There is a wildly under rated but essential aspect to our lives. This aspect to ourselves gives us likes and dislikes. Who and even what we are is in great part dictated by it. It is super complex. Being unique to each one of us, it is wildly personal. And old.
How old is your genetic code? DNA is fondamental to our very existence. Our genetic code is something incredibly old. Vastly longer living than our immediate individual 80 years of existence. In fact, it is freakishly old. Unimaginably old.
The extremely complex life coded in our DNA has never been broken and has been ongoing for hundreds of millions of years. In fact, the best evidence points to most probably 3-4 billion years.
The presence of this information has been very mysterious for generations upon generations. It is foundational to our lives and existence. We are in fact not just short-lived individuals with an average life span of some 80 years. We are in fact very much part of the an immensely old life. Not one of our ancestors has died before keeping life alive into the next generation.
Many of our values and behaviors find their meaning here. Our genetic code is fundamental to are lives but is far from being all that we are.
We are, at least through the information in our genes, part of an eternal life.
Richard Dawkins book, The Selfish Gene gives some insight into this.
Reproduction may be one of the strongest secular forms of informational continuity. A child does not simply preserve part of a parent’s DNA: a new informational self emerges from recombined genes, learning, culture, and relationships. Parenthood is therefore neither personal immortality nor a religious duty. It is the creation and cultivation of another conscious being capable of experience, agency, knowledge, and meaning. Secular thought has rightly defended the choice not to reproduce; it should also explain why creating and raising a new person can be profoundly worthwhile—without God, souls, commandments, or obligation.