What are we?

Thoughts on our atomic composition and our position in the world
We're just atoms, right? What's a rock? Atoms. What's my laptop? Atoms. Where did I come from? Well, apart from that book having the answer, it's established that we're not sure. Where did my laptop come from? Well, it's component parts, I suppose. Out of the ground. Where did my ancestors go? Into the ground. Are my ancestors part of my laptop? Quite possibly.

Consider us humans, and consider a rock. What's the difference? Not much. We have component atoms. We just have moving parts. Ok, perhaps we have more in common with plants. What's the difference? We have legs, they do not. We have intelligence; they, arguably, don't. With our intelligence we've crafted clothes to wrap our bodies in, tools with which to make it easier to get food. But we're still basically the same thing, component atoms. When we both die, we both get absorbed back into the earth, back to join the large pool of atoms that don't currently make up humans, or plants, or other "living" creatures.

Apart from the odd meteorite hitting earth, or the satellites we fling into outer space, we're not growing or anything. We basically keep the same amount of atoms, we can't "create" any, right? So the greater we populate the earth, the more of this pool of atoms we take up, right?

So the earth is just this big hulk of atoms, some rising from the earth to be part of humans or to rise from the earth to be plants, to be consumed my humans, to become part of humans, and then to be released back in to the earth at a later stage, possibly to become another plant, a rock, or a mineral only to end up in someone's laptop.

To me that's remarkably visual.. this ever changing ever morphing lump of earth, popping out "creatures" on it's surface, only to take them back in later.

Fascinating.