“A worm? A worm? You think I’m related to a worm.”
“Well, Ikaria is pretty old and it has what you have, a head on one end and a butt on the other with a body that is bilaterally symmetrical along its length.* Yeah, I’d say you started out as a worm, well, if not you, then your kind, the animals, I mean.”
“Insulting! I’m a sophisticated organism whose kind has conquered the planet. Surely, we humans, nay, all animals, can trace the origin of our ‘animalness’ to some more complex creature.”
“No, Ikaria is it, at least as far as we know. Then, of course, along came Myllokunmingia, maybe the earliest vertebrate and Haikouichthys, both with notochords and simple vertebrate body styles.” **
“Okay, I get it. My ancient ancestors appear to have been rather common worm-like creatures. So, what?”
“Humble roots, my man, humble roots. And a connection to life-forms of all kinds. And here we are, wanting to assert ourselves as individuals, and the moment a pandemic comes along, we realize that ‘Hey. We’re all human; we’re all related. We’re all capable of passing along a virus or bacterium because we generally are susceptible to the same kinds of illnesses as a consequence of being related.’ There’s no getting around it.”
“Yeah. I suppose I see your point. You gonna make another?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That because we see a deep relationship among all humans, living and dead, maybe we should realize that we aren’t as ‘individual’ as we think we are in our hubris. Maybe our humble roots alone, and not some pandemic, should be enough to warrant practiced humility and compassionate relationships. Maybe the common roots give us a sense that we’re all in this together, even when we are separate--and especially when we are separated.”
“Couldn’t have said it better.”
*Evans, Scott D. Ian V Hughes, James G. Gehling, and Mary L. Droser. 23 Mar 2020. Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia. PNAS, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001045117 Online at https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/03/17/2001045117
And, Phys.org. Ancestor of all animals identified in Australian fossils. 23 Mar 2020 online at https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancestor-animals-australian-fossils.html Accessed March 24, 2020.
**Wikipedia. Myllokunmingia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myllokunmingia A good enough overview of the critter. You could, if you so desire, also look up Haikouchthys ercaicunensis. I’m not trying to make you a paleontologist, just an advanced form of vertebrate whose knot of neurons understands that humans, for all their differences, aren’t fundamentally very different and that little makes this point more clear than a pandemic.
“Well, Ikaria is pretty old and it has what you have, a head on one end and a butt on the other with a body that is bilaterally symmetrical along its length.* Yeah, I’d say you started out as a worm, well, if not you, then your kind, the animals, I mean.”
“Insulting! I’m a sophisticated organism whose kind has conquered the planet. Surely, we humans, nay, all animals, can trace the origin of our ‘animalness’ to some more complex creature.”
“No, Ikaria is it, at least as far as we know. Then, of course, along came Myllokunmingia, maybe the earliest vertebrate and Haikouichthys, both with notochords and simple vertebrate body styles.” **
“Okay, I get it. My ancient ancestors appear to have been rather common worm-like creatures. So, what?”
“Humble roots, my man, humble roots. And a connection to life-forms of all kinds. And here we are, wanting to assert ourselves as individuals, and the moment a pandemic comes along, we realize that ‘Hey. We’re all human; we’re all related. We’re all capable of passing along a virus or bacterium because we generally are susceptible to the same kinds of illnesses as a consequence of being related.’ There’s no getting around it.”
“Yeah. I suppose I see your point. You gonna make another?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That because we see a deep relationship among all humans, living and dead, maybe we should realize that we aren’t as ‘individual’ as we think we are in our hubris. Maybe our humble roots alone, and not some pandemic, should be enough to warrant practiced humility and compassionate relationships. Maybe the common roots give us a sense that we’re all in this together, even when we are separate--and especially when we are separated.”
“Couldn’t have said it better.”
*Evans, Scott D. Ian V Hughes, James G. Gehling, and Mary L. Droser. 23 Mar 2020. Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia. PNAS, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001045117 Online at https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/03/17/2001045117
And, Phys.org. Ancestor of all animals identified in Australian fossils. 23 Mar 2020 online at https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancestor-animals-australian-fossils.html Accessed March 24, 2020.
**Wikipedia. Myllokunmingia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myllokunmingia A good enough overview of the critter. You could, if you so desire, also look up Haikouchthys ercaicunensis. I’m not trying to make you a paleontologist, just an advanced form of vertebrate whose knot of neurons understands that humans, for all their differences, aren’t fundamentally very different and that little makes this point more clear than a pandemic.
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