What does it mean to be human?
Well it means you have genetic coding of homo-sapien-sapien. I think I’m going to refer to us as gay-think-think’s from now on. But anyway many people feel that this does not properly describe us due to our cognitive abilities. So I shall refer to this as the ‘human condition’.
So what does it mean to be part of the human condition?
This is a much more complicated issue. So I’ll start with the self, the part of the human condition, which exists solely within our heads. (now for this I assume that the universe does not need me to exist) We as humans interact with our environment. Through this we gain experience. Now a good starting point is birth, is there a self at birth? If no we are a clean slate (I’m considering the formulative time in the womb negligible), if yes well….. I’m not going to go there it’s too freaky and I don’t really believe in determinism. So we start off with a clean slate so each & every experience at the beginning is forming the self, since there is no self at this point, the self is being made entirely from outside influences being internalized. There is no filter of self to reject excepting through instinctive responses (these are not responses of self but genetic responses (pain=cry)). So the beginning we are learning how to experience the world, how to use our senses. The next phase would be learning how to interact with our world. As we get older our neural pathways become more ‘rigid’ so at some point the self is making a majority of the choices & decisions. The older people get the harder for them to change ideologically it becomes.
Anywho, on with the self. So we start with no self and the self starts off using only outside influences to build, until enough of a base has been formed and self-awareness occurs. The statement ‘I think there for I am’ cannot be applied to an infant but only at some later point in development do we become self-aware. We believe this to be unique in humans. So I will put this as part of the human condition: A: self-aware. (I’m ignoring possibilities of extra-terrestrial intelligence with self-awareness) infants are not part of the human condition. I do not know what age self-awareness starts.
More to come…
4 comments:
I agree that self-awareness is the key to learning and making us into a human (one of our conditions) but unfortunately the "training" never stops. It is by sheer force of will (based on this self-awareness) that allows the training not to stick.
To endulge in only self is very difficult since it is the training that forces one to abandon self and join a cause, be it faith or state or family or whatever institute that is training.
So once you are "human" you cannot allow only this aspect of your self to be prevalent over all the rest of you. Otherwise your new master is "humanity" and not your self.
That sounded rambly didn't it? heh
a dynamic system with more components than our mind can percieve, we take a limited view, a narrow path, for to try & percieve all the factors inflencing us all the time maddness would surely shortly follow. we can only comprehend that we cannot comprehend how large the universe truely is.
i don't know
Some would suggest that the divine image is part of being human. As in Genesis.
some could say 'divine image' but i would need some evidence which i could expierence through my own senses or arrive at through logic. thus far i have seen nothing that points, even remotely, toward a 'divine'
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