see our environment, sometimes even see far and high to see national problems, then higher to see world problems, then higher to gain perspective of our life vis a vis the universe. The further and higher our vision, he says, the more important we are to the story of civilisation. And there are traps.

The trap of our civilisation, he insists, is God. He says God is the answer when you don't know the answer. And we tend to restrict our vision because we have him to fall back on. Starck said we all invent our stories and pass on. So our children can invent a new story, the only rule is that you work from a blank slate every time. That s why he says, he finds joy even in designing a toilet brush, because that's the story of his life.

It made sense to me. The idea of me being a mutant. An evolving being, in process, a tiny flutter in a sandstorm. Part of a bigger plan that me as a waft will never see unless I rise to become something that moves the winds. And that the story of my life is for me to invent. And live. And my vision invents that story. If I think of my job and my bills, my story will be written like that. If I think I want to do something for India, my story will perhaps go the way of the Mahatma. If I think I want to rule the world, my story might be Alexander's. If I think of the Universe, maybe Einstein.

It puts immense power in the hand of the mutant, to stay or rise, be the cause, or the effect. To live or to curse fate. I sat on my bed for a bit and said this is myself 'I am a mutant' and it felt strange, like a scene out of X Men. Where is my power, aren't Mutants blessed with power. We are, blessed by evolution with intelligence and immunity that's higher than the bacteria we mutated from. The next lot of mutants will probably be more developed than us.

We think of advances in science and technology and wonder what the inventions for the next millennium will be. What about the next human being? How will we be? I have no idea. Maybe we'll fly. Or live underwater once more. Or not need Oxygen to breathe. Once I opened my eyes to being a mutant, I can see the universe that I live in, and feel its machinations. I also realised that I am not content being a flutter in the evolutionary sandstorm. This means I need to do what Starck's Good Mutants do. Move the winds.