Theise writes, “Generalizations about how we are all ‘one with the universe’ are so common these days as to be trite.” Using the observations of an ant colony led to the discovery of the importance of “quenched disorder.” Which means a few of the ants get off the beaten path and by doing so, they are instrumental in the survival of the colony. Theise describes the importance of this random act, “If you have no randomness, then there’s no way for the system to change how it’s responding if the environment changes, such as if the sugar cube is used up. When that sugar cube is used up, some ant in the colony has to be finding another sugar cube. It’s going to be those ants that aren’t following the line that are likely to bump into something…It’s this limited randomness that’s really key that all complex systems share, whether we’re talking about humans and human society, ants in an ant colony, cells in a body, there’s got to be a limited range of randomness”. This randomness in biological life makes us different from machines. Also included in this deep dialogue is a discussion about how the brain does not create consciousness. Researching what is the origin of consciousness poses the “hard problem” of science. As Theise explored complexity theory he learned, “What complexity theory teaches me is to remind myself, where are my boundaries? What view am I choosing to look from? Am I looking from the communal level and my boundaries are the people that are in my community? Or is it just me in my little bounded self? Or is it the cellular level? In which case I’m part of the entire biomass of the planet. Who am I becomes a question of how am I looking at myself?” He’s describing what the Buddhist call the “Absolute” and the “Relative”. They are a complementarity.