Fascinating news in this, possibly the most germ-phobic period in human history (and also news with some themes in common to my last post): scientists in the Human Microbiome Project have managed to catalog a representative sample of the microorganisms that live on and in the human body.
Each of us is our own mini-biosphere, carrying around an array of tiny life forms that not only depend on us for survival, but also often help us survive. For instance, some of the bacteria in our guts help us digest our food.
It's startling to think of yourself as kind of a mini-planet hosting a population of life forms, instead of (as some of us sometimes do) a mini-planet hosting one too many stored portions of cheesecake.
Compare this to the metaphor of the human mind being itself a kind of Universe, bounded and private yet also shared, through our many kinds of communication. Long before it was applied to amusing pictures on the Internet, Richard Dawkins coined the word meme to describe ideas which can be shared between memebers of a culture, as well as between cultures, and which may mutate in the sharing. He suggested the meme may have taken over for the gene as the primary driver of human evolution (since memes can be shared much faster than genes, and often better survive mutation.)
Every time two humans touch, they share their personal worlds. A kiss or a handshake can be an emigration, for better or worse. A sneeze can send countless tiny astronauts into the void, possibly to take up residence in some other human world. And when ideas are shared between humans, they can change Universes: the interior mental Universe as well as the real physical one.
We started sending radio waves into space long before we started sending artifacts and organisms. A memetic sneeze, flying out into the Universe. Someday, humans (or some other creature) may colonize alien worlds. We may have already sent viable bacteria into space on one of our probes. We've only seen a tiny portion of all the changes we can wreak.
For the record, I'm aware of how clumsy some of my metaphors may be. I write this on the fly, editing only for a degree of clarity and the odd typos I notice. Relax, it's just a dang blog! :)
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