Understanding Global DNA

When we get past the double helix of the DNA molecule and the sequencing of the human genome, we are left to conclude that DNA is just information. Without that information the cells would not know what to do and nothing would happen in the body. There would be no life.

Global DNA is also information. In non-human species this information is a fixed quantity. This is why they all operate on instinct. Their behavior is genetically determined and they have the same responses to external stimuli regardless of whether they were here ten thousand years ago or live on earth today. Non-human species don't know everything but they know everything they need to know.

Humans are very different. When they arrived on this planet they did not know anything. This is strange because one would expect that if every species that appeared before humans knew everything they needed to know to ensure their survival that humans should also have the same level of information. Someone appears to have switched the script when humans arrived. But that ignorance is also the basis of what we call intelligence. Intelligence is actually managed ignorance.

In the place of full knowledge we came equipped with curiosity and creativity. This curiosity allowed us to learn from the non-human species around us, and to use what we learned from them to create new knowledge. We have done a great job of learning from these species. Each time we learned something our knowledge base increased and that only made more information available to us. In every instance we improved on what we learned from our environment, except one. Self-destructive behavior is the one thing that humans did not learn from the other species around. Before humans arrived the animals knew not to deplete their food stock or to overgraze their grazing grounds. Violence in nature was always inter-species rather than intra-species. It is logical that when humans arrived on earth they also lived together in peace among each other. Without that they would not have survived those early years of their existence.

How then did we abandon the information that told us that as members of the same species we are brothers and develop a new set of information that caused us to look on each other as potential enemies? This is the question for the ages. If we can address it adequately we may be close to understanding the anomaly the human race has become. We are in search of information.