WHO ARE YOU? .

Schopenhauer: "We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves to be like other people." ... people, we might add, who are doing the same thing, to try to be like who they think we are!

Hamlet, to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
. . Dust? Who are you? After a set of stock answers that would fill in the blanks on an imagined form, you might finally say, in a 1960's vein, "I am an expression of the universe." A phrase that's almost trite. Throw it away. Yes, it's true, but someone simply said it and you simply heard it. Even to "know" it scientifically is nothing, tho necessary. To understand it is considerable, tho not everything. Move that stuff from the "know about" column to the "understand" column.
. . To feel it, as you could feel the sunset, or to realize that the Earth turns --to feel that in such a way that you could not possibly find words for the feeling-- that is something!
. . The feeling of insignificance as we regard the cosmos . feels good. Why is that? Isn't insignificance a bad feeling?
. . I think it's because we instinctively feel the truth; that we are part of an unimaginably big and complex thing; yet, a thing not outside ourselves; therefore, we can feel proud. There's no "it against us". We know it won't reject us. We generate our own feelings about it. And all we can do is feel about it --it's beyond thinking about. You are part of the Gaia... not as a member is part of a club, but as a hand is part of a human.
. . People have felt that way about the ocean for a long time. But it's simply big. We see only water, and only the surface of it at that. For me, the thing most beautiful in its complexity is a rain forest. But that doesn't mean I'd want to live there, tho some people can do so quite happily. I want the protection it gives my environment --wherever I am.
. . The grandeur of the cosmos is not always benign toward rain forests and other living things. Things happen. The biggest thing happens every 28 million years or so. The last few events apparently weren't as bad (1908, Tunguska, Siberia) but the big one before that was a hammer!
. . There is little doubt left that the dinosaurs were wiped out when Earth was hit by one or a few planetisimals. That was the big opportunity for scurrying little forest things called mammals. That disaster ("bad-star") opened the door for us. It was, essentially, the time when the universe began to make the expression "human".
. . We call that time --65 million years ago-- the K-T boundary. I think that after it, there would've been a mass evolution of many species toward an immediate increase in body-size. Some species probably changed habits between solitary and pack-hunting.
. . (Can this be one trouble with human communication; that we have switched only so recently from pack-hunting, to towns, to be increasingly solitary? . This would be due to our culture, our increase in body-size, and our new hi-tech weapons.)
. . The extinction event shook the Gaian system of life severely, but it survived. It, but not most species in it. The dinosaurs had been extremely successful, but every animal over 10 kilos in weight went extinct. The little survivors quickly evolved into a new balance, though it must have been a chaotic time.
. . With a vast number of ecological niches opened, evolution must've been fast. Shapes, sizes, and functions changed. Most animals got bigger, of course, including the one that would eventually become human. Note that it didn't have to be that way. A lot of luck went into our path.
. . A disastrous change such as the extinction event is happening again now, and obviously... we are the culprits.
. . In technological societies, we've built cities around people. When we destroy nature for our seeming profit, or put up barriers, or distance ourselves, we remove our contact with it. This has already happened for most of the world's people. It then becomes difficult for the people to realize (experience) their place in nature. They have no experience of it. They can't find their place in it any more.
. . Therefore, in destroying nature, or by removing our contact with it, we've destroyed our own identity; our only chance to know who and where we are; like the lost cures from extinct plants, or an orphan who can no longer find his biological parents because... he's burned his papers!
. . We can also call Gaia a meta-symbiosis! I've coined the word to match "endo-symbiosis". Symbiosis means mutual benefit; and meta-symbiosis takes our understanding beyond that of a mere pair of beneficiaries, or of merely local action. In fact, there seems to me to be a continuous scale. At the microscopic end, there is Dr. Margulis' Endo-symbiosis that makes up the parts of our cells. Even further down in scale, genes too can be said to be proteins which are symbiotic with each other.
. . At the "macro/telescopic" (meta-) end is Gaia, a single planet-wide being that consists of cells such as ourselves, (the "individuals" we imagine ourselves to be) and things from viruses to Blue Whales.
. . When a single cell procreates, it is by fission. It can't be said that one is the "mother" and the other is the "daughter". The two cells are equal and each is the original. Likewise, all creatures of the current earth are equal parts of the original cell. Some of us, like humans, are collections of vast numbers of cells.
. . Tho in less direct contact, and in less obvious communication, all these cells still form one body. Gaia. Incredibly, we are in the womb yet! Earth is not "the planet we live on" --it is us, our "meta-self". Those dramatic pictures from space are self-portraits.
. . So we --our physical bodies-- are merely one point on that spectrum; not in individual size between a virus and a whale, but as our species is between micro-creatures being part of our bodies, and our species being part of a larger body. Where we begin and end is not as simple as we always thought. Are the vital bacteria in our gut  part of us? Do they count as an organ of our bodies? Without them, we die, sure as we would without our liver.
. . How about the mitochondria and dozens of other creatures that populate the inside of our every cell? They reproduce every time a cell splits. Formerly free, tiny independent creatures, they now perform vital functions inside our cells.
. . Perhaps a better example: the termite --as we think of "a" termite-- is not one individual, but a dozen to thousands, all of which are necessary to the survival of the whole being. Most of the creatures that total up to "a termite" are organisms in its gut, and bacteria inside those! (really!) Each of what we see as an individual termite is really a colony in itself.
. . Obviously, it can also be said that that termite "individual" (or a Bee) is as truly seen as one cell of a colony. And that colony is really just another level toward the "real" individual. And so forth. So too are we. Finally, the individual is Gaia!
. . Huge as we are, we can look up (in scale) telescopically to see ourselves as cells in Gaia, and down microscopically to see the once-independent micro-organisms in the cells that make up our bodies.
. . Part of your identity is your physical self. The people in history perhaps least acquainted with that part of themselves were the Victorian ladies --the champions of denial.

We are animals. The concept of there being "higher" and "lower" animals is a distinctly Victorian egotism --or back to the Greeks, etc..  And while we may be thought egocentric for putting ourselves on top, there do seem to be reasons. Yet, we may also resist; the top is a lonely place.
. . >The Gaia Society is here to tell you: you are not alone, not isolated, as our traditional culture tends to make us. You are literally part of the biggest picture on all Earth: the "Gaia creature".
. . Three-quarters of animal species can fly. Wow. Probably half the rest can jump more than ten times their length --from a flea to a kangaroo. Poor humans.
. . Humans are unique in many ways. I suppose we could collect a list for other animals too, but this one is interesting.
. . Did you wonder about that "huge size" thing? Yes; we are nearly the largest animals on Earth, just a hair's breadth from the top of the list. There are millions of species that are smaller, but only a dozen or two that are bigger, and we're extincting those fast. We can't breathe or step without destroying vast numbers of simple, microscopic lives.
. . It's interesting; humans must rank as number one --or in the top few percentage points-- in: intelligence, speed, weight, height, and most other categories in this "Olympics of the species". Only our five senses compare poorly.
. . Two curious things among very many that make us unique: over-size brains and genitals, and constant female estrus with sexual receptivity/interest. (The extreme right wing apparently criticizes God for doing that. Curious!)
. . And one more thing: number of lifetime heartbeats --all out of proportion with other animals. For the others, lifetimes are fairly accurately counted in heartbeats. The number --one billion-- is surprisingly similar, from shrews to elephants. Except us. Ours is way higher. The human heart beats 3 Billion times. Were we the same, we'd live only 25 years!
. . Amazing, too, the way we get vitamin D. Our skin sweats stuff that includes precursors to vitamin D, and lets the energy of solar radiation create it; then we reabsorb that part. Clever, eh wot? It's doubtful (to me) that any other animals do that, because no others show skin! The radiation would not penetrate. (I won't count the Mexican Hairless dog or the Naked Mole Rat!)
. . Clothing must've amplified the speed with which northerners got white. (white so the sun could get deeper thru the skin.) The farther north they went, the less sun and the more clothing they would use, so the less vitamin D was made. Finally, it would be a health risk to get far north without some other source.