Nature and Dharma

A Master's View

                        Shan jian

NATURE, DHARMA AND INFERIORITY

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.

~Alan C. Kay

SOUNDS OF DELIGHTFUL FREEDOM

I awoke this morning to the sound of a nightingale, the Old World flycatcher, which  also sings goodbye to the falling sun. They come every year at this time from North Africa, their magnificent melodies, their loud whistling crescendo, filling the woods with a special greeting.

Then a strange thought came to me. Was it their music that enchanted me really, or was there something deeper?  If there had been a human creature out there in the woods I might have been delighted, even grateful, but I would not have been touched in the same way. Why?

The answer came quickly.

The male calls, a mixture of an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles, were natural and spontaneous and came from a creature that was complete in every way, doing what a nightingale’s true nature told him to do.

It was that music which stemmed from his true nature that touched me, not the music in and of itself.

Why would that touch me so?  Because that nightingale was free and I and no human creature today in this world can express that freedom with such glorious natural expression. We are not free.

Are creatures that fly and those that creep beneath the earth the only living creatures that are truly free, their destruction pending at any moment, while we encroach upon their lives and liberty? Eventually we will succeed in destroying this planet, before perhaps moving on to another.

Yes, even within a large wooded area, the animals here are not free. Here we live accompanied by six dogs and they are not free. They are not free to run where they will and hunt and play. No, they are restrained within what is called our property.

They are contained so that they will bother no neighbors. The presence of any animal which encroaches the space of the human creature must be dominated and controlled or sacrificed. I, for one, don’t like living in a world where nature is not free to act without human approval. I am comforted with the certain knowledge that mankind will eventually perish by its own hand and that nature will again hold its sovereign place.

Yet while the nightingale sings and the dogs run and the wild boar visit, digging their earth baths, and while all manner of other creatures pay their respect to mother earth, I can touch in their presence, just for a moment, a glimpse of what the human creature has thrown away.

KINDNESS KILLS

Living in a wooded area next to a forest reserve, blighted only by man’s insatiable desire for roads for his mechanical beasts and pylons to carry his thirst for electricity, we nonetheless frequently see a number of foxes.

They live not far away and though they only cross alone in front of the house occasionally, one can easily imagine young litters playing and running among rocks and brush. Foxes and vixen, old and young are certainly there, all quite beautiful.

On one point all appears clear. While human creatures live in a world where vision is of primary importance, foxes do not. We know that they are basically nocturnal animals and that their eyes are accustomed to night vision, rather like a cat’s, but a fox has no true macula and is unable to focus on a stationary target for more than a few seconds. So if we are quite, quite still, we can watch them.

However, they are capable of picking up the slightest movement far quicker than a cat and their sense of smell is phenomenal. A fox is equipped to smell and discriminate almost everything. It can detect the different states of water, differences in earth, grass, shrubs, trees, and all at a distance. All depends, however on the movement of air. A slight breeze is enough. That is why it almost always moves upwind on important forays.

One surprising thing is that it needs a moist nose in order to detect wind direction. Do you remember as a child, how you moistened your finger and held it up to the wind to discover the wind direction? The fox is essentially using the same system.

In fact, it is supersensitive, being far more refined than a dog. They can make the noise of an injured bird to snare the mother and can even climb some trees. Remarkable creatures, yet we seem to either ignore them or hunt them.

However, there is one great danger when it comes to trying to help them.

A neighbor who is enamored of animals sets out food for them every morning and they come singly from their lairs to pick up the tasty morsels of chicken and grain.

Yet we must examine this kindness. Gradually, what these kind people are doing is setting up a new hunting pattern in which the new generations do not have to use the old hunting skills. They are making it too easy for the foxes.

In bad weather, when hunting is difficult for birds and the like, we can scatter crumbs about which they must find or go hungry. This is a form of acting so as not to debilitate natural aptitude.

There is an important lesson here for us to learn, not only in respect to these precious animals and all other natural creatures, but in our own social comportment. We are making life just too easy and too convenient.

Where is the child that makes his own tanks from matchsticks and cotton reels? Where is the child who uses a dustbin lid as a battle shield or makes his own bow and arrows and catapults?

Where is the child that, with his or her mother, makes the Halloween costumes and Christmas decorations?

Kindness and folly is killing our imaginations and much more.

Kindness can kill.

DYING DHARMA:

 WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE

Walking out in the wooded area this morning, much slower than normal (much akin to Chan walking meditation), making frequent pauses, I suddenly spotted a flower that I had not seen since living in Ibiza. It was small, almost insignificant with respect to the plethora of other wild flowers all around. It was a wild bee orchid.

Carefully looking around, I found another, then another. In fact there were about ten growing in an area of about twelve feet.

The presence of wild orchids is a good indicator of a healthy ecosystem, as they are  highly evolved plants. Even small disturbances of the habitat can have a huge effect. These bee orchids, with protection, live about five years.

The first response was to protect them, so I marked off the area with stones, for saving them and the entire habitat is essential.

Our eight acres with very high biodiversity and endemism (presence of species that occur nowhere else) is our first priority.

Ex situ conservation is possible. but we have no facilities at the moment.

Anyway, I took a good look at this bioiversity that we have and realized that we have a magnificent array of what are termed “wild flowers”.

“How strange, ” I thought, “that the word wild means “untrained and uncultivated” and also “savage”  for there is nothing savage about any wild flower except their tenaciity in survival”.

Then I considered the human creature and realized that we are trained and cultivated, yet the term “savage” really applies to us as devastators of nature.

These wild plants in plentitude do not “fight” for survival, they “seek” survival through the soil, the water, and the sun. They grow together without the jealousy, hatred and greed of the human mind. How wonderful they are.

Over seventy years ago I used to walk in the woods of Devon in similar circumatances and delighted in picking wildflowers to take home to my mother. Now I know that we have gone too far and that wild flowers are slowly being decimated. The woods, once full of wild creatures and wild flowers, are falling under the axe and my holy place “Stag Lodge”

has given way to cement and steel.

Where have all the flowers gone… long time passing.

Today I don’t pick flowers and, although flowers are available in florists, I don’t buy them. Oh, they are cultivated for a sort of plastic beauty, OK, but they fail to show (although they do possess it) the “true nature of the Life Force”.

I thought about those florists and realized that people do buy those beautiful cultivated flowers and display them in their pretty cardboard square houses or give them as gifts of love and caring. How strange that a flower that has been cut so that it has a premature death should serve as a message of what is called “love”.

People do not give plastic flower imitations as gifts, athough they do buy them for themselves, for they can decorate with them, using them without giving much thought to them, because they do not die. Still, they prefer the natural beauty of cultivated flowers.

Why? Because they know that they are natural. How strange that knowing that they are natural, they still end their short existence by picking them.

One day perhaps, when all the flowers have not gone to graveyards… every one… the world will be a better place.

      HOW STRANGE THE HUMAN STAINED MIND IS.

The jaguar is the largest feline in the Americas and jaguar territory ranges from the southwestern United States to Argentina, one of the most extensive distributions of any feline species. The fragmentation of habitat through human development is one of the biggest threats to jaguars, isolating populations and preventing genetic exchange between them.

Large predators are forced to live within those islands and then become endangered through loss of habitat and genetic diversity.

Now that is interesting, because when we look at these jaguars there is great migration from one part o another in nature and it takes the form of long corridors which form complex networks.

The species was placed in reserves, but still they could not survive without that diversity. Fortunately, on a positive note, with pressure from conservation groups, seven nations of Central America and Mexico have formed a network of selected protected areas and wildlife corridors have been established to safeguard the jaguar population and coincidentally all other wildlife within.

That means an increase in the existing corridors which were established in 1990 as the "Paseo Pantera" and again in 1997, with multi-national support, as the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.

The objective was to balance human needs, sustainable development, and conservation of some of the earth’s greatest biodiversity.

This is a laudatory plan, yet insufficient for the thousands of other species threatened. Still it points out one interesting thing about the human creature’s strange behaviour.

It is clear that he recognizes the need for animal bio-diversity and complete freedom of movement in space, unrestricted by politics and economic considerations and yet he is unable to see that the human creature itself has allowed itself to be entrapped amidst identical fragmentation of habitat, isolating populations and preventing genetic exchange.

He even makes laws and boundaries between nations that prevent free access to resources and create false identities based upon artificial boundaries. His wars are fought over these islands that he has created.

Are not human creatures by folly, commerce and conditioning of their own minds that accept these laws really denied those same biological necessities?

It is strange too that these very laws and fear of the movement over their borders has generated the idea of creating a great wall across the Mexican border.

How strange, because that would effectively seal off the jaguars of North America from all of South America.

How strange the human mind stained by Identity is.

SEEING THROUGH MY EYES

Among the mammals, this is my favorite creature. We call it an orangutan, but that is only a name. I remember a film called "Cabaret" in which a comedian was singing about his being in love with a gorilla and, with regard to the perceived hostility, the song was called, “If you could see her through my eyes.”

More profound than it seems at first hearing, for if you could see this animal as I see it, in fact like I see all non-human animals, then you too would feel the awe, the rapture, the bliss, the well-being, the gladness, the compassion and the benevolent affect for all.

It’s not strange really when I consider that I share more than 98 percent of my genes with the great apes. I’m a cousin of the orangutan, the gorilla, the chimpanzee and the bonobo.

Yes the bonobo, perhaps the closest cousin we have. Not too different from us, really.

Why do I feel this affect, this oneness with them?

At first I considered it an admiration for their skill and prowess and even their beauty. But that was not it. I discovered it first years ago with the curator of Mammalia at the Zoo during classes of comparative animal psychology when I was a student at the State University in San Diego.

It was not the orangutan that captured me; it was the spider monkey. On looking back, I saw them playing, swinging about with such dexterity and what captured me was their innocence.

They were playing with such momentary well-being in a cage. They were glad, not with human stained Identity gladness, but with a gladness which was natural. As a result I was glad. That was the key, you see, being glad that another creature was glad.

We have five Sharpeis now and a Doberman, and I capture that innocence even when they do things that cause social problems.

Why is that innocence appealing? Because I didn’t have it. The human creature doesn’t have it. We lost it long ago when Identity began its reign and we were separated from every other living creature by a dual thinking mind.

They are our cousins, these orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Of course these great apes are not monkeys. That should please the proud human isolationists. But it only means that apes are usually larger and heavier than monkeys, with a broad chest and upright body posture that allows them, like humans, to walk on two legs. Apart from that they have no tail and rely like the human upon vision more than smell.

Finally, of course, they have a large brain-to-body size ratio compared with other animals that we consider lowly.

But what about this bonobo? What is it? Well, it is rather like a chimpanzee but smaller and, like the orangutan, looks rather human. It is more.

Looking kind of human-like, the bonobo is more slender and graceful than the common chimp, having slim upper bodies, narrow shoulders, thin necks, and long legs. Its head is smaller and well formed with pink lips, small ears, wide nostrils, and long hair. The females have slightly prominent breasts in contrast to the flat breasts of other female apes.

In fact, they have behaviour which we would term, with our human wisdom, altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness, patience and sensitivity. However, knowing that they do not have a consciousness of Identity separated from every other creature, these acts are not cognitive and therefore, from my point of view, reflect what is hidden inside the human creature that he is now unable to reach without deep contemplation. Our altruism, compassion, empathy and kindness are mental and tainted.

Perhaps it is good that they don’t speak, for that was our biological turning-point, allowing Identity to step in and bring us to this civilized point. However, they are aware of self (that has nothing to do with Identity awareness) for they pass the mirror-recognition test for self-awareness.

Yet although we can indeed teach them to understand our words and actually type using symbols, they have never lost that innocence.

When Identity comes in, innocence is lost. Yet it is clear that the human creature respects little and particularly not innocence... the innocence of the legendary Adam and Eve... and today there are less than 10,000 bonobos in existence. They are an endangered species.

So I continue with my gladness and they with their innocence and continue writing in the hope that those with sympathy for the cause of animal life will look even deeper and awaken their own innocence and allow their clinging and craving identity to fall away.

MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

We all know the rest of the phrase, “Who is the fairest of them all?” We are told that Snow White was. That brought Snow White up to that place where we knew she was the best, for it would never do that the queen was more beautiful.  She could be beautiful inside, but that wouldn’t count, would it?

Of course the seven dwarves had to be beautiful-ugly and the wicked witch ugly-ugly. That is the world we build and the world we judge. Cockroaches are ugly… kittens are beautiful… how strange.  Yet we say it as if we really believed it, that beauty is only skin-deep. What are we judging then… lungs, kidneys… gonads? No it is something intangible.

Aesthetically pleasing? That is skin-deep, so we must be referring to “delighting the senses” or “exciting intellectual or emotional admiration”.  That can’t be it.

We really mean that there is something that words cannot express, that generates an awe that is uncommon.

If you have had the good fortune to be associated with animals, then you will sense at least that beauty that goes beyond words. It is synonymous with the natural expression of the Life Force. If you have not experienced that, then you have sown the seeds of your own life on barren ground.

But there’s still time.

Remember that that Life Force is the same as the one you possess. Strange, is it not, that you have been alive for so long, knowing that you are alive, but have never seen that Life Force.

Look in a mirror, any mirror, and see yourself in a way that is not Identity stained. Do you see your Life Force beyond what you sense with your eyes?  PROBABLY NOT. Okay, do you get the message?

Throw out the mirror and look at Nature. See the Life Force growing and falling away. You are seeing your own reflection and, if you cannot sense with awe what is within yourself, go back to the mirror and your suffering.

DANGEROUS MOUNTAINS

I have often spoken of the true appreciation of nature and what that can tell us about the human creatures attitudes, intentions and actions and it is clear that the human creature comes of second-best on every count.

Yesterday, the first of May, I turned the corner with artificial intelligence and began by giving Dharma impressions of various direct aspects of human behavior that can be labeled kindly as absurd.

The photo above shows Siula Grande a mountain of the Cordillera Huayhuash, in the Peruvian Andes. It rises to an altitude of 6,344 meters.

It is one of the ten mountains that are considered the most dangerous.

Now that is a strange designation, is it not? The idea is that it is dangerous for human creatures, for I doubt that mountain goats feel threatened by its presence. In fact, I doubt that a mountain goat would be intrigued with the idea of climbing to the top.

Is it that mountain goats have greater appreciation for correct behavior? For it is not at any point, as far as I can tell , interested in being the first to climb any mountain, with or without horns, climbing backwards or any other foolishness that has little utility for its survival.

It is not interested in climbing this or any other mountain because it is there. It is not interested in climbing this or other mountain to prove anything, and as far as television and media coverage is concerned, I doubt that the highest-climbing mountain goat would be news at all.

Similarly I doubt that there would be little attempt to risk lives sending a rescue party for a goat trapped in snow who had lost its way or had fallen in a crevice.

Female goats, I feel, also have little interest in being the first of the goat distaff side to make the top.

Is it then that the human creature climbs these peaks because they are dangerous. Wait a minute. What does that mean?

Do mountain climbers know something that we don’t know in terming these mountains dangerous? Is the human race in danger from an imminent attack by mountains? Will they descend upon us?  Is there a possibility that a great mountain will just fall down upon us because it wants to see how low it can get?

I think not.

So why are they dangerous?

They do not threaten great harm.

Is it then that they are called dangerous by those who wish to put their lives in danger? If that is so, then we would better call them Dangerous Climbers, for not only do they put themselves in danger as they wish to overcome that danger, but they cause great danger to those who occasionally must rescue them.

I wonder if there would be some sort of thrill in shaving with a rusty razor blade or racing in front of a Formula-1 car. For some I suppose there might be, but fame and fortune do not accompany these acts and no one would buy a book entitled,  “I shaved with the ten top brands of rusty razor blades.”

Fame is not that easy to get.

Certainly the climbing genre will conclude that I have not understood them or worse, but I understand them too well.

Give me those creatures who live within their limits of survival as part of Nature without any objectives of conquering it.

Sadly the Alpine bear and the mountain wolves have disappeared. I wonder if somehow I have misjudged and that they have been devoured by a dangerous mountain or perhaps it is that they are extinct because of the presence and demands of “non-dangerous” human creatures with “non-dangerous arms” and “non-dangerous minds.”

It is good that the mountain Lynx has been reintroduced to the Alps in small numbers, and the Red and Roe deer as well as the Chamois still abound in the lower reaches.

I would rather keep my admiration for those and the small carnivores such as the Red Fox, Badger, Pine Marten, or Stoat that live in the lower forested areas, not to speak of  the Common and Nose-Horned Viper, the  lizards, frogs, toads, newts and salamanders.

Of course, the birds range upon the upper reaches of these dangerous mountains and I feel that they hold no fear, for the mountains are their home and they never certainly go higher than their nature dictates.

Now that is an interesting point. Does the human creature call a mountain dangerous because it is not easily conquered? Is his human nature such that he must live on the edge of danger so that he feels alive?

Does he need to see the majesty of a mountain from its summit and cannot see it from below? Or is it the thrill of conquering what is dangerous that is his ego aim.?

Perhaps that is why man hunts dangerous animals, although I doubt that the rabbit can be considered dangerous.

Perhaps indeed that peak mountain-view allows these climbers to appreciate Nature and eliminate their tawdry lives for a moment.

It is a pity that they must label the mountain 'dangerous' to achieve that, for I assure them that the beautiful Alpenapollo butterfly, now very rare, the magnificaent Alpine Long-Horned Beetle and the Burnet Moth which they may have passed on the way up could have brought them as close to Nature as they would wish to get.

I admit that I must be confused, for I cannot understand why so many human creatures seek to understand Nature by looking outside, for they can best understand it by looking inside.

I seem to have led myself astray, for my aim was to talk about Dangerous Mountains, but though I searched I couldn’t find one that really threatened any living thing, though I find many human creatures who are threatened by just being alive.

THE RIGHT TO LIFE QUESTION

As we know, the Life Force is directed at survival, not of an individual species, but of life in general, in and of itself.

Although it has no impulse to retain any particular form which we may call a species, there are some living creatures with an imposing history of natural survival.

The oldest living animal species on earth that we have discovered at the moment is the horseshoe crab, which has at least been around for 445 million years in a minimally changed condition. That has to be a great success story, because the great Tyrannosaurus rex lived for only about three million years and is of course now extinct. This seems to suggest that the biggest is not always the best.

Actually, the horseshoe crab is not a crab at all. Evolution-wise is related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions. In fact, their direct descent may have been the sea scorpion, which existed once more than 510 million years ago. A fish, the Coelacanth, is a youngster compared to them, with a mere a 410 million years’ record.

So how has the horseshoe crab managed to succeed? It is most likely because they have an excellently evolved immune system.

When a foreign invader, for example, a bacteria, enters the blood, the immune system goes to work. Using a substance called Limulus Amebocyte Lysate, it detects its presence and clots that particular blood sample.

That seems to point clearly to the fact that nature, without any superior external guidance, can mange to restore the system and preserve its life and thus the Life Force of all horseshoe crabs, as long as we do not eliminate them with the folly of our actions.

A question that arises which I do not pretend to answer is, “Are we humans reducing the true Life Force potential of the human creature by artificial external interruption of the biological processes? Should we be allowing the least fit to die in terms of biological, not social survival?”

Of course the pharmaceutical world would collapse, doctors would collect unemployment benefits or turn to the profession of law, and I can hear the horrified cries of religions and “right to life” (human of course) organizations at even the mention of the topic.

We are, after all, no better than fruit flies in a bottle, reproducing and reproducing, and will do so until the upper limit is reached. But while the fruit fly always continues with reduced numbers to continue life in its bottle, we will undoubtedly break the glass of our world in the vain hope that he human creature will go on and on as the great survivor.

I’m willing to bet on the horseshoe crab and the Coelacanth.

SCIENTIFIC TUNNEL VISION

Science is considered to be a discipline producing solutions in some problem domain and a scientist is supposedly someone who works for that end.

However, sometimes one must wonder if the production of a solution may not be counter-productive, if not absolutely absurd.

Take the case of the simple clam. What is so special about this creature?

Did you know that there are  over 2,000 varieties of clams? There is the hard-shell (Mercenaria mercenaria), and soft-shell (Mya arenaria), but here we wish to speak about the hard shell type that lives in deep water, not tidal flats.

Apart from being eaten since prehistoric times, what is its life like?

Can you imagine simply drifting along or swimming at the mercy of the currents or sitting on the ocean floor simply ingesting?

Clams drift along on the ocean floor, doing nothing more than extend their siphon to suck debris that may contain food off the sandy ground.

It has a thick tan shell, usually egg-shaped, with concentric growth lines on the surface. Its white interior has a deep purple stain surrounding its muscle scar, and its hinge has three white cardinal teeth.

Its natural enemies are few… several species of ray, the Atlantic blue crab and of course, the enemy of all living creatures, including itself, the human creature.

Their life cycle includes a pelagic larval phase, a sedentary benthic juvenile phase and, as an adult, begins as a male with functional male gonads during the first couple of years, often becoming female with greater maturity. Their reproduction method is spawning and female fecundity is high, releasing up to 24 million eggs with each spawning.

Once the clam settles to the bottom, it sinks the siphon into the sand and at the same time secretes chemicals to build a carbonate shell that increases in size as the clam’s internal organs grow.

Now that becomes the interesting part, for like a tree, a cross-section of a hard clam’s shell usually reveals a clam’s age.

Traditionally hard clams live for about 40 years, but occasionally an exception is found.

Now as a scientist you might wonder how old clams can get before being destroyed naturally, and of course you cannot wait for an answer, because you may yourself fade away, others may find the answer before you or you may require tenure and maybe get an ounce of fame.

Patience is not always the virtue of a scientist of folly.

So what do you do when you get a remarkable and very unusual-looking clam with a very dense shell? This is the dilemma.

Do you sacrifice the clam? After all it is only a remarkable “clam”. Or alternatively do you let it live out its life with careful observation so that its final life span can be determined?

Remember that science is considered to be the discipline that produces solutions in some problem domain and a scientist is supposedly someone who works for that end. So if the question is the life potential of the clam, you clearly report the find and let that glorious life continue its development.

If you were bored, you could let it reproduce and even enjoy the fruits of that special clam’s life work if you were not a vegetarian.

Maybe you could open a restaurant while you were waiting or write a book or two on the “sex life” of a clam (probably not a bestseller).

Now we come to the point of demonstrating scientific folly. While dredging the waters north of Iceland, a rather unusual specimen of the clam species, Arctica islandica, was found in waters about 250 feet deep.

With scientific innocence or is it ignorance… or plain careless stupidity… they decided to open it (thus sacrificing the creature) to find out how old it was. Who knows what they were actually thinking?

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings, did they realize how old it had been —between 405 and 410 years old.

This “ex clam” just happened to be more than 406 years old, which makes the common life span insignificant.

To take a living creature and kill it to find out how old it was may be part of scientific discipline, but it fails to answer the question of how long a clam’s life potential might be. Of course, this is a typical error of asking the wrong question.

Okay, we can call it an accident, or was it the foolish ego excitement of discovering a clam that might beat the previous records of 220 years and 374 years?

A spokesman declared, “Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it,” and another declared, “For our work, it’s a bonus, but it wasn’t good for this particular animal.”

If the human creature did not have proof of birth in the form of legal certificates, I wonder if scientists might be tempted to “sacrifice” human creatures to determine how old they had become.

A Nobel Prize I consider doubtful, but the Guinness Book of Records might be interested in mentioning the man who killed the oldest living clam to find out how old they get.

THE EGG AND THE CHICKEN

Today is the day in which those few who remain alive and know me may recall that it is the day in which one is supposed to celebrate one's original birth.

That is all very well, but a good question to ask is what my birth, indeed what any birth, is all about?

I was (and I suppose this mind and body still is in a way ) a psychologist and a biologist. The practice of psychology is the study of "mental processes and behavior," while biology is the study of "living organisms". Well, we know that the be-all-and-end-all of life is Survival. But the question is who is it that survives... The answer is certainly not "Identity" and it is not "consciousness".

Each creature is different, at least in what can be observed and cognizable, although we do know there is really just life in a diversity of forms and that we see ourselves as superior and separate from all other lifeforms. Human vanity and folly, certainly, but there is something that may appear more sinister in all this. Perhaps our life and survival is more mysterious and subtle.. No, I am not wandering in esoteric fantasy, but considering another biological possibility.

Supposing the human life, in fact any life, is not what it appears to be.

Supposing the important elements of life are the sperm and the ovum.

Let's look at that sperm. What is it? It is more than a mere male gamete, which is a mature cell with a haploid set of chromosomes. We might consider it to be a combating chromosome delivery boy, but that sells the sperm short. It is also carrier of a complex cargo of RNA that are probably crucial for the embryo's early development.

It appears then that this delivery boy may be much more important biologically than we are.

What about the egg?

Well, we can say simply that it is a receptive form of the same thing.

Wonderful! Sperm and egg can get together.

Now that is when I ask the important question.... Why?

For the perpetuation of life, certainly.... But whose life?  Not mine or yours or that of any other creature that generates a sperm and an egg or any comparable system.

The target is the life of the sperm and egg. They are the stars, the heroes and heroines in this picture.

Then what are we...? Nothing really.

Our task as apparent individual cellular aggregates is to wander about out here in this ever-changing and hostile world as explorers of the environment in order to gather up and take part in a genetic deme pool, so as to generate a better and more efficient egg and sperm so that better explorers can go out and report back necessary changes ad infinitum.

Now that changes completely our perception of the Identity problem. The Identity of each one of us is out here, far away from the cellular world, gathering information that is completely in error. The rest of the animal world is doing its part but the human creature... oh no. It is only concerned with itself, not the message he or she is supposed to deliver in reproductive procedures to his or her sperm and eggs.

We are generating gradually a message to the silent and secluded sperm and gene that confusion, greed, aversion and a fear of the future is the correct way for the sperm library to be constructed.

We are generating the life-killer genetic base, getting ready to slaughter all the other creatures out there where we should be gathering information and furthermore destroying the environment itself so that the genes will only be sending out misfits that do not survive and in any event collect no information.

Now many may treat this idea as a jest, but for those with a greater vision it as realistic a view of life and its function as any other that has been presented by science.

Samuel Butler, a proponent of this idea, made it quite clear in a simple quotation, "The hen is simply an egg's way of making another egg."