Genetic Diversity

I just picked up my favorite pair of boots from the repair shop, and I feel good about it. It has nothing to do with being “green” – the new soles are leather, and stitched on, and the “Cat’s Paw” heels are meticulously pinned in place. It’s unusual these days to find anything done with such obvious care. The boots themselves are a little ratty, but they’re comfortable, and that’s what’s important.

Almost any of these boots are repairable, and worth repairing. And, as I said before, it has nothing to do with being “green”. It has to do with not discarding things for the flimsiest of reasons, about finding something you like and sticking with it, about not just changing for the sake of change. I’m part of probably the first generation that hasn’t done this automatically, without having to think about it. My parents, and their parents, wouldn’t have wasted anything; they wouldn’t have thrown away something that could be repaired; and they wouldn’t have bought anything simply because they felt like a change. For the most part, we probably never stop to think how lucky we are to have the choices we have; or how cursed we are to have to spend the time to make them.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not really into “saving the planet”. For one thing, I’m not sure what we’re saving it for – it’s a finite resource, and will run out eventually no matter how hard we try to prevent it. And for another thing, I think that the best thing we could do for the planet is to allow ourselves to become extinct. A hundred years on there would be little trace of humanity.

And talking of extinction, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about endangered species. It’s true that it would be sad to see no more tigers or polar bears (especially if you happen to be a tiger or a polar bear), but in earlier times we had another name for it – evolution. We commonly regard genetic diversity as a good thing – after all, it’s why cousins can’t marry cousins (a general rule from which royal families seem exempt, with observable results).

Coming into my hotel via a side entrance the other day, I saw a cricket in the stairwell. Do you know how many crickets there are in the world? Hmmm … neither do I, but I can tell you that it is estimated that there are 200 million insects for every human. I began to wonder if perhaps their DNA might not be unique for any individual insect. Indeed, if perhaps their DNA might not all be the same. And, if it was, that perhaps they have reached a perfect stage of evolution, and that our genetic diversity, far from being an advantage, might simply indicate that we are a long way from perfection. Think how easy it would be to find a mate if everybody was exactly the same!

I’m being ridiculous, of course, but I’m sure you get my point. Just because we think it’s a good idea doesn’t make it a good idea. And although we’re at the top of the food chain right now, it’s only a couple of millennia since Italy had an empire.

Discuss.