Hamlet on DNA

O! Pendant lipped one! Thy bruised shade mounted high on its immortal hook: to be or not to be. And who of us recall beyond that? Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer ... or to take arms against the sea of troubles and by opposing end them.

The options put forward are rather stark. There is only the one. Yes, poor Yorrick has done it, gone across to the undiscovered country. In fact it's not an option at all, rather a matter of timing that, as the young man says, will put an end to all the worry. So, in the time being, be!

Yet being in itself holds the dangers of joining Yorrick in an unscheduled manner - life is dangerous. Would it not be better to slumber, like cicadas, and thus extend our being indefinitely? But then, where is the being in that? To be is to engage, to be thrown against those outrageous slings and arrows in hopes, in the ever hope that one will pierce just so and  being leap forward, enthralled, enjoyed.

There is a way, young caesar. It is in you and you hold its essence, the riddle locked and opened at once. It is your DNA.

DNA - a single object in two parts

DNA, in a word, is a word. Fashioned with the finest skill, by nature herself, of atoms alone, cobbled together in a long, a very long, long string. Arranged much like a ladie's chain, each link, a letter, the whole - your own true name. It's double, wound round itself like the physician's snake, two strands combine to make a whole It's got two pairs of letters, this word, and each pair snap together, clever, so one utterance implies another and there they are, paired and lovely swirls, as though locked in some everlasting conversation.

Here is a thing that is nearly crystaline 'to be'. It does 'be' better than just about anything besides the atoms themselves. DNA is the original artist of 'to be', which did in the one instance worm its way through the mud one day, as it were, for a first time, to speak those very words as a whisper in the head. What does it tell us about the issue? Plenty, it turns out.

Photograph 51 - Rosalind Franklin 1952

Remember, this is a molecule that can speak. To see it for the first time was to understand in an instant two great secrets of life - the ladder code of chemical speech, and the double strandedness, that allows it to replicate. This was one of the most open insights the human mind has ever encountered.


So let's ask ...


There are two strands. To be isn't something that can be done alone. This is interesting straightaway. It could be said that a single thing is, but it takes at least a pair to be. In an operational format - all we can speak of here is the living state. A thing is, a pair can be.

DNA makes RNA to do things with itself.

 Adapted from the ALS Assoc.

And how is it to be? How does DNA manage this? It cleverly manages to be and not to be at the same time, in a very essential sense. Because there is another pairing, another separation. To act in the world, DNA makes a very similar chemical copy of itself called RNA. Spelled the same, it is very nearly exaxtly the same chemically. But, what ho! What have we done?

Well, let's take a short step back. This proposition, being, it is singular as we know it. To be is to be an individual identity. We came to DNA to see how individual identity is accomplished in physical means. I am searching for the specific identity of a discrete object, which I feel myself to be.

Apparently, whatever it is 'to be' is not possible to become as a single object living. The DNA pairs with itself - this is the only way it has ever worked, nevermind the apparent exceptions to the rule. And then there is this mirroring that occurs to place an RNA copy of itself into the environment. There is an essential division of labor to the proposition of being. Let's examine it closely.

The DNA has a job and that is to embody being in a physical format. Within life, it has two functions. It replicates - that is, it makes copies of itself. And it also is copied into RNA, a process called transcription where segments of DNA are re-implemented as RNA molecules, their sequences becoming unlinked from the main identity. The DNA has become essential a storage object. A container for identity.

The RNA, it goes out into the world. It places the chemical information of what identity is out into the environment, where it acts and does: it does be, actively. The DNA can't do this itself and here I think is the weave of the rub. To successfully navigate the environment, to be within time and the chaotic nature of things, to ride with change, is precisely not the nature of DNA. DNA exists to resist change, to be the definitive statement of a specific identity. It cannot change to adapt to the whims of moment.

Tree of life

In truth it cannot resist, but this truth takes place in a frame of time that dwarfs our most monumental accomplishments, our vastest extents. Evolution is the outcome of this inevitable change, within this contingent environment. But we ponder a very specific, if evanescent thing, the only thing we have: specific actual being.


RNA accomplishes this being in time. It is the precisest copy of DNA that nature can make, the next best thing to being there. It's nature is to be transitory, for there will be another utterance from the great I Am, the DNA behind it. It is what allows a life to be, to become from the one thing into the many splayed wonder of, for example, a child. Even within the body, the great I Am cannot be all itself at once, for a heart cell must be different from the cell of an eye. And so: RNA. RNA enables DNA to enter time as a contingent entity. Contingent on the needs of the being in that place and time and circumstance.

Here, Hamlet, I have dragged this out and am near exhausted, as are you I am sure. To be means to encompass both Unconditional and Conditional being. These two forms - the only thing that has ever worked - cooperate to produce actual being, instantiated being as, for example, yourself.

There is no question, dear prince, such as you said: to be or not to be. There can only be both, locked together in an imperfect alliance. Unconditional being - being in perpetuity - is what the DNA seeks. It speaks. And the RNA of its words carries out the actual act of being. Nothing can be one thing without being splintered so in its very guts. It is possible to exist without this, yes. Indeed, many things are. Only few have the facility to be.