These are the principles for the development of a complete mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science… Realize that everything connects to everything else.
– Leonardo Da Vinci
When I first read Richard Dawkins’ masterful book The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life and learned how every living organism alive today is descended from the same single-celled organism that lived about 3 billion years ago, my reaction was twofold. Firstly, I was in awe of how interconnected life really is; it helped me see life on Earth as one living interconnected organism, as opposed to separate unrelated entities. My second reaction was “well duh, how else do you think life evolved on this planet?”
Why wasn’t it obvious to me? It wasn’t like I was just learning how to walk. I was 25 years old when I read this, fresh from completing a university degree in physics. So why had I literally never once thought, when I looked at another human (anyone will do), that if we both traced our lineage back, eventually, we would hit a common ancestor, making us cousins, usually several times removed? You can take it further. Look at a dog, a cow, or a dragonfly, if you trace all their lineages back, you will eventually converge on a common ancestor. It works with amoebas. It even works with extinct animals. You and a long-extinct T.rex share a common ancestor — seriously.
Is this supposed to be so obvious that no one bothers to talk about it? Is this not talked about because it goes against religious beliefs? Are most people just completely unaware of this? Or is it not discussed much because it leads to a host of conclusions that expose our own hypocrisies and ethical shortcomings? Allow me to entertain some of these ideas and the implications they hold.
First a proof
To prove that humans are at least descended from the same common ancestor is relatively simple. It does not require scientific evidence, only some simple reasoning and acceptance that parents and children are related. This can be proven using the mathematical trick reductio ad absurdum as described by Dawkins below:
Take our imaginary time machine absurdly far back, say 100 million years, to an age when our ancestors resembled shrews or opossums. Somewhere in the world at that ancient date, at least one of my personal ancestors must have been living, or I wouldn’t be here. Let us call this particular mammal Henry (it happens to be a family name). We seek to prove that if Henry is my ancestor he must be yours too. Imagine, for a moment, the contrary: I am descended from Henry and you are not. For this to be so, your lineage and mine would have to have marched, side by side yet never touching, through 100 million years of evolution to the present, never interbreeding yet ending up at the same evolutionary destination — so alike that your relatives are still capable of interbreeding with mine. This reductio is clearly absurd. If Henry is my ancestor he has to be yours too. If not mine, he cannot be yours.
A formal proof that all living organisms on Earth are descended from the same common ancestor requires in-depth DNA analysis. By all means read up on it, or better yet prove it for yourself scientifically. But for the purposes of this article let’s take it as fact (and it is fact) that every animal, plant, fungi, bacteria, archaea and eukaryote are all directly descended from the exact same single-celled organism that existed in the oceans of Earth over 3 billion years ago.
What does this imply?
You’re inbred? Yup. Unless you define an arbitrary number of generations apart disqualifies a conceiving couple from being considered to have interbred. I won’t get into that here. No matter how you look at it, your parents do indeed share a common ancestor (who was human no less). The same goes for your children. It is inescapable.
But interbreeding is possibly the least interesting implication. I want to go a level deeper. Let’s start by meeting the ancestor of all living beings, our collective great, great, great, great… (many million greats later) grandparent. And here it is:
Living somewhere in the oceans of the early Earth, this lone single-celled organism was the true origin of life on Earth — ancient Earth and modern Earth. Remove this one cell and the butterfly effect takes on a whole new meaning. There, in the oceans, an incredibly important event happened. Division! This cell split in two, replicating itself. Then one or both of these replicas split again, and then again, and again and again. These events may have been separated by hundreds of millions of years — but they did happen — and they happened in precisely the way that led to life as we know it today; all life!
I want to entertain the same question I first had when I thought about this: what was the result of that first division? Was it the same cell replicating itself resulting in two copies of the same cell? Or was there one parent cell and one child cell? Or was the result two children cells rendering the original parent dead?
The first possibility is what I find most exciting, but I’ll go into detail on that near the end of this article as it involves some spiritual leaps of faith that may not resonate with some. For now, let’s entertain the other two possibilities.
Obviously, if the cell division led to either a parent and a child, or two children, that implies that the resultant cells were related in much the same way you are related to your family, either your parents or your siblings. And of course, if you extend this to the entire tree of life, that has resulted in all life currently on Earth, every living being is biologically related.
If that’s not enough to get you to deeply contemplate this I don’t know what would be. Let us see some examples now of how this huge family of life functions and is interdependent with one another.
Clownfish and sea anemones
These two animals share a special bond, and not just in the movie Finding Nemo but in real life too! Clownfish benefit from this relationship by having a safe place to hide from predators; clownfish have a coating on their bodies that protects them from being stung by the anemones. Predators of clownfish don’t have this coating, so they generally stay away.
Anemones benefit from this relationship in a whole host of ways. Clownfish pick-off parasites, and the anemones get a free meal from the clownfish’s feces! Other possible ways clownfish may help anemones is by circulating water around the anemone helping them to oxygenate. And the clownfish’s bright colours help lure in small animals that the anemone feeds on.
Woolly bats and Pitcher Plants
Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants and have a slippery coating around the opening so small animals slip and get trapped inside and then get eaten. But woolly bats actually voluntarily allow themselves to get trapped! Pitcher plants do not eat the bats themselves but do love their feces, (I’m sensing a trend). The bats in turn get a safe place to hide from predators for the night. This happy union of defecation and voluntary imprisonment lasts until the bats have had enough and push their way out to get on with their day (or night, actually!).
Don’t let this take your breath away
Billions of years ago, Earth had very little oxygen and a lot of carbon dioxide. If you travelled back in time to Earth 3 billion years ago, you would suffocate to death almost instantly. But for billions of years, tiny single-celled organisms called cyanobacteria breathed in the carbon dioxide and converted it into oxygen allowing the rest of life to evolve. You now breathe the oxygen given to Earth by these bacteria.
The function the cyanobacteria served is now carried out by their descendants, plants. Every exhale you take is mirrored by an inhale from a plant, and every inhale you take is mirrored by an exhale from a plant. I love this concept! I heard from Tom Chi in a TED Talk which I encourage you to check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPh3c8Sa37M&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
Life from destruction
Destructive processes can sometimes lead to new life and often something even more abundant, than what was there originally, occurs. Here are some ways this can occur:
- Dead trees in a forest decompose and form ecosystems of their own. The rotting wood fertilizes the soil and gives new plants and fungi a place to grow.
- Forest fires crack open seeds that otherwise wouldn’t make it in an old dense forest (e.g., giant sequoias, etc.).
- If an asteroid had not hit Earth 65 million years ago, dinosaurs would probably still be the dominant life form on the planet (I’ll leave it up to you to decide which scenario would have been preferable).
- Muscle hypertrophy. Muscles cannot grow without first undergoing small rips. The act of working out your muscles tears them slightly, and in recovery they grow back stronger.
Why isn’t this taught?
Let’s return to the problem I had earlier, which was: why had I never explicitly understood this concept until I read about it in my 20s? And why wasn’t this taught in school? Is it just so obvious that they don’t bother teaching it? I don’t think so. But even if we assume that it is obvious, for a moment, this has got to be one of the most profound discoveries of modern science. It merits much more than mere mention. The implications are too fascinating, too deep.
Does it go against religious beliefs? Are most people just completely unaware of it? Does learning about it expose certain hypocrisies and ethical shortcomings?
There may be some truth in the above questions, but I believe the main reason why life being interconnected isn’t taught in school (and certainly not contemplated deeply), has to do with the values of society today and of the North American education system. Education is still based on economics. It is a system designed to optimize for economic output rather than human happiness, or wisdom, or free thinking or the thriving of Earth. There likely isn’t much money in spending hours studying the interconnectedness of life. I mean maybe there is, and if that is the case great, but money shouldn’t be the reason why it should be taught and studied.
Why can’t school be more about understanding our interconnectedness with all beings and then, also, connecting our life to the world around us? Why can’t school also be more about thinking for yourself and understanding the beauty of nature? The fact that every lifeform on Earth shares a common ancestor has been scientifically proven. Is that not one of the most beautiful examples demonstrating the beauty of reality and science?
That’s why I’m writing this blog — because I didn’t learn everything I wanted to in school — writing about this helps me. And hopefully it will help others as well (when people other than my family start reading this!).
So let’s continue our holistic understanding of the world together…
How Everything is Connected
Let us push beyond life on Earth (as we understand it) and see how everything in the universe is connected.
Stars form and live over millions or billions of years, under conditions of extreme pressure and heat. The lives of stars more massive than our sun end in supernova explosions that can reach over a billion degrees Celsius and affect an area of the universe several light-years across. Under these conditions any lifeform on Earth would be vaporized instantaneously, yet these are also the only conditions under which it is possible to form the element iron — an essential element to keeping you and all you’re dependent on alive. Every beat of your heart carries iron through your bloodstream — iron that was formed in a massive supernova. In fact, every element in your body (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc.), other than hydrogen and helium, was formed in the hearts of stars.
Furthermore,
- The material that is leftover from dying stars, gas, gets combined with other star remnants. This forms large nebulas that generate new stars.
- The water you depend on was carried to Earth by asteroids that bombarded the young planet over 4 billion years ago.
- The radio signals we send out every day are sent out into space that may be heard by aliens in the distant future.
Imagine how different our world would be if every human contemplated not just the scale of the universe, but the interconnectedness and interdependence of it all. How much suffering could be averted? How much more meaning would people find in their lives? I don’t know exactly, but I’d be willing to bet our world would be unrecognizable.
How far can this be taken?
The function of education is to help students understand the interconnectedness of all life and develop a sense of ecological responsibility.
– Jiddu Krishnamurti, 20th century spiritual teacher
Let us return to the first thought I had of our collective ancestor dividing for the first time. If indeed the first cell division was our cardinal cell’s way of replicating itself, resulting in two copies, then projecting that idea forward to each subsequent generation until present day (a huge cognitive stretch, I know), this may imply on a certain level, that all life on Earth is the same organism that has just been replicating itself over and over again since time immemorial. Some may think this notion is absurd but bear with me.
Spirituality — not strictly organized religion — but spirituality in a more fundamental sense may have something, perhaps everything, to say about this. Spiritual teachings from the Buddha to Krishnamurti describe the entire universe as a single consciousness. This is the notion that not only is everything in the universe connected but that everything in the universe is one and the same. In perhaps a similar way that the cells and organs, all components, in your body work harmoniously together — everything, on a much grander scale, is doing the same thing.
This — a way of understanding spiritual enlightenment — is the deepest, most fundamental truth one can know. I myself am absolutely not enlightened, there are few who are, but I have yet been given a reason to doubt spiritual enlightenment. In fact, the proven tree of life on Earth, being connected as one biological family, only makes this notion of the entire universe being a single consciousness that much more compelling.
This is where I see science and spirituality begin to merge, two traditionally opposite disciplines, rivals, starting to eerily show parallels. Perhaps the whole purpose of humanity, in all its pursuits, is to realize that science and spirituality are not only similar disciplines but complementary, ultimately leading to the same conclusions, that the entirety of existence itself is a single, infinitely intelligent consciousness whose sole purpose is to understand and love itself.
My pursuit of understanding myself and the universe I live in will inevitably lead to deeper spirituality. I am only in my infancy, so I won’t go deeper on this for now. But, at the very least, I hope I have convinced you somewhat of the importance of learning and appreciating how life on Earth is connected at least. No matter what form you happen to take, learning this and thinking deeply about this should be taught to everyone, because it involves everyone and everything.
Allow me to conclude with a quote from Tom Chi’s TED Talk:.
Imagine for a moment you were one of these little organisms two billion years ago (cyanobacteria that gave us oxygen). You might be born, you live a couple weeks, you die and you kind of feel like “nothing really changed. I had no purpose in this life, the world I came to is exactly the same as the world that I left”. But what you wouldn’t have understood is that every breath you took contributed to the possibility of countless lives that came after you. Lives that you would never see; lives that we are all a part of today. And it’s worth thinking that maybe the meaning of our lives are actually not even within the scope of our understanding. Because it is true of every one of these organisms, and it may also be true of us.