These days, many people evoke the idea of our human “interconnectedness” and revel in the idea of “unity” or “oneness” with everything.  Many have also pondered how we’re all ultimately related to each other, some of us by a few centuries and others by a few millennia. It’s good to recognize this because it explains a lot about life. Some would say it gives us hope of a unified future, where the world is working together towards a common end– like saving humanity.

But the idea of “interconnection” goes so much further than that.

If you look at what actually makes us “human”, our definition needs reconsideration. We have a distinct gene code, and we house 22k different genes that are said to make up the “human genome”. But the truth is that human DNA is 8.3% ancient virus. Said another way, nearly 10% of the genetic code (the “markers” at the genetic level) that make us fully human actually come from viruses– actually are viruses, one of the earliest forms of life on earth. While some consumed each other in those warm ponds as life was beginning to emerge, others attempted to consume rivals and ended up merging with them, retaining their code. New viruses were born that carried the genetic code of multiple other viruses, and inside of our very own DNA you can still find those same early sequences– they’ve been on a very, very long ride, and humans are but one, relatively new vehicle.

But it gets more interesting. The mitochondria of human cells (the source of energy production for all animal cells) actually came from the bacteria that causes typhus. What happened was that one of those typhus bacteria attacked another simple-celled organism at the dawn of life, and instead of taking it over, somehow the mitochondria present in the bacteria cell was able to continue doing its job inside of the attacked cell. And when that cell thrived with the new energy mechanism and later divided, its clone had the mitochondria. And it’s been that way ever since. We’re the new carrier of that material. We’re actually carriers of the mitochondria of typhus bacteria.

Everything we think, everything we do and everything we even believe, is all just a mechanism for ensuring the survival of that original gene. We’re walking tanks, hugely complex machines, and we exist entirely because of the little driver inside of us, that original gene, instructed to survive by its original code. Everything about us serves a survival function for the gene. Our emotions, our propensity to lie to ourselves and others, to believe in strange things, to fall in love, and to philosophize and to do good things– it’s all in service of the original gene. Every trait we have is an add-on survival tool, and those tools are constantly evolving, and diversity is key. Multiple tool types ensure survival over changing conditions. People can’t all all act and be the same or we’re dead.

(NO FF-ZOMBIE RANT, BUT IT WOULD BE PERFECT HERE!!)

And that’s just the beginning. Part of our add-on for survival is that humans (and most animals) carry hundreds of thousands of different species of organisms in their bodies. In our case, this totals more than 8 million different genes. Source. Our “own” genes number around 22,000, but our bodies contain 8 million genes of non-human life that keep us alive. We are literally walking bags of bugs, and without our bugs, we’re dead, and without any bags, they’re all dead.

So, here’s the weekend thought prompt: we not only live because we’re an evolved form of ancient virus, and not only because our cells contain features that are being borrowed from bacteria that still exist, but we live because each one of us is a vessel housing an entire world of life inside of it, each living thing inside of us contributing to the life of every other living thing inside us, and overall giving life to us.

So when someone says we’re all interconnected, it’s more than that. Maybe a better word is integrated– with everything we know about life itself. We literally are each other, and all living things.