What is life: The long ascent from matter to mind

Standing in front of the conveyor belt, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had just spent the last few hours carefully sorting through the detritus of other people’s lives as it rolled by me. I had paid my way into a rag house, the colloquial name for a garment recycling centre, which gave me the opportunity to dig through previously donated clothing inside of the facility before the clothes got destroyed and turned into rags or compacted into bales and shipped off to other countries. This is where many vintage clothing stores find their inventory. My thrifting hobby had led me to start a...