There are more microbes living in the human body than there are cells, adding to the question of what exactly a ‘you’ or an ‘I’ are.
As this recent article from the Chicago Tribune points out, the human microbiome (the microbial biome, or, the cumulative microbial life living inside each one of us) can influence our health, moods, and behaviors; and, we can influence it - through diet, exercise, and getting ‘dirty’. The connection is a 2-way street.
Or is it? Is there any real separation at all? Or is the separation only created by our analysis of it? The word analysis comes from the Greek root for ‘loosen’, and is the opposite of synthesis.
Human beings can see and understand things at different resolutions. We’ve spent the last several hundred years dissecting the world, but can we piece it back together again? If so what will that look like? Will it be a Frankenstein’s monster?
We inherited a paradise, this earth, and in our effort to understand it through the evolution of reason we may have inadvertently separated ourselves from it, spurred on by technology. But the truth seems to be that there is no real isolated ‘it’ out there and ‘us’ in here.
In the 19th century mankind discovered germs and has since set about sterilizing our environments, not realizing there would be blowback; that ultimately we would end up sterilizing ourselves in the process. Take the pasteurization process for example. This process is used to kill pathogens in commercially sold beverages, but of course also ends up killing beneficial bacteria and degrading nutritional content as well. Our bodies and minds cannot survive in a healthy state without such beneficial bacteria which nature provides.
This mentality is not at all different from the one which informs some that murdering people of different races and religions on the other side of the world (or in our own backyards) might be a good idea, or that it will somehow bring about order and resolve collective differences: It's the same process operating at a different resolution, involving an over-extension of the intellect, devoid of compassion and love which is true intelligece.
There has got to be a balance. If we aren’t able to temper our desires for efficiency of outcome, we’ll only continue burning ourselves, believing that what we do unto others will not come back around to be done unto us, whether those others be people or tiny microbes.
I don’t believe that humanity as a whole is inherently evil, just fundamentally out of balance, if there is a difference. Maybe it is simply a different way of seeing things, and making meaning.