On a Biological Part of Personhood

I'm currently bothered by how biology shapes us, and how it effects our personhood. Considering the manner in which biology works, it seems that life is just a medium for which DNA propagates itself. Our germ line happens to have benefited from both the creation of abstract intelligence and highly social behavior; though if mindless cannibalism would have contributed more to its continuance, exactly that might have happened. As far as biology is concerned, all that matters is that we live long enough to produe another generation of creatures that will perfrom exactly that function.

Being derived by biological evolutionary means, our behavior is in part dictated by these biologies. Perhaps the largest is the drive to couple and produce offspring, followed closely by eating and defecation. These have even informed culture to a large degree, though the last may not seem so (perhaps a discussion of the culture of defecation might be interesting). And because of these, we spend considerable energy following these, i.e. being animal, as opposed to contributing to the sum of the universe's culture and knowledge, being people. The latter, course, can be informed by the previous, and has produced a mass amount of work culturally interesting, but should be known as being human, and can only be understood from the context our particular animal-person.

Whilst these biologies may contribute to our humanhood, personhood, they may also detract. The upkeep needed to maintain ourselves as biological beings is of such a degree that only the wealthiest of persons in the world, which it seems would include myself (and as such fills me with guilt), get the opportunity to contribute considerably, or even insignificantly, to the canon of personhood.