Let’s first talk about what life is.

• What is the Meaning of Life?
• What is life?
• Conclusion
• References

*Disclaimer – Well, not for this one. No-one can authoritatively define the meaning of life. But everyone can inspire reflection.

What is the Meaning of Life?

“The goal of life is not to survive it.” – Charles Eisenstein [1]

“To be is to interbe.  You cannot just be by yourself alone.  You have to interbe with every other thing.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Maybe the most fundamental questions of human existence is about the meaning of our existence, the meaning of our life. Our humans struggle to find a definite answer to this question is as old as human civilization: philosophers of all advanced civilizations, psychologists, religious practitioners, and cognitive scientists remain puzzled. When ecological philosopher Charles Eisenstein was challenged to give an answer [2], his first responded with a Chinese saying: “He who knows cannot tell, and he who tells doesn’t know”. In awareness of the limitations of words, I would like to inspire a different perspective on this question, by refining a preliminary question that will lead to an actually rather simple answer. This refining question is:  What is life, really?

To understand the meaning of life, the first step is to grasp the essence of life – then we can start thinking about the meaning of ourselves in relationship to life. Without understanding life’s essence, we cannot grasp the meaning of life. I am convinced that Western societies struggle with life’s meaning, because they cannot grasp life itself.

What is life?

Most people think that life is the opposite of death – a body is either alive, or it isn’t. Some ecologists may disagree here – there cannot be life without death; life and death are part of an ever-repeating cycle where life leads to death and death leads to new life. In this ecological view, the opposite of life is the same as the opposite of death:  the absence of the cycle of life and death. Some writers call this absence of life a “thermodynamic equilibrium”. Until today, researchers who search for extraterrestrial life forms on other planets are really searching the sky for signs of disequilibrium. So we can define the absence of life… but what, then, is life?

One explanation of life is called Theory of Evolution: After some unlikely accident that created the first forms of life on Earth, evolution created some progressive force driven by mutation, and selection. The “survival of the fittest” is a narrative embraced by most biologists – our strength and our ability to reproduce become a purpose by themselves without further meaning[3]. Biologist Richard Dawkins lays it plain and simple:  Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference [4]. Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humens describes species as “random, repetitive, unconscious behaviours, not conscious design”[5]. How depressing is that? No wonder that psychologists like Viktor Frankl build their entire therapy around the question of meaning in life! And many Christians take deep exception with this understanding of evolution.

A schism in science falsified Dawkins simplistic view on evolution. First, Dawkins interprets Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” as a trait of individuals who live in separation, in a world where individuals compete with each other for passing on their genetic material.  This simplification led many evolutionary theorists to calling Dawkins ideas “Neo-Darwinism”  – a theory on its own, which has little to do with Charles Darwin’s observations on the “Origin of Species”. Secondly, it has been shown that collaboration and symbiosis are core drivers of evolution, far more transformative than mutation and selection. Life is not a random accident but a purposeful creation that finds unity in diversity. For me, this changes everything.

The strongest voice for a new perspective on life was late Lynn Margulis. Her work is a game-changer and was called the most important biologist of the 20^th century who laid out the biology of the 21^st century [6]. But unfortunately, she is also little known. And this is not co-incidental: the dominant voices in biology have singled out her theory as not useful for those in power positions in Academia ([7] See a fantastic documentary on her life!). Her findings question the scientific fundamentals of patriarchy, academic power structures, and ultimately, the way we see life itself and our role as humans within the world. I had the opportunity of listening to a few of her lectures directly, and I studied under an inspiring professor who admired Lynn big time. In Lynn’s own words, Neo-Darwinianism teaches “that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection. If you want bigger eggs, you keep selecting the hens that are laying the biggest eggs, and you get bigger and bigger eggs. But you also get hens with defective feathers and wobbly legs. Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create.” [8]

In her PhD thesis, Lynn Margulis demonstrated that all eukaryotic cells are the product of the merging of two microbial organisms; a small bacteria lives inside another. A free-living bacterium that was able to create energy from oxygen and sugar started living inside a larger cell in a new form of partnership: The outer cell moved around and found sugars, whereas the inner cell –the mitochondria – has the ability to derive chemical energy from burning sugars with oxygen. The two cells interchanged energy and other chemicals for their mutual benefits. For decades, Lynn’s idea was ridiculed despite the strong evidence that she presented. Today, her theory is widely accepted and part of every biology school book – mitochondria in protoctists and higher animals, and chloroplasts in plants, are the successors of this merger and continue to power all higher organisms today. We now know that mitochondria have their own DNA, and that this DNA is passed on maternally only within the female egg.

Lynn continued to study the phenomenon of symbiosis until she passed in 2011. In her lifetime, her study basically re-wrote what we know about life and evolution:

• Margulis favoured the location of life at the cell itself, as a dynamic and self-sustaining system. “DNA is the database of life – and the cell itself seems to decide when to access this data, and when not to”, she taught in her lecture. The cell is seen as the master of the DNA, the cell core is not the “control centre” but a passive database. She also favoured an origin-of-life theory that seeks the origin of life in little bubbles of fat – the lipid world theory [9] – and dismissed the RNA-centred origin hypothesis. This centering of life around the cell itself is consistent with all new findings,m including how electric fields direct cell differentiation (as demonstrated in Michael Levin’s fascinatingly weird TED talk [10]).
• Microbial collaboration was first understood when Margulis and others studied microbial mats in sediments[11]. Scientists found stratified, layered slime that consistently have multiple colors. Different biochemical pathways allow microbes to create unique ecosystems, where each layer hosts a different strategy to survival. Only as a stratified ecosystem, these microbes can live as effectively as they do.
• Margulis was fascinated by bacterial consortia – close aggregates of different types of bacteria that form a bigger unit. One of these consortia looked a lot like a ciliate – an amorphous being that swam by the power of its wiggly hair. Chemical shock dispersed the partnering organisms … leaving an amoeba in the center, while the cilia – the hair that create mobility – swam off in all directions as independent spirochete bacteria. The central amoeba had sensors that gave the consortium direction, while the spirochetes enabled this amoeba to swim. The partnership benefited all partners. And it also offered a powerful demonstration how higher organisms acquire new abilities not by mutation, but by merging together. While Margulis’ claim that all eukaryotic mobility stems from symbiosis was later falsified, she nevertheless provided massive insights into our evolutionary understanding of motility[12].
• Margulis stressed the role of Horizontal gene transfer in evolution. Bacteria can exchange plasmids, or entire DNA sections. Viruses are mainly designed to transfer DNA segments horizontally between cells – science has not even begun to understand the role of viruses in microbial ecology, we just know that there are ten times more viruses than bacterial cells! With horizontal gene transfer, symbiotic microbes can ‘out-source’ DNA storage to host organisms, and greatly enhance their own success within the internal microbial ecosystem. In fact, a large percentage of mammalian DNA is only used by symbiotic microbes.
• Symbiosis also drives species formation. All dogs are still one species, despite massive physiological differences – breeding has never led to a new species despite dramatic mutational differences. In a lecture in 2001, Lynn Margulis laid out the only formation of a new species that ever was observed by scientists, in some small insect. A DNA mutation that impacted a gene utilized only by a symbiont, created descendants that no longer could host that symbiont. The descendants with this mutation could no longer create propagable offsprings.
• Lynn Margulis studied the microbial ecosystems in termites in great detail. She found about 20 species of obligate symbionts – ciliate protoctists, and bacterial microbes. The function of these symbionts is to digest wood – a very complex biochemical process. Without their symbionts, termites cannot survive long. This means that a termite, by itself, is not meeting the definition of a “species” – they could not create propagable offsprings. Termites can only exist as a complex symbiotic organism that includes multiple separate species. Many small organisms can even dissociate from their symbionts and live in different strategies – corals [13], the polyp hydra [14], lichen [15]. In higher organisms, obligate partnerships exist in the digestive tracts of all mammals – in particular koalas, sloths, ruminants, and humans.
• The concept of a holobiont. A holobiont is a collective term for a host organism, typically a eukaryote, and the variety of other species that live on, near or within it, jointly forming an ecological unit [16]. We think of a human being one organism from a single species. But if we zoom in with a microscope, we will discover many other species that are living on and inside of us – an entire microbiota of bacteria that affects our health. More than 500 types of microbes live on our skin alone. Inside of our bodies, we have another 500-1,000 types of bacteria in the gut, along with an unknown number of viruses (known as our virome). These bacteria and viruses are essential for our lives – we could not live without them.
  Now, my ‘holobiont’ is the unity of the human and all its symbionts. I share many of the same microbial symbionts with the family and my loved ones. This means that my holobiont overlaps with the holobionts of my loved ones. Without the microbes, we could not survive. This means that we acquire significant genetic overlap by co-living – we merge in our basic functions of being a complex living organism.

Lynn Margulis sometimes over-generalized her observations, which helped those who preferred to dismiss her ideas. But there’s too much truth to her ideas… Other authors have since underlined the symbiotic nature in our living world, everywhere around us. I am just offering three examples that stand out for me:

• Trees in symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi. Suzanne Simard [17] described the deep connectivity of trees through mycorrhizal fungal networks. Through these networks, trees exchange nutrients, energy, and information. They communicate pest attacks, and enable a collective immune response to disease. Entire forests are thus connected through the “wood wide web” and create a single hyper organism.
• Recent whale research demonstrates a powerful influence of whales on the function of oceans, global carbon storage, and the health of commercial fisheries [18]. As whales are recovering from centuries of over-hunting, researchers begin to understand how (still unimaginable) abundance of whales have impacted the circulation of nutrients, effectively greening large parts of the oceans that are now ‘nutrient deserts’. This way, whales have “farmed” the oceans and created living abundance of plankton, fish, and other vertebrates. Whaling not only collapsed the populations of whales, but entire ecosystems that were once abundant turned into ‘ocean deserts’. Because whales have sustained the growth of plankton in on enormous regions, and many plankton species exude cloud condensation nuclii and influence cloud formation and albedo, whales may have changed our climate.
• Prairie-dwelling First Nations of North America have understood the intricate relationships with grasslands and bison herds. Using smart cultural burns, they managed to attract bison, changing the movement of bison herds in time. First Nations were successful in pulling the bison further and further into dry areas, building soil, and creating fertility. Plant growth followed, and strengthened the small water cycle – it started to rain where there was no rain before. This way, First Nations have transformed dry deserts into lush grasslands [19]. Similar stories of deliberate, positive ecosystem transformation are documented in Australia [20] and the Amazon rain forest [21].

Finally, Lynn Margulis saw the entire Earth as one system that self-regulates its state.  Margulis championed the Gaia hypothesis, an idea that was originally formulated in the 1970s by the British atmospheric chemist James E. Lovelock and that Margulis filled with her understanding of microbial processes. The Gaia hypothesis states that the temperature of the planet, the oxidation state and other chemistry of many atmospheric gases, are produced and maintained by the sum of life  — Earth’s surface is somehow “alive” and creates the conditions for more life. The strong version of the hypothesis, which has been widely criticized by the biological establishment, sees earth as a self-regulating organism with intention or even consciousness; Margulis subscribed to a weaker version, seeing the planet as an integrated self- regulating ecosystem. Gaia is not a Goddess there to protects us humans – Gaia simply is.  Lynn Margulis summarized:  “Gaia is a tough bitch” — a system that has worked for over three billion years without people. Gaia’s surface, its atmosphere and its environment will continue to evolve long after people and prejudice are gone. Life will persist.

Conclusion

In summary, life is far more than individual organisms. Its more than flows of genes through generations. It’s even more than the interaction of species in ecosystems. Life is something that creates the conditions for more life. Life is deeply interconnected, it encompasses flows of matter, energy, and information. Life transcends species, because species could not live in isolation.

Somehow, I feel that Margulis’ work forms the biological foundation to what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “inter-being” – the understanding that every organism lives in every other organism, that energy can flow between organisms. If we harm one being, we harm all beings. Her work also stresses the sacredness of God’s Creation, as Judaeo-Christians once formulated it (before a translated Bible twisted the meaning of Hebrew writers and entitled Christian Males with the right to control Earth [22]). And Margulis’ work seems fully compatible with the indigenous way of seeing life. Why aren’t our academic institutions, our schools, our religious teachers, our feminists, talking more about her? Why are her ideas almost disappearing, while we get all gang-ho about DNA?

With this symbiotic understanding of life as an interdependent system that fosters conditions for more life, the age-old question on “What is the Meaning of Life?” becomes simple, almost trivial. The meaning of life is to contribute to creating conditions for more life. That’s why we humans are here on Earth.  To foster more life on Earth – more vibrancy, more balance, faster cycling of nutrients, more conversion of our sun’s energy into life, more diversity of life.

Is your life meaningful?

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References

[1] https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/what-if-we-survive/

[2] The Meaning of Life? – Deep Therapy for Existential Crisis and Despair – Non-Dogmatic.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFKWfB_j4EI

[3] Daniel Marston, Animal Behavior and the Meaning of Life, December 28, 2020, https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/comparatively-speaking/202012/animal-behavior-and-the-meaning-life

[4] Scheff, Liam. 2007. The Dawkins Delusion. Salvo, 2:94.

[5] Humes, Monkey Girl, 119.

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/14/magazine/attack-of-the-microbiologists.html

[7] https://www.edge.org/conversation/lynn_margulis-chapter-7-gaia-is-a-tough-bitch

[8] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/discover-interview-lynn-margulis-says-shes-not-controversial-shes-right

[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6958426/

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c

[11] Margulis L, Lopez Baluja L, Awramik SM, Sagan D. Community living long before man: fossil and living microbial mats and early life. Sci Total Environ. 1986;56:379-97. doi: 10.1016/0048-9697(86)90342-6. PMID: 11542059.

[12] Lazcano A, Peretó J. On the origin of mitosing cells: A historical appraisal of Lynn Margulis endosymbiotic theory. Journal of theoretical biology. 2017 Dec 7;434:80-7.

[13] Muller-Parker G, D’elia CF, Cook CB. Interactions between corals and their symbiotic algae. Coral reefs in the Anthropocene. 2015:99-116.

[14] Bosch TC. Beyond Lynn Margulis’ green hydra. Symbiosis. 2022 May;87(1):11-7.

[15] Honegger R. The lichen symbiosis—what is so spectacular about it?. The Lichenologist. 1998 May 1;30(3):193-212.

[16] https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-are-holobionts.html

[17] Simard S. Finding the mother tree: uncovering the wisdom and intelligence of the forest. Penguin UK; 2021 May 4.

[18] Roman J, Estes JA, Morissette L, Smith C, Costa D, McCarthy J, Nation JB, Nicol S, Pershing A, Smetacek V. Whales as marine ecosystem engineers. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 2014 Sep;12(7):377-85.

[19] Johnston Lyla June. Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Regenerative Food and Land Management Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History (Doctoral dissertation, University of Alaska Fairbanks).

[20] Gammage, Bill. “The biggest estate on earth – how Aborigines made Australia.” (2013).

[21] Maezumi SY, Alves D, Robinson M, de Souza JG, Levis C, Barnett RL, Almeida de Oliveira E, Urrego D, Schaan D, Iriarte J. The legacy of 4,500 years of polyculture agroforestry in the eastern Amazon. Nature plants. 2018 Aug;4(8):540-7.

[22] Davis EF. Scripture, culture, and agriculture: An agrarian reading of the Bible. Cambridge University Press; 2008 Oct 13.