We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested – probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley.)
So we are all reincarnations – though short-lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere – as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
In 1885 Senator Henry Dawes made a tour of Indian reservations in Oklahoma and delivered his report to the Lake Mohonk Conference – an annual gathering of influential whites who called themselves ‘friends of the Indian’, and were dedicated to advancing their red brethren towards white civilisation. The senator brought dispiriting news: ‘There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilisation.’ The tribes were still living within communal social structures. They were still sharing all their food and possessions with their kinfolk. They were more impressed by displays of generosity than the accumulation of private wealth.
‘We need to awaken in him [the Indian] wants,’ said another conferencee. ‘In his dull savagery he must be touched by the wings of the divine angel of discontent… Discontent with the teepee and the starving rations of the Indian camp in winter is needed to get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers – and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars! … this is the first great step in the education of the race.’
From Ghost Riders: Travels with American Nomads by Richard Grant
