The Long-Lasting Intimacy of Strangers:

"After centuries of speculation, we will soon have the capability of detecting ancient life or pre-biotic chemistry in the solar system, microbial life on extra-solar planets by its alteration of global atmospheric chemistry, and technological civilizations throughout the galaxy. Success in any of these areas would profoundly affect social discourse at all levels, reawakening religious questions in a new context."

Another quote from this site concerns a lady I admire tremendously and who inspired me with the Gaia project:

"She (Lynn Margulis) is best known for her theory of symbiogenesis. She argues that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Rather, new tissues, organs, and even new species evolve primarily through the long-lasting intimacy of strangers."

The long-lasting intimacy of strangers! What an evocative phrase for human relations in general, resonant with both our existential isolation and concommitant desire to connect with the Absolute! This also describes what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence between artists separated by centuries or decades.

The piece goes on:

"The fusion of genomes followed by natural selection, she suggests, leads to increasingly complex levels of individuality."

Could it be that the mistaken notion of the self arises directly from the fusion of genomes followed by natural selection?