Evolution and Organization (or Merging Again)

We all evolved from the microbial world; our ancestors are bacterial. I'm thinking again of the ideas of symbiosis, planetary integrity, merging with more complex networks, and our incredibly destructive human hubris. In Lynn Margulis' book Symbiotic Planet [A New Look at Evolution], she writes: "There are no 'higher' beings, no 'lower animals,' no angels, and no gods . . . Even the 'higher' primates, the monkeys and apes...are not higher. We Homo sapiens sapiens and our primate relations are not special, just recent: we are newcomers on the evolutionary stage." In other words, we need to reconnect with and respect our origins and understand (at a much deeper cognitive and visceral level) how our short-term actions and self-centred needs impact the environment, all ecostystems, the globe, and life generally. We newcomers are very dangerous children.

Margulis also notes: "The tendency of 'independent' life is to bind together and reemerge in a new wholeness at a higher, larger level of organization. I suspect that the near future of Homo sapiens as a species requires our reorientation toward the fusions and mergers of the planetmates that have preceded us in the microcosm." I'm still waiting for us to show signs of our potential to reach this higher wholeness, since we so frequently seem to be stalled in self-destruct mode. We are painfully slow to wake up to our failures. let alone compensate for them.