Why Everyone Matters

Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man 

© 2010 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved.

Beginning with the first little wiggle in the ocean and going to the very stars, the only path from your ancestors to your descendants runs through you. So if you want to play in traffic, for your family’s sake, at least wait until after you have reproduced, or all that have come and gone before you will have done so in vain. For you, and you alone, carry a unique message encoded in your genes, one-half of a blueprint for future individuals of your kind, and, within some range of environmental limits, a wealth of contingency plans. Evolution is a relay race, and a slowly-morphing baton is passed from generation to generation by individuals.

Within the bounds set by their individual (and so-far mysterious) mating decisions. a large variety of genetic combinations are tried. Occasionally, an advantageous combination comes to predominate within a family line and the dis-advantaged trait falls by the way.

Just as they have for the whole of history, the descendants produced of such individual decisions that may carry any advantageous trait, will prove better adapted to prosper through whatever lies ahead, and prevail, reproductively. It’s why we’re ALL shaped just like this, within just this range of variability. By hook or by crook, blueprints containing just these traits out-survived and then out-reproduced all others offered. Any trait that inhibited that, passed into history with the individuals whose genetic messages included them.

As the environmental conditions and unintended consequences ahead of us may be unknowable in the longer run, and as any given line is just as likely as any other line to be among those best suited to whatever conditions have by then unfolded, any message at all may turn out to be precious to our human future, and all are therefor equally priceless beyond all measure, completely irreplaceable; and therefor so is each messenger. for from an individual, a trait may radiate globally. It would be a shame to lose for all time the specific message that you carry to a moment of cruelty, carelessness or recklessness. Think about tomorrow and stay out of traffic, metaphorically speaking. And just as it would be a shame to lose the genetic message only you carry, so, too, any message, and therefor any messenger.

A paradox lies in that, while no message is replaceable, none is indispensable. The planet cares not a whit how well-suited any species is to the changing conditions it presents at any given time, and will reward with continuity whoever and whatever shows up to pass along their messages most prolifically.

Genetically, there is no other measure. Ask any Neanderthal, he’ll tell you the same thing: “I wish somebody hadn’t played in traffic…”

But it is not apparent who that somebody was, even after the fact, let alone in advance, so the lesson of the extinct is: be careful, and take care for the children, all of them. We can best do that by ensuring our habitat remains within the environmental range that our blueprints specify. Exceed those, and we void all warranties, and can take a seat beside the Neanderthals.

That seems obvious enough, yet we are failing to do that, for reasons that escape my limited comprehension. By knowingly and unnecessarily heating our atmosphere, we are playing in traffic, indeed, and about to settle for the remaining versions of the human blueprint that best handle wide climate swings, drought, famine, dehydration, pestilence and civil unrest. Any other conclusion is arguing with simple arithmetic, and must be discounted accordingly. Even if it preserves short-term financial profit for some, it is longer-term suicide... for all.