Here is something that I find really strange. Probably the strangest thing I can imagine. See what you think, and if I've got my logic wrong, let me know.
When I was a child I assumed that the three of us (my two sisters and me) were inevitably the children that my parents were going to have. I am the youngest. I often wished I was in fact the oldest. But I always thought it would be "me" whatever the birth order. It just felt inevitable; my parents would have a boy, and the boy would be me.
Of course I now know that isn't the case. If, in my family, a son had been the first born, he would have been the result of a completely different sperm and egg union, and therefore a completely different person complete with his own ego, self awareness and so on.
In fact if "my" particular egg cell and "my" particular sperm cell had not got together, I would never have existed. This I am taking as a given. I base it on evidence such as each of my sisters, each of whom is the result of a different egg and sperm cell, is clearly a person in their own right, and I have no access to their awareness or identity, or vice versa. Had my parents copulated an hour earlier or later even on the same occasion, a different brother or sister would have resulted (bar the absolutely cosmic coincidence of the same sperm cell winning the race anyway).
We get to some startling (at least startling to me) conclusions. Given an egg cell and 300 million sperm cells are present at each act of successful union, any one of 300 million completely different people could have resulted. Each of whom would have had their own ego and awareness.
But wait.
A woman releases something like 400 eggs during her lifetime. A man releases something like 20 thousand million (yup, twenty billion) sperm cells during his life time. So a couple, between them, represent the potential for 8 trillion different people or about as many stars as you would find in 80 galaxies. Every one of whom would have had their own mannerisms, own eye colour, own laugh, own consciousness and own identity, if only "their" union had taken place and therefore they had been born. Of course, the same 8 trillion : 1 are the odds against you or me being born.
So we are extraordinarily lucky, and unbelievably improbable winners in the lottery of life.
But it gets much spookier. If you followed and accept the logic so far, then the same odds applied to your parents. If either of them had not won that lottery too, you wouldn't be here either. Or if they had been born, but teamed up with different significant others, which is actually highly probable, then you wouldn't be here either. Remember, it is a specific pair of cells that gave rise to you; any other pairing doesn't count.
And the logic goes back and back - grandparents, great grandparents and so on.
And so on? Just exactly where do you call a halt? It seems to me that if two rather hairy primate ancestors had not had a quicky 5 million years ago I wouldn't be here either.
Why stop there? I may be able to convince myself that if the DNA in a dividing bacterium a billion years ago had arranged the split differently, I wouldn't be blogging now.
And my last question - where exactly are my poor, unrealised, less lucky, 8 trillion siblings? Who never existed before, had one brief chance of existence and lost, and will never exist in the future.
20 comments:
It's all down to chance, of course. My father was a soldier in the Second World War and could have been killed; he wasn't so here I am as is my son and daughter.
It seems strange that we produce 80 billion sperm - why so many? Why not 10 million? Surely that would be enough. Has Mother Nature made a mistake or is there another purpose that we don't know of. Questions, questions!
That's given me plenty of food for thought. I am a great believer in fate, which I think bears out what you are saying.
dumdad - and of course it goes all the way back. His father may have survived the first world war, his father before him was not crushed by a falling horse and so on. The odds get worse and worse! On the excessive sperm thing, you're right, nature tends not to waste energy. I think that sperm is constantly renewed and doesn't live all that long, so perhaps it's down to that.
akelamalu - I don't really believe in fate, but when you go through this lot, it does all start to feel very predestined, doesn't it. I mean, only one egg and one sperm cell on the entire planet, ever, was going to make you, and they did.
Yes I often run through all of this and was once tempted to have a third child just to see what it was going to be like. My first words to both my babies were "hello, who are you?" - both times it came out involuntarily. When you think that over a three month period practically all our cells change too, the possibilities of what we may become get even more frightening, or exciting depending upon whether one is an optimist or a pessimist. x
jollygood -yes, I had forgotten that feeling, which I had too when my daughters were born.
Interesting that we do survive the turnover of materials within our bodies, but somehow the information content stays the same.
I've just read your last post as well and my head hurts. It might be a two cup of tea morning now.
But you're right - food for thought indeed. However it may take a rather more infinite period of tinme before my poor brain recovers to work it all out.
I'll let you know.
mud - two cups of tea, eh? Ah well, better than cocaine.
huh? tea? cocaine? nevermind HOW THE F*CK DID I GET TO BE HERE? righto. stiff drink more like it. xx janelle
j - how indeed? I dunno about you, but I almost feel guilty. But jolly pleased quand même.
Fascinating. I've had to read it a couple of times as my brain itches when faced with large scale 'boggling' things.
Anyway, it makes me feel very special - and my children and so on as I'd never quite thought of it like that before.
You're an education Mr de Cugnac.
Oh dear, that makes me think of my parents having sex...which OF COURSE they never did...
...but oh boy do I feel a lucky boy now
lane - i guess it does make us all very special, and very improbable, people. It has got to be one of the imponderables of all time, surely? This whole ego / identity thing. Wierd.
NB - true, one's parents could not have had sex, the idea is repulsive. Which brings us on to immaculate conception. Now how improbable is that?
I remember pondering on the unlikelihood of my conception at university! It made me feel really special :-) When I was trying to conceive my own child though I learnt that actually men produce so many darn sperm because many of them don't make it - they have funny shaped heads, swim the wrong way, stop for a chat, curl up and die... in a healthy, fully fertile male, only about 1000 out of anything up to 400 million sperm per, um, encounter, will actually get to the fallopian tube and have a chance to bump into the egg! That's why a low sperm count is such a total bummer when it comes to reproduction. Mind you, it's a perfect example of natural selection in action, isn't it? Less blind chance and more sheer determination on the part of the sperm that becomes YOU. I shall walk out today feeling empowered...
I've often thought this, but in a vaguer soupier sort of way, without nice firm terse masculine (steady on, girl) phraseology.
Knowing no better I must accept your staggering and humbling calculations. As you infer, out of 8 trillion, why me?
That said and having just returned from staying with my girls, it fascinates me that one daughter is discernibly like me in looks and interest, and the other like her mother. So, despite the long odds, there is this thread that bridges generations. I know the answer is to do with genes and so on, but does that also help define intellectual pursuits and character?
jeannie - most informative, maybe you should be writing this. I read your blog "Thinking Aloud" about crime in SA. I think you're right; it does have a different quality. I remember when I lived in Pietermaritzburg, an old professor was killed in his home,a houses away, just in the course of a burglary. My life is so different here, I blogged about it in the land that crime forgot. Quite a contrast. I hope you can do something about your circs; difficult I know, but better not to put it off if you have decided.
milla - mind like a scalpel, nothing soupy about you.
dot - the nature/nuture thing grumbles on, but I suspect that nature (genes) has an awful lot to do with it. I met my father's identical twin when he was already quite old, and was stunned by how similar he was - type of laugh, mannerisms etc. Much more than mere siblings. Yet they had worked in different parts of the world for most of their adult lives.
Ha, worlds within worlds, see, multiverses and galaxies within each act of union - each egg, each sperm, a life in it's own right, living out its course - and two going on to create a third life who in turn will create its own series of universes.
As for the "I" in all of it, well if it wasn't "I" in this body, "I" would have been "I" somewhere else - maybe even in a different part of the multiverse.
I don't really mind how "I" got to be here, I'm just enjoying the ride :-)
av - indeed, are these extra potential consciousnesses somewhere or nowhere? And as for existence after existence ....
I think there was a Woody Allen film where there was a sequence with 'sperm' on their way to the 'egg' and the leader shouts,
'Every potential man for himself..!'
Great post - this is a mind-bender!
claire - I think I remember that; was it called "Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask"?
One of the gags was a breast roaming the countryside, and one cop says to the other, be careful, these things usually travel in pairs. Well, made me laugh at the time, but then I was very very young.
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