The Seven Billion Species of Man
As of the moment of this writing, there were currently 7,509,287,532 people alive on the planet. (source: World Odometer). Each of these people include themselves as members of various subgroups, such as Men, Women, Caucasian, Native American, Bipolar, Russian, Spectrum Autistic Syndrome, LGBTQ, Republican, Democratic, Episcopalian, Atheist, USC Alumni, Rotary Club, ISIS, Down’s Syndrome, and others.
Each of these groups has their own collection of stories, which include origin stories (how they came to be), membership stories (who is qualified to be a member), enemy stories (with whom they have fights and why), and stories about why their group is so much better than all the others.
All of these stories are important to the members of those groups. Some stories are so important to those members that they are willing to fight and die for that story. Even those whose stories are to anybody outside the group clearly arbitrary (such as Professional Football Team fans), people get into mortal combat over a bad referee call, with another human being whose only difference is the color of the shirt favored by that team over the other.
Recently there have been many arguments (especially in academic circles) around the questions of ethnicity, sensitivity to other cultures, and offenses (real or imagined) taken by somebody when someone else “appropriates” the others culture, tribe, race, religion, or other group membership. This includes such things as “whitewashing” a dramatic or historical role (e.g. by a person associated with one “race” portraying an historical character of another “race”). These controversies become especially heated when one of the groups has historically been oppressed, attacked, targeted for genocide etc by another group in power.
The tragedy of all these stories, both of the oppression, the suffering, and of the later push-back by the oppressed groups, is that they are all based on stories, as as stories, they are fiction, and as fiction, they are far from the actual reality on the ground, at least to the best that science can discern.
Here is the story that evolutionary science suggests may be a more accurate story about the species we call Man:
| Every single 'Human' born is a mutation, and may even be a brand new species. |
In other words, none of us are the same, and any allegiance to a particular group, religion, ethnicity or other collection of humans is arbitrary, and made up only of stories, nothing more. The earth is not populated with over seven billion humans. It is populated with over seven billion individuals, each a unique experiment of Nature, bearing only incidental similarities in physical, sexual, psychological or other features with others which whom they may share social or familial descendancy.
This is the general perspective I have been gradually coming to embrace. Perhaps it is easier for me, because I have never particularly felt like I belonged to any group, race, or religion. Almost certainly it is also due to what others call “privilege,” in that because of my outward appearance of whiteness, the dominant ethnic group of society in America does not constantly harass or subdue me because of my differences. It is quite possible that I would tell a different story if my skin were a different shade. When under assault, groups of people unite out of self-defense, and have only their shared oppression to bind them together.
And yet, regardless of that fact, the evidence remains that the only story that truly seems to be the case is one, not of races and ethnicities, but of radical individualism, that we are each a member of groups which have only one member in them, and that all other associations are pure fictions, what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. called “Granfalloons“, which are arbitrary and pointless associations that bind people together. To be aware of this absurd situation may seem depressing, but over the years, I have found it to be liberating, and ironically joins me in brotherhood with all other humans, with the great Granfalloon, based on the fact that we are all utterly alone.
And now at the end of this piece, the population has risen to 7,509,296,070 people. I would like to welcome these new 8538 creatures to the earth, and wish them each well in their unique journey through life, and to remind them not to take the stories told to them too seriously.