Shared History

“The cosmos is within us, we’re made of star stuff.  We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” --Carl Sagan

We have a profoundly deep relationship with the cosmos we inhabit.  Literally.  It is a 3.5 billion year shared history, a mutuality, a related existence, a symbiotic occupation.  Our DNA, cells, organs have a relationship with fish and pools of algae, as well as rocks, and are related to the grand "othernesses" of the cosmos at large.  These 'outer' thing's stories are our own brilliant truths.  The things that shape our bodies are the things that have shaped this planet and the entire universe.

Farish Jenkins and Neil Shubin, decades-long colleagues, explored the zoologist and paleontologist/ evolutionary biologist's point of view in finding the relationship to our ancestors (the fish and rocks).  As they have found, we have a shared history. "The sun burns hydrogen. Others stars burn oxygen and carbon.  The fundamental atoms that make our hands, feet, and brains serve as the fuel for stars.  It isn't merely the atoms in our bodies that extend across the far reaches of the universe: molecules that make our bodies are found in space. The building blocks for the proteins and larger molecules that make us--amino acids and nitrates--rain down to Earth in meteorites and lie in the rocky crust of Mars or on the moons of Jupiter.  If our chemical cousins are in the stars, meteors and other heavenly bodies, then clues to our deepest connections to the universe must lie in the sky above our heads."*  These are extraordinary suppositions.  As Sagan indicates above, the cosmos needs to know itself and the universe is its playground to do so.  That each of us and all matter would resonate with the energy of 
itself and other both makes sense and is simultaneously mind boggling.  When we have the occasion to admit we are but grains of sand in a vast desert is also to admit that we are surprisingly unique (see photo image) and related in that uniqueness.

Wholeness; the thrust of our inner and outer cosmology.  This fact is, in all this relatedness which Jenkins and Shubin speak about.  How is it possible we are able to evade this truth on an ongoing and unrelenting basis?  That we speak and act from a lack of relationship to almost anything and everything.  It is so astounding, it almost feels like a joke is being played on humankind.  'You will be placed on this planet in a universe that is made of a complete and perfect cosmological order, but it will appear like it is in utter and complete havoc, practically at all times.  Confusion and misperceptions will reign.  And you will have a time of making sense of it.' And we make sense of it by grappling with the effort of gaining as much control (and power) over what is possible, assuaging the buried terror we have of not understanding, not knowing, not being in relatedness.  It's a good joke, right?!

“Learn how to see.  Realize that everything connects to everything else.” 
 --Leonardo da Vinci

This is not a new concept nor from one scholar's point of view.  This actually is common knowledge (science, art, math, philosophy to mention a few disciplines that have heralded this).  Then, why does it sound so fresh and new and borderline shocking?  Possibly, we are usually so invested in separateness and individuality.  Possibly, we don't view things on a large scale, but from our minuscule point of view, our built in limitedness.  Possibly, it's a frightening notion, our minds can't wrap around it, know it or allow it to impact our being.  I've recognized at times when a huge schema comes along, it can't be received because it is so "other".  It just doesn't fit into our normal understanding of how things work.  What could it mean to include this type of information into our daily life?  How do we/could we integrate it?  How would this mega-relatedness factor impact me if I could take it in?

"Imagine what it would be like if there was no sense of otherness when you were with other people [or material objects]. How would it feel if there was no trace of self-consciousness, and no preoccupation with superiority, competition, fear, mistrust, or unworthiness? Dare to consider, just for a moment, the possibility of being so at ease in the company of others that there was nothing to hide, nothing to defend—only the fear-less transparency of egoless awareness and the ecstatic urgency of the evolutionary impulse. That is what it feels like when we awaken to the Authentic Self, together."

--Andrew Cohen, shared by Richard Siebels 19 August 2012

*The Universe Within: Discovering the Common ... - Amazon.com

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Talks and Publications by Neil Shubin

In a two-part video (part I and part II), Shubin discusses the planning and research that lead up to the discovery of Tiktaalik.

His book, Your Inner Fish, explores the connection between paleontology—in particular, the anatomy of fossil life forms—and present day human anatomy. It delves into the subject of how humans are shaped by their ancestors and what it means for who we are today.