“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
—Hamlet, Act 2.2
“paragon of animals”: Chain of being, interrelation to the planet, ecosystem, responsibility
Homo sapiens have evolved on this planet and done well for themselves. They have been able to adapt, change, move across the globe, live and thrive in different climates, create more and sophisticated tools, build roads, buildings, bridges, skyscrapers, rockets to the moon, and stations in space. They have created systems that have helped defeat certain death, ease birth, fight disease, feed and clothe not only millions, but billions. These animals have learned to communicate, speak, sing, read, and write. From these certain systems, they have made themselves into humans, beyond an animal, and create and form beauty from the smallest thimble to grandest cathedrals.
But I get ahead of myself. I still would like to remain chatting about us as animals. Certainly, when I look out my window in Tokyo at the city below, the land reclaimed from the sea, the skyscrapers, the state of the art hospital, refrigerator stocked full of food, my computer that I’m writing this to you on, even a glorious heated toilet seat to warm my buns in winter—the tools we have created and adapted surely make us superior to any other creature walking the Earth.
I have fish tanks. The fish swim, eat, breed, mark territory, and pecking order. I’ve had dogs and they did much the same, though they offered a bit of protection and warmth, but I’m sorry my poodle would have quickly died in the wilderness. The cats I’ve known could care less for any other species in their world except when it comes time to eat.
Horses in history have had a special place for people as beasts of burden, war machines, transportation, and the closest of friends.
Dolphins and chimpanzees have much of our respect and perhaps even abilities to communicate. Through testing, we are learning more and more each year that the intelligence of these animals is beyond our original thinking. Though I have yet to see a dolphin city or a chimpanzee shopping mall. Of course, many of my friends say that makes them superior.
My mentor, Dr. William Boast, was famous for shocking audiences saying that you should be as smart as a cockroach. The cockroach was before the dinosaur and, if I were a betting man, I assume they will still be crawling the planet after we are dust.
Lastly, I’ve been told of the mystical communication channels that trees and forests have, the energy that they send out, vibrating into the cosmos. I’ve not yet communicated with trees, but that is possibly my challenge and no fault of the aspens, firs, oaks, pines and other leafy friends.
None of these things I would debate. What I would debate, however, is that homo sapiens, as an animal, seem to me, the “paragon of animals.” Let’s face it, we have built a lot of shit on this planet. We are able to do things that no other animal can do. And if it is just opposable thumbs, language, and the wheel that have made us masters of this planet, then so be it.
My second point is based on my pure homo-centric viewpoint….survival of the fittest if you will. I’m a homo sapien, my kids are homo sapiens, my wife, parents, friends, and co-workers are all homo sapiens. What I like most (and some of what I hate most) that happens in my life is because of homo sapiens, made for homo sapiens, and because of homo sapiens.
I know there are groups of people who would argue that the planet and Nature with a capital N would be much better off without us homo sapiens walking around on the planet. Arguably, this could be the case, but in that case, I wouldn’t be here to chat about why people are so great, nor would I need to. The point would be moot. Of course the universe would carry on, but sadly, sadly, it would be such a boring place without us beasts roaming this little blue ball.
So what does that mean to me? As the paragon of animals, we people are the big brother of the planet, the father and the mother too. We have a responsibility to do good. Every creature, even the mosquito (though I do admit I hesitate to write this) has a place on our planet. And if we are the top of the food chain, we have a responsibility to take care of every other animal, plant, and ecosystem. The planet and the galaxy and the universe is not ours. It’s on loan. Surely, we have not been on the planet very long and, though I don’t like to say it, I’m sure that in geological time and universal time, our time is very limited. The planet will burn out and dry up and be a rock in space with or without us. I get that. But for now, it’s our home and our responsibility.
This means we must be smarter than the other animals. Animals gather as much to protect themselves and fight off others. Humans also do the same. But have then taken to extremes of collecting as much money and things as possible, shooting each other, give ourselves drugs, the terrible foods and drinks with chemicals, tobacco, all the things we put into our bodies; the foods that we raise to eat lack sustainability and slowly rob the planet reserves as well as torture other sentient beings. Back in the day when you raised your own chickens and cut off their head and plucked out the feathers and cleaned the guts yourself, using the feathers for your pillows and eating the guts, that was many ways more responsible with less torture.
I’m pragmatic, and I’d lie if I said I didn’t love bacon, steak, and crispy fried chicken. However, there must be better ways that we can live and husband our planet.
Though we are expanding as a species, there must be ways that we can look at the world and not pollute it. We have electric vehicles, and yet the automotive companies want to keep fossil fuels pouring out of the ground because it makes money. Same as the IRA wanting to keep selling guns even though it makes little sense to shoot our neighbor. We know tobacco gives lung cancer, and yet these mammoth companies still move to sell us tobacco. All because of money.
As an animal, we need to keep ourselves and our families safe and provided for. Is there a semiotic way that we can do that and take care of our planet and fellow animals, ourselves included?
“how like an angel”
As I alluded to above, human beings are the pinnacle of creation. Your fellow human, like an angel, a celestial being, one of a kind, as unique as a snowflake and as complex as the universe. Our fellow humans have given us works of literature, drama, and dance that expand our mind and horizons and imaginations, music that stirs the soul to such depths and flies to the greatest heights, philosophy to sharpen each thought, paintings and sculptures that can expand our sight and show us the depth of the soul. Architecture to beautify our homes, delight our places worship and meditation, and the ability to shape nature into gorgeous gardens that enchant. The creative spirt has given us 5 star restaurants with sauces that are out of this world and the sciences that have given us formulas that literally have taken us out of this world. At this point, when a person stops working to collect sticks — be it dollars, yen, or euros — ceases to worry about war and disease, and begins to celebrate the riches of life and the ability of this flesh to transcend into spirt, then we become human. At that point, the human, like a reflection of all creative agencies in existence, we move beyond the flesh of the animal and into the skin of the spirit.
At times in human history, though granted only briefly, and only with a select group of people, has this thought permeated communities. However, when those communities were created, the ripples built our civilizations. In Pericles Athens, in the court of Urbino and the Medici (please remember that many people—homo sapiens—were out in the Florentine streets stabbing each other), Goethe’s Weimar, Emerson’s New England, Tang China, Heian Japan, and we are now learning more about the the heights of the Mayans and their civilization.
And there have been people throughout history, a golden chain of individuals, who saw that humans were just below angels and were able to create and move beyond just our animal needs.
The point of writing this is that I don’t feel we do this anymore. Our neighbor scares us. We worry about race, creed, color, religion, nationality, and so many other minor factors of flesh and community. Whereas if we look on each of us as an angel, a unique being different than any other being, then what a potential we have.
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.
Now this is an interesting number, for by curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.
But every one of those stars is a sun often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many—perhaps most—of those alien suns have planets circling them. so almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven—or hell.
How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times further away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; and one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars.
Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never become reality. Increasing numbers, however, are asking: “Why have such meetings not occurred already, since we ourselves are about to venture into space?”
Why not, indeed? Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable question. But please remember: this is only a work of fiction.
The truth as always will be far stranger.
—Forward, Arther C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Then are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—Hamlet, Act 1.5
Again, I feel that we are it. There may be life on other planets, but it isn’t human life and it may take us some time to learn about it. By all means, we should seek it out. As long as there are humans, we should have explorers! But in the day-to-day world, we paragon of animals, just below angels, are outstanding, wonderful, brittle, loving, caring, gorgeous, creatures and of course, we are often times selfish, sentimental, petty, belligerent, hurtful, and hateful. Still, when you look at the person in front of you, be it on the subway, the street corner, the cafe, or in the mirror, realize they are the only one in the universe, as unique as any star or snowflake. The chances of that human is alive, sitting in front of you, are so remote! That a sperm and egg can fertilize, that cells can meet, that the birthing processes can happen and that you can survive birth up to the point you are now is an amazing miracle. Many have survived not only the biological chances, but the environmental uncertainness of starvation, disease, abuse, injury, condemnation, inequality, prejudice, subjection from a variety of corners on the planet and still you are here in this moment. You have a choice what to make, what to create in this moment. It may not be an Ode to Joy, the Sistine Chapel, or Ryōan-ji in Kyoto: it may be a life. A single breath that leads to a life.
You have the choice. Make it one that creates a world of angels. Treat others with their greatness and expect that of yourself as well.
“what a piece of work is a man”
As mentioned above, you are the only chance the universe will celebrate you in the flesh. This moment, this day, month, life. This is all you have. The work of art is you. In all the plants, animals, birds, fish, and insects, of all humans—past, present, and future, of all the stars and planets, spinning galaxies, and maybe other universes—you are an original work of art.
For that reason, you have a responsibility to the the history of the species to celebrate and share your talents. Listen to the poet who was going blind:
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent, which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
-John Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”
My 8th grade teacher, Mr. Craig Bowman, a black orphan raised by Catholic nuns, made us middle-class14 year olds memorize this sonnet and stand in front of the class to recite it. He taught us that it didn’t matter your station in life, life is a choice and a meritocracy. You chose how you respond to challenges. You may be born poor or rich, either way, you have a human species to serve. You are just below an angel and you have a talent to give. You may be blind like Milton or deaf like Beethoven. Or you may be in a wheelchair or a minority or like Viktor Frankl, find yourself a captive facing certain death. You chose.
The point as well is that life is a meritocracy. Being a human is not closed to anyone. The human elite welcomes all types of people. Those who would block out another based on a race, a creed, a belief are not human, but have resided back into the base state of an animal—the territorial imperative creates borders. There are no borders for the golden chain of humans.
“quintessence of dust”
We are but moments. Dust of stars. Charles Sherrington says human child has at birth 26 million cells. Those cells will die away and then become something new and then we will go back into stardust. That dust may live twenty years or a hundred years. Percy Bysshe Shelley taught us the humility:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
From the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, we will meet this fate. From the bookends of life and death we have a responsibility and a choice. The responsibility to be the paragon of animals and take care of that which is on loan to us, our planet and our fellow travelers of insect, mammal, fowl, and amphibian. We also have a responsibility to our fellow human to live together as a species and use to our fullest extent our unique talents. And we have that responsibility to ourselves, a kindness that is often overlooked.
Life is short and fragile, but also filled with beauty and wonder. In our breaths here together sing and celebrate this life, the beauty, the wonder and use our talents to crush out inequity, prejudice, hate, and anger. Yet, those things make us human as well. Our time in paradise was only in myths. The utopias we crave from watching Star Trek are but fictions, but with education, insight, dedication, and love, we certainly can overcome, and not only survive, but thrive and build greater civilizations than have come before us.
what is this quintessence of dust?