April 1, 2012 was the 70th birthday of philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, one of our era’s most important and influential thinkers on philosophy of mind. His insights on purpose and consciousness get to the heart of what it means to be human. His quote below is a reminder of how fortunate we are.
Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.
Source: Brain Pickings
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