Here's another sobering thought: you represent an unbroken chain from the universal common ancestor of successful reproduction going back billions of years and probably trillions of generations (given that many of those were as a single-celled organism). Every one of those generations a success.
So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year old chain of evolutionary success.
Here's another: you have 2 biological parents, (up to) 4 biological grandparents (go look at Cleopatra's family tree) and so on to an upper bound of 2^n ancestors for the n'th previous generation. At some point this number exceeds the number of organisms that were alive at that time so there are likely one or more individuals in the past who are direct ancestors to everybody.
A consequence of this is that if you go forwards in time ultimately your genetic line will either die out or you will be the direct ancestor of everybody given sufficient time.
Humans are social animals. It’s myopic I think to only evaluate based on reproduction and genetic propagation. For example, most bees and ants are not involved in reproduction but they are all involved in helping the species survive into the future. So even if you don’t reproduce you have a critical role to play in society (helping it stay cohesive, helping productivity, helping through your work efforts, helping your friends and family raise children who can help humanity survive and be good humans themselves etc)
I suspect a lot of the "woe, things are way harder for Millennials than past generations, I'm too poor to have a family" zeitgeist is actually this phenomena + literal survivorship bias. Every single person alive today came from parents that successfully reproduced. When you're a kid, it's very natural to think that having kids and a family of your own is the default state of being. After all, all of your friends have parents who successfully reproduced too.
But that's because you tend to have much closer relationships with your family and peers than with childless adults. When I change my sample from "my friends growing up" to "my parent's friends when they were growing up", a lot of them never had children. By the numbers, the percentage of households that are families with children has gone down, but it's gone from about 55% in 1970 to 40% in 2022, which is a much less drastic fall than most people would suspect. Being childless is far more normal than children believe.
So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year old chain of evolutionary success.
True to an extent. What you really break in this case is the last inch change that your parents happened to merge in. Your extended families are still there with almost the same genotype.
> So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year old chain of evolutionary success.
All your genes are in other people and will continue without you. And your unique configuration of genetics is lost like a droplet in a river. Only around one in a billion people really put their stamp on our genealogy -- and you really need to rape, murder and empire build like Genghis Khan to achieve that kind of thing (and as the population expands it likely gets more and more difficult).
The idea of a genetic "line" is not the concept people think it is.
Humans already share 99% of their DNA. Of the 1% that creates our differences, after 5 to 7 generations, depending on how you look at it, the similarity of your descendent's DNA to your DNA would essentially be indistinguishable from noise or random variance in people who you aren't even related to at all.
Talk of lines and blood and bloodlines has more to do with people really wanting to not disappear into oblivion.
> At some point this number exceeds the number of organisms that were alive at that time so there are likely one or more individuals in the past who are direct ancestors to everybody
Wouldn’t this common ancestor be a certainty? Otherwise aren’t you betting that there were similar mutations in different lines?
>So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year old chain of evolutionary success.
I sincerely could not care less. As far as I'm concerned, my blood ends with me. I have absolutely no interest in continuing this endless cycle of bullshit.
You are welcome to have babby, of course, and to also do so in my stead if you are exceedingly concerned about the population count that I won't help grow or maintain, I ain't stopping you since what you do in your bedroom is none of my business (and vice versa, if the above wasn't clear enough).
There's a reason religious types recoiled from Darwin's idea. It paints God as a vivisectionist on the grandest scale.
Darwin experienced this as a father, watching his oldest child die slowly and horribly (probably from cerebral tuberculosis). It would not be a stretch to imagine this experience soured him on traditional religious dogmas.
jmyeet|2 years ago
So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year old chain of evolutionary success.
Here's another: you have 2 biological parents, (up to) 4 biological grandparents (go look at Cleopatra's family tree) and so on to an upper bound of 2^n ancestors for the n'th previous generation. At some point this number exceeds the number of organisms that were alive at that time so there are likely one or more individuals in the past who are direct ancestors to everybody.
A consequence of this is that if you go forwards in time ultimately your genetic line will either die out or you will be the direct ancestor of everybody given sufficient time.
vlovich123|2 years ago
nostrademons|2 years ago
But that's because you tend to have much closer relationships with your family and peers than with childless adults. When I change my sample from "my friends growing up" to "my parent's friends when they were growing up", a lot of them never had children. By the numbers, the percentage of households that are families with children has gone down, but it's gone from about 55% in 1970 to 40% in 2022, which is a much less drastic fall than most people would suspect. Being childless is far more normal than children believe.
wruza|2 years ago
True to an extent. What you really break in this case is the last inch change that your parents happened to merge in. Your extended families are still there with almost the same genotype.
_0ffh|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
lamontcg|2 years ago
All your genes are in other people and will continue without you. And your unique configuration of genetics is lost like a droplet in a river. Only around one in a billion people really put their stamp on our genealogy -- and you really need to rape, murder and empire build like Genghis Khan to achieve that kind of thing (and as the population expands it likely gets more and more difficult).
qgin|2 years ago
Humans already share 99% of their DNA. Of the 1% that creates our differences, after 5 to 7 generations, depending on how you look at it, the similarity of your descendent's DNA to your DNA would essentially be indistinguishable from noise or random variance in people who you aren't even related to at all.
Talk of lines and blood and bloodlines has more to do with people really wanting to not disappear into oblivion.
lostlogin|2 years ago
Wouldn’t this common ancestor be a certainty? Otherwise aren’t you betting that there were similar mutations in different lines?
Dalewyn|2 years ago
I sincerely could not care less. As far as I'm concerned, my blood ends with me. I have absolutely no interest in continuing this endless cycle of bullshit.
You are welcome to have babby, of course, and to also do so in my stead if you are exceedingly concerned about the population count that I won't help grow or maintain, I ain't stopping you since what you do in your bedroom is none of my business (and vice versa, if the above wasn't clear enough).
pfdietz|2 years ago
Darwin experienced this as a father, watching his oldest child die slowly and horribly (probably from cerebral tuberculosis). It would not be a stretch to imagine this experience soured him on traditional religious dogmas.
lotrjohn|2 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Darwin
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
nkrisc|2 years ago