Recently, I read an article in The Guardian by George Monbiot about some of the implications of Darwinism, for example that according to the theory of evolution, life has no purpose, and how this may be disconcerting for many people. This is not what I want to talk about, however. Instead, a couple of the passages, which are in fact a reiteration of a common theme among evolutionary theorists and many a layman as well, struck me as a bit curious. The passages were these:
Darwinian evolution tells us that we are incipient compost: assemblages of complex molecules that - for no greater purpose than to secure sources of energy against competing claims - have developed the ability to speculate. After a few score years, the molecules disaggregate and return whence they came. Period.
As a gardener and ecologist, I find this oddly comforting. I like the idea of literal reincarnation: that the molecules of which I am composed will, once I have rotted, be incorporated into other organisms. Bits of me will be pushing through the growing tips of trees, will creep over them as caterpillars, will hunt those caterpillars as birds. When I die, I'd like to be buried in a fashion which ensures that no part of me is wasted. Then I can claim to have been of some use after all.
While I understand that this is meant to describe how one can find solace in a purely materialistic world, I'm struck by the fact that essentially all the versions of the above passage always go in the same direction: first, you have "me" or "you" - the human being, who then dies and is re-used by various other organisms. In this manner, the human being begets other life forms, and is, in a certain sense, a basis for them.
But for some reason, you never hear the opposite: that before you, there have been life forms roaming around and then dying, and parts of them have reassembled to form you. Every human being is composed of atoms and molecules that were previously parts of other life forms, including other humans. Why is this part never emphasized?
For one thing, there is of course the matter that this is not particularly comforting. Yet there may be something else as well, for if you claim that other organisms come from you, you can remain as the basis, as the foundation for further life. The exalted position of human beings remains: you may not live forever yourself, but you now beget new life! But to admit that you yourself are composed of parts of other beings, you are no longer a foundation, and you form a starting point for new life in a much more mundane and irrelevant fashion, since the bits that made you previously made, with no reservations whatsoever, other life forms, and will go on creating yet more life, with you not being a foundation or base, but just a random, accidental moment in the unstoppable stream of life.
To use the rhetoric of “my molecules are incorporated into other organisms” is to retain the important role and position of humans in nature’s scheme. To admit that the molecules of other organisms were incorporated into you, and next will be incorporated into something else, is once again to dethrone human beings from a position of importance. The claim that "Bits of me will be pushing through the growing tips of trees, will creep over them as caterpillars, will hunt those caterpillars as birds" is rhetoric with a purpose of retaining a position of importance and relevance for human beings in the universe. For it's not really bits of "you" or mr. Monbiot crawling around as catepillars. It would be equally accurate to say that roaming catepillars perhaps now form a part of me and you and mr. Monbiot and perhaps in a sense wrote his article!
Finally, it should be noted that there is an error in the passages quoted. It has been estimated that all the atoms composing an individual human being are completely replaced during an approximately seven year period. You don't have to die for your molecules to be passed on. Seven years from this moment on, not a single atom that comprises you at this moment will be part of you then. This means that not only are we constantly in the process of becoming catepillars or birds or trees, but that bits of catepillars and birds and trees are constantly in the process of becoming us! And as far as our environment is concerned, it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference, if a particular molecule is part of me, you or mr. Monbiot. The fact of the matter is: we do not become new organisms who then inhabit the environment. Instead, the environment becomes us.
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