The human species is at the dawning of the second genetic revolution.
The original carriers of information are thought to be not DNA, but RNA. RNA is commonly known as messenger RNA, and used by the DNA to enable it to operate, and therefore to reproduce. It is thought that RNA molecules originally reproduced themselves, but at some stage the DNA took over. In a sense this does not represent any defeat of RNA - the RNA is reproduced in every living cell, with the help of the DNA - so the RNA is not in anyway "ripped off".
Another theory is that RNA actually took over from very primitive forms of life based on clay, but this is not really relevant to this discussion. The point is that the new life is based on thought.
Have you ever composed a joke? While most of us make jokes in our lives, I am referring to the kind which are apocryphal stories with punch-lines. I have told many jokes in my life, but have never even spoken to anyone who claims to have made up a joke. Jokes have misty origins, and are copied (by word of mouth) many times. These are parasitic life forms, which use the human brain as a host, and replicate themselves via communications between people.
The jokes which we would think are good jokes are told more often, and hence are good at reproducing themselves. Some jokes I know have been around since my grandparents were young.
Jokes are a sub-class of life-forms called human thought. There are many examples of reproducing human thought - including the text that you are now reading. While the words are not themselves fighting to get me to write them into my note-book, the ideas which have the most appeal are the ones which will get retold, and shall be in some sense successful.
Our genes have produced our brains, and our brains care more about ideas than about the DNA which forms and controls them. The brain has been designed to reproduce the DNA, but brains didn't know about DNA, so it was more effective to program them with ideas like love of family, fear of death, and ability to communicate.
Many humans now care about our thoughts more than our bodies or our genes, and we now have the technology to focus on that instead of our bodies. Our essence of being that so many of us wish to conserve is our thoughts, not our bodies. Many humans would be quite happy if they had their bodies replaced with other bodies, but most of us feel that we would not be ourselves if our minds were swapped with others.
Human-kind will eventually learn to transfer his thoughts, and his consciousness onto another platforms, and enjoy a kind of immortality. He will be able to share his consciousness with others, and possibly join everybody together and form a uniform consciousness, and remove our dependence on DNA altogether.
We see a primitive form of this now - the internet.
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