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Stewardship
Expand the notion of the tribe to include the entire human family.
The Founders had two reasons to participate in the DNA
Tree-of-Life project 3,000 years ago. The first reason is well known
— they wanted a broad base of human DNA for the project that
became us.
There was a second reason, though. Earth had already begun a mass extinction. The genomic information once carried in living things was preserved as data in laser etchings in glass. The scientists knew that one day there might be an opportunity to reseed Earth's biosphere from those slabs of glass. Mites are now conducting just such a restoration, as described here. We have become stewards of the world's living things.
It was suggested that we restore humans too. The idea was roundly unpopular, but it set us thinking. We have identified ourselves as a separate subspecies of Homo, distinct from sapiens. But how different are we, given that we speak the same languages, read the same books, and give our children the same names? We decided that mites are not merely descended from humans; we ARE humans.
Most humans who lived before the Anthropocene extinction would want their own little tribe to emerge victorious as the last one standing after all others were destroyed in an epic struggle. They would fling the book if they saw a picture of a mite that didn’t look like themselves.
Mites made the same mistake, thinking our tribe only includes people who look like us and share a common culture.
But expand the notion of the tribe to include the entire human family and the picture changes. Our story is not about Earth after humans but about adapting and moving forward. The blood of all humans who lived before us is in our veins. They are alive in us, and we are them. We kept their line alive.
We won’t restore humans to their original configuration only to find them killing each other over a scrap of land. The warriors’ survival adaptation doesn’t work now, and ours does. But it is a mistake to think warriors lost and mites won. We are all copies of the same basic animal with the same potential behaviors. By mites representing all humans who came before and surviving on their behalf, we have all won together.
We now stand at a new threshold. We took control of our own evolution and changed our nature from warriors to who we are today. We built a society that is warm, honest, fair, and free. We survived the Great Extinction when few other living things did. And then we turned the desolate biosphere into a genetically-engineered garden. In the history of Earth, all of this is new.
The future from here is uncertain, but we will probably tackle it as we always have — with vision, courage, and dedication.
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Copyright (c) 2024 by Don Knight
There was a second reason, though. Earth had already begun a mass extinction. The genomic information once carried in living things was preserved as data in laser etchings in glass. The scientists knew that one day there might be an opportunity to reseed Earth's biosphere from those slabs of glass. Mites are now conducting just such a restoration, as described here. We have become stewards of the world's living things.
It was suggested that we restore humans too. The idea was roundly unpopular, but it set us thinking. We have identified ourselves as a separate subspecies of Homo, distinct from sapiens. But how different are we, given that we speak the same languages, read the same books, and give our children the same names? We decided that mites are not merely descended from humans; we ARE humans.
Most humans who lived before the Anthropocene extinction would want their own little tribe to emerge victorious as the last one standing after all others were destroyed in an epic struggle. They would fling the book if they saw a picture of a mite that didn’t look like themselves.
Mites made the same mistake, thinking our tribe only includes people who look like us and share a common culture.
But expand the notion of the tribe to include the entire human family and the picture changes. Our story is not about Earth after humans but about adapting and moving forward. The blood of all humans who lived before us is in our veins. They are alive in us, and we are them. We kept their line alive.
We won’t restore humans to their original configuration only to find them killing each other over a scrap of land. The warriors’ survival adaptation doesn’t work now, and ours does. But it is a mistake to think warriors lost and mites won. We are all copies of the same basic animal with the same potential behaviors. By mites representing all humans who came before and surviving on their behalf, we have all won together.
We now stand at a new threshold. We took control of our own evolution and changed our nature from warriors to who we are today. We built a society that is warm, honest, fair, and free. We survived the Great Extinction when few other living things did. And then we turned the desolate biosphere into a genetically-engineered garden. In the history of Earth, all of this is new.
The future from here is uncertain, but we will probably tackle it as we always have — with vision, courage, and dedication.
Home | Creation Story | Warriors | Honesty | Limits | Class | Gender | Religion | Sexuality | Countries | Stewardship | Author | Contact
More: Multi-targeted Breeding | Founder's Program | Food | Energy | Justice | Eugenics | Possessions | End of Life | Restoring the Biosphere
Copyright (c) 2024 by Don Knight