What is a human? The body I call ‘me’ when I'm shopping for clothes is in reality a mobile ecosystem composed of interdependent cells of many species, few of which are human in any sense. If I were a democracy, then cells with human DNA would not be in government, just a fringe group on the back benches.
The exact population of this ecosystem-self affects and is affected by the environment it moves through - exchanging membership all the time. On top of that, each cell, whether genetically human or not, is permeable to the mineral world: atoms and molecules continually flow across boundaries, replacing parts of the structure. Importantly, this replacement is not always exactly like for like - metabolic processes use what is available.
So should our self retreat to the mind - have a little human ‘me’ in charge, driving the little bit of ecosystem that is a 'human' body? Not really. Increasing evidence shows non-human agents, including our own gut bacteria, affecting our minds, our mood and our priorities, as well as our energy levels. If we are in the driving seat, then our 'passengers' are a crowd of map reading backseat drivers who sometimes actually wrest control of the wheel - although we will usually still experience it as ourselves doing the driving.
Can we then expand the 'me' to include all contributors to the driving: our whole local ecosystem of animal, vegetable and mineral? I think we should, but we don't. We keep a clear distinction between ourselves as human, and the rest of nature. That is what 'human' really means - our sense of ourselves as separable from the world.
At least in English, this distinction is embedded in phrases such as ‘getting out into nature’ on the weekend, as if our our own homes and streets were something else. But our homes are the nests of homo sapiens, and our cities no less natural than a stretch savannah with termite mounds, or virgin rainforest containing orang nests.
This idea of ourselves as somehow separable from the natural world is dangerous because it disconnects us. It gives an entirely illusory sense of freedom and power where the world we inhabit seems just one of our possessions. The world is not a possession, not something we can choose to exploit or to care for. It is something we are.
In reality, our skin is no absolute boundary, merely a national border, with constant traffic across. We are utterly knit into the universe, not just walking through it. We are not humans, we are the local world - tiny fragments of conscious nature, utterly continuous with the physical and abstract worlds.
Believe in the world around you, believe in your experience, believe in your connectedness. But don't believe in humans, they are mythical beings abstracted from the world. And since the world is entirely connected, they don't exist.
