Evolution gave joy & woe, sentience. Verse f. Within Aue, the theory of evolution is central. The inexorable processes working through nature have given rise to all life we see today, expected to apply even to life we have not yet seen. Just as water always finds or carves its way through a landscape, so too do biological creatures through their environments, shaped through natural selection. Even the course of society is at the mercy of such a fundamental force.
Science, while supplying profound understanding of the inner workings, rightly does not assert what relationship we should have with this fact of life. We all have a universal heritage, but the level of apathy or engagement with this knowledge is up to each individual.
Some cultures directly worship their ancestors. All cultures at least remember them, seeking the truth about their past. Some people can trace their roots back centuries, while some are entirely alienated from even their parents.
But these pale in comparison with the deep past of our species. Events and individuals whose actions are lost to time, who set the path for people hundreds of thousands of years later. These animals and people, tossed around by fate, developed distinct faculties, desires, and emotions. Our individual quirks notwithstanding, we have inherited the vast majority of everything that makes us human, everything which makes us enjoy and suffer life in the ways that we do.
The power of language; particular tastes, smells, sight; fear, awe, boredom, love, and even death are all inherited from the innumerable minds and bodies now wholly scattered. All joy, and all woe, are products of how we respond to the world around us with our innate expectations. We crave attention, longevity, reproduction, knowledge, preservation, and control over our circumstances. We loathe physical harm, social disarray, torment, insecurity, helplessness, and ignorance. And while each individual has inherited or chosen different levels of these, evolution will ensure they are permanent features of the sentient experience.
We should give consideration also to our descendents, of whom we are ancestors. Eight billion Earthlings will be dwarfed by all those to come, both on Earth and among the stars. Even if you have no close biological descendants of your own, your ideas, your engagement in life, your care for others, your pollution, and even some of your words will live on to shape these people and animals. In fact, susceptible to millennia of success, you might be entirely unable to help yourself in improving future society. Selflessness, altruism, and long-term thinking are staples of the human experience.
This story will continue for practically eternity, never escaping the dichotomy of joy and woe.