Gotta keep our "Humanity" some how....

My mind!...it's blown! X_x

Touche. Thats why I keep things simple.

Ignorance truly is bliss. :3

Yep.

I find it pretty hard to define what a "human" is. Even though we're incredibly smart animals, in the end we don't really know that much about ourselves and the universe around us. But it's a wonderful ride... like speeding down a really long, thrilling and fearsome road without having any idea where we came from or where we're going.

Fasinating hu? =3

That sounds rather interesting, now i get this small fear of a like, civil war inside me D:

Don't worry, you have it all the time. All in your body.

That's called disease :P

Or possibly cancer. Disease is usually more of a World War inside your body.

Mind chunks -- EVERYWHERE.

My brother does microbilogy (bacteria and stuff). So I kinde know this story's. Really intresting how your body's made up and what it does.

Okay... who cares? This doesn't affect us. We're not suddenly going to dissolve into a pile of microbes just because we figured this out X3

Hooray for hive organisms.

I knew that there were animals that were colony creatures but I would never have guessed that we were infact one of them.

Siphonophores are even crazier.

Seconded.

The man 'o' war should be the heraldic symbol of communism. Or something.

I've heard that 70% of human body is made of water...
So, if we're 70% water and 90% bacteria and fungi, we're only -60% human XD

MOLD POWER 8D

Oh Shi. . . .Teh mold is attacking the red bull! D:

Replace the enzymes in your gut with more efficient ones and you are as good as dead.

This probably explains otherkins. Who would feel at home in their own body if they came to the realization that they weren't entire all there to begin with?

You got a point there......so if we aren't completely human(despite the fact I haven't really fancied myself as human in the past 5 years), then what are we?

We're failure :3

DUDE!!! DUE TO YOUR ICON I READ IT AND HEARD FARNSWORTH'S VOICE LMAFAOROFLOL OMFG THAT IS SO HILARIOUS!!!

I swear, everytime I read your shit I hear his voice. XD

sooooooooo we're like the Hunters in Halo

But then again every organism in the world is part of the whole we call universe. 8)

Hmm interesting.

Unless you're a bubble-boy, in which case you're 100% human.

Lol.

we actually adopt quite a bit of foreign organisms from our mothers :P

Not until you're born. When you're in the womb you're 100% sterile. You get colonized by your mother's bacteria during vaginal birth and breast feeding.

This is very intriguing I have to say.

Ah, but we are still the governing mind of the whole.

And even though we may not be entirely human now, we started out entirely human, as the article says.

So yeah, we do just happen to have a lot of hitchhikers, but they're pulling their weight it seems!

This makes me wonder what kind of humans will come into being on Mars when we eventually colonize it.

We'll start seeing different species of human for each planet.

Exciting, isn't it? ^_^

But yeah, science may try to sum us up as a walking germ circus, but remember this; You still *think*. You still love. You still hate. You are still *you*.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We're each our own corporations, engaging in hostile takeovers every day!

I will now go LIQUIDATE this brownie, and seize its assets!!!

And then downsize what remains :P

Symbiosis is just about the coolest thing nature ever came up with, here on Earth. Even inside our own cells we aren't alone; the mitochondria that power them are the descendants of ancient bacteria themselves.

We define humanity as the abiding by our own morals whether right or wrong. Basically free will as we define ourselves. But really any organism can do that. Humanity is more of a concrete term, I guess morely associated with the homosapien field I guess.

Have you heard of the concept of "superorganisms"? It's quite fascinating.

75 Billion. Thats the number of lightyears if you drew a strait line across the event horizon, disecting earth at its center, from termination to termination.

And the rub is, theres more of it out there that is just beyond the capabilities of humanity to detect. This http://muse.univ-lyon1.fr/IMG/jpg/v.....field_02-2.jpg is the thumb print of my god. Every point of light, smear, and smudge is a galaxy, over ten thousand of them, more stars then can be seen from earth in the clearest, darkest of night skys, each containing stars beyond count, all in a portion of sky about the size of a hole pierced in a piece of notebook paper with a pencil and held at arms length.

So very, very tiny are we little things, that what we are made from hardly impresses me. And yet. we are made, atom by atom, from the dust and ashes of the stars them selves. We are not human beings. We are nothing less then the children of the universe its self...I guess that makes it all the more sad that we cant seem to get along.

*Ahem*

~How very special are we, for just a moment to be part of lifes eternal rhyme? so very special are we, to have on our family tree, mother earth, and faaaather time. He turns the seasons around, and so she changes her gown, yet they always look in their priiiiime, they go on dancing their dance of everlasting romance, mother earth, and faaaather time.~

Way to go Carl Sagan X3

atleast i paraphrased a little *sticks tongue out*

I have to say...I too have thought about that a lot...We are not so much a person as we are millions of single cells working in concert as one giant colony to survive better. Skin cells defending with the immune system, digestive cells (one could even say we have a big worm that lives inside our body), and even the brain which is a collection of very specialized cells designed to process information for the colony and help control it.

Odd then that we can be so destructive to our colony...

omg this is so fascinating, yet so confusing and complex x.x

argh, my brain @@

We are walking ecosystems.

I disagree! You can't really classify all cells in our bodies as individual living beings because many are so specialized that they can't maintain homeostasis on their own. However, our origins certainly are lots of individual living beings coming together to form a living community with job specialization ;3

Despite it all, we're still human. We're not a "colony of organisms" so much as we are a being with a lot of hitchhikers, some benign, some even benevolent.

Like most articles, causation needs to be mentioned. Kids without a certain bacteria are more likely to develop asthma. Now, is this a product of the bacteria, or is this a product of the environment bacteria-deficient kids live in? (Car exhaust, smog, other air pollutants)

I suspect if these bacteria were so important to our health, we would notice a sizable impact, so much so that one would become physically ill without them. And not just a chance of becoming ill like athsma.

I'm composed of badass and awesome organisms. it's why I'm both badass and awesome... *flexes*

Even more intresting, every single cell in our body works to benifiet the orginism in whole; if a single cell suddenly begins working to benifiet it's own being, it becomes our worst fear....cancer.

This also says so much about other things like society and government.

Are you implying that self interested people are cancerous to society?

I dunno if he is, but I'll say it right out: BIOLOGY IS COMMUNISM! *ahem*

Not essentually a self enterested person, a person who works only to expand and better themselves, but does nothing to help society as a whole progress.

Living to improve ones self is not bad, but it becomes a problem when a single being works to improve to the point in which it shadows all others.
Just like in a body if a single cell goes beyond improving it's self for the benifiet and health of the whole being, it becomes a tumor as it grows, and it kills the being once it over shadows all other cells in the body.