All My Relations

As succinctly stated by Lisa Seachrist Chiu in her book ‘When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish,’ “It’s important to remember that 99.9 percent of human DNA is similar, even between unrelated people – only about one in every twelve hundred DNA bases differs between people. The variation in that last 0.1 percent of human DNA results in visible differences such as hair and eye color and susceptibility to diseases, and the bulk of that variation comes in the form of a single DNA base-pair change.” 1

If you ask me, that makes us related. Part of the same family. OK... I realize that a lot of people will squirm in their seats over this: "Oh, I couldn't be related to thaaaat person!" But, the results are in. The final tally is: less than a tenth of only one degree of difference. That makes us pretty close.

Actually, we're not that different from chimpanzees, who share about 98 percent of the same genes as us humans. OK, a more distant relative, but part of the same Earth family, nonetheless.

We are all brothers and sisters from the same 'hood'. We come from the same turf, Earth.

I don't know what got me onto this relatedness jag, but the degree to which we are part of the same family just shows itself more, the more you look at it. For instance, humans are nourished by a common 'soup' of ideas, experiences, and emotions of a surrounding community. This, from tending to live in large or small groups, and thus inhabiting a cultural milieu. Actually, the 'soup-bowl' has grown to planetary proportions with the advent and development of the world wide web.

Because we are so related in kind, one can pretty easily make a few generalizations about being human. For instance, we tend to fall in love with someone, get into fights with someone (or some group), worry about our neighbors (whether they are the oddball next door or the next tribe up the valley). We listen to each other (or not), speak out about what we are hearing or experiencing (or not), or chose to in some degree, become involved in what is occurring around us.

Actually, it’s hard not to. Now, we not only have access to the thoughts and issues near us, we have vastly broadened the range of people we share thoughts with. We write books. We read books. We hear the news and the banter of opinions and emotions, whether through sound of talking heads on CNN, the local radio, or following the soon to be disappearing thump of the newspaper as its is tossed on the doorstep. With just a click at a computer, a single human has the ability to hear and see events, ideas and emotions from the farthest corners of the world.

Instantly. The ‘cultural milieu’ is rapidly growing.

Pondering these things, since our human variation is so slight, our sharing of information is so wide, and since we come from the same 'hood' (Earth), it would be unsurprising that the cultural, psychological and religio-spiritual manifestations are at their basis, similar as well. These are, after all , the products of remarkably similar, related, humans.

I like to think of human development as being in a kind of species adolescence. We are no longer infants, yet we are pretty clearly (by our behavior) not yet adults. This is a time of rapid and awkward surges of growth. It is uncomfortable. Teens can be difficult to raise, even when they have the most wise and compassionate of parents and supportive community, in which to mature.

Sadly, humanity as our extended family of not-so-distant relations, has forgotten where it came from, and who we are related to. We have been trying to raise ourselves, blindly kicking about, thinking we were alone. In the boisterous enthusiasm of our first adolescent blush of technological and cognitive power, we thought ourselves infallible. Along the way, our mother Earth and our huge family extending everywhere on her was forgotten, passed over in the sparkle of toys like cities, airplanes, televisions and cars. The consequence of forgetting this is... well, just look around.

Sigh...

Regular trash swept in by the tide.

1 (Lisa Seachrist Chiu: When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish: ... and Other Amazing Tales about the Genes in Your Body, Oxford University Press US, 2007. (ISBN 0195327063, 9780195327069)