What was I before this?

Just a small thought, something that came to me as I was reading Everything is Illuminated by Johnathan Safran Foer, that is, what was I before this? A paper was mentioned, one written by a character in the story, with a title something along the lines of "To the Dust: From Man You Come and to Man You Shall Return." I have to look around myself, in light of this, and wonder, how much of this dust around me was human before, and what kind of life did it lead? Did it create anything? Did it love? Where was it and what was it before it was here? Within all that exists around us lies the secrets and the history of all time, since the beginning, whenever and whatever that was. We all know, of course, that nothing is either created nor truelly destroyed, and that everything around us, and we ourselves, have always been, in some form or another, and will always be. I, for one, find comfort in this.

Beyond that, there was another, similar case in which I was reading a paper on the Philosopy of ecology that was sent to me by a friend in which a paper was mentioned, written by a Norwegian, that claimed that Man is the most tragic of all creatures on this earth because "he has learned enough about the Earth to realize that the Earth would be better off without the presence of humankind." I thought at first: So ture, so true! Then of course I reflected for a couple moments on how much of Man really realizes this? Does it really matter to them if they do? Our period of experience on this earth is so finite that people get too greedy to care. I.E. the bush administraion (a.k.a. the US oil lobby) claiming that global warming is just a myth. Which it is. I mean...what?