User:Aliveness Cascade

What’s the most urgent thing I could say?

Probably this:

Without mortality, and without the fragility and fallibility of life – and the wildness of nature – we would not and could not be alive in the first place. Humanity, and the other forms of animal life in the world today, would never, and could never have existed, could never have evolved, without animal life being mortal and fragile, and without the world being a wild place – where bad ends happen.

Imagine animals were superheroes – like superman – and they couldn’t be damaged and they couldn’t die! The world would quickly fill up with undying superhero animals (who’d also breed like rabbits!), and they’d be no opportunity for new animal forms to arise. Evolution, then, would never have occurred, and indeed animals would not have arisen in the first place – they couldn’t have!

We all know that all of us are going to die. And others die before us. Humanity has always struggled with these facts!

So this is the most urgent thing I can say to you – to say this thing which can enable us to be well-adjusted with our knowledge and experience of mortality: It is necessary for us to have existed at all!

It is necessary! As is the very wildness in nature which brings some of us to an early, and sometimes nasty, end. That wildness that brings bad ends, also brings good things – for good and bad both spring out of the wildness of nature, and that wildness of nature is the very thing which creates novel variations in living things in the first place, providing the essential raw materials for evolution to build its extraordinary and wonderful life-forms – that is *us* and *all* of the living world! (And when I say "necessary", that doesn't mean it was intended!)

Also, if we realize that the sheer wildness of nature – which brings both the fortunate and unfortunate – is a prerequisite for any of us existing in the first place – it underlines our commonality with everyone, and every living thing.

Thank you for reading!

Aliveness Cascade
"Aliveness Cascade" references the cascade of alive beings that arise in evolution as wildness generates diversity, and as one beneficial novelty builds upon another.