Fabulous Odds- June 1 2026

 

Fabulous Odds

June 1 2026

Let time run backwards,

trace the branches back

until they converge,

and imagine the primordial cell

where we all began.

How many billions of years have passed

since the common ancestor

of every living thing?

The we that supersedes

the narcissism of small difference

on the planet we share.

Contingency,

serendipity,

an accident of chemistry

on an airless rock

that barely had time to cool,

a small planet circling a random star

in a remote arm

of a minor galaxy.

It took 6 days for God

and they call it a miracle.

But I’d rather consider the fabulous odds

of life beginning like this,

than a father figure, made in our image

who summoned-up existence

with a wave of his hand.

Who watches over us still,

yet keeps a careful distance

as we fumble through life.

An endless 7th day

on which absent God

persists in his rest.

So the Buddhist

who refuses to kill a fly

is truly his brother’s keeper.

How can one not admire

his reverence for life

and abhorrence of suffering,

no matter how bothersome or humble

a life form it is?

What, then, would LUCA* think of us?

Distant cousins

who kill our own kind.

Who imagine ourselves

overlords of the world 

doing what we like with it.

Who believe there’s a plan

and its purpose is us,

a Creator

who made Man on the final day

by breathing life into dust;

as good a metaphor as any

for the the virtue of humility,

even if it somehow still does 

put us at the centre.

Yet what could be more humbling

than cultivating gratitude

for the accident of birth?

For having beaten

such unfathomable odds;

surviving, for 4 billion years

all the wild contingencies

of life on earth? 

*LUCA: “Last Universal Common Ancestor”

(According to “Perplexity”:

The hypothetical ancestor from which bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes all descended. Recent studies suggest LUCA may have lived about 4.2 billion years ago, very early in Earth’s history. It was likely a complex microbe-like organism, probably anaerobic and able to use hydrogen and carbon dioxide for energy. LUCA was not the first life form, but the last population from which all present-day life shares common ancestry. That means earlier life may have existed, but its lineages did not all survive to the present.)

I was reading about an experiment involving exposing octopuses to Ecstasy (MDMA). Apparently — despite a decentralized brain organized with completely different anatomy than ours, and despite 800 million years of divergence from a common ancestor — we share a serotonin-like molecule that still binds with Ecstasy and produces similar behavioural changes. (Some commentators have offered an alternative hypothesis, finding fault with the experimental protocol. But never mind!) 

So it would appear that back in the mists of time a direction is taken or a choice made, a random accident sets life on a certain track, and then these fundamental features are conserved. Because they work. Because nothing better comes along. And we still share them: a striking commonality despite our apparent differences.  

Or think of the symmetrical body pattern so many multi-cellular organisms share. Is this the optimum architecture, or the result of some random choice back in the day? Intelligent aliens certainly won’t look like this — two arms and legs, 5 digits, topped by a 2-eyed head — no matter how unimaginatively most science fiction depicts them. 

So the similarities of life on earth are arguably more striking than our differences. One can’t help but think of Sigmund Freud’s trenchant observation of human foibles, “the narcissism of small difference”. 

Of course, the difference between us and a banana is bigger than a different language or skin colour. Yet bananas still possess 60% of the genes found in the human genome; presumably, genes inherited from a common ancestor. Or in looking at similarities in another way, back to the octopus, who evolved eyes on a completely separate track than we did, but with both of us ultimately converging on similar solutions. Necessity is not only the mother of invention; its offspring often seem singular and inevitable.