On Being Human
First off, I plan to post soon some or all of what I wrote in my journal during Zurich. While it may not be interesting or significant, I do have a few points buried in there. Zurich was like Strawberry Fields for the Beatles. A lot of potential with a ton of disappointment. Zurich, that monotonous exile that I so blanked in my mind, it taught me nothing other than I am a tool to the world. Its done nothing, but bite me in the ass work wise, hurt my wife, and delayed a lot of my deserved relaxation time. In terms of keeping the journal, I had my heart in it and the fact I kept writing at times, shows how fucking bored I was. Meaning, when there was nothing to even write about, occasionally I would sit in star bucks or my hotel room and crank out a few lines.
Todays post is on some recent thoughts I had. I know that most of what I am talking about probably has a name in philosophy and has been thought of before. In all my years studing anthropology, psychology, working in business, and busting my ass off, I have thought what makes us human.
It's a classic question and at the heart of any person who thinks. I thought a lot about language, particularly the fact I am not fluent in any, besides English. Words, representations, are sounds and we constantly talk in our heads. This may be mistaken for consciousness, and when you think that the common ant, without thinking, can build an ant hill, you can conceive words are probably not so imporant. Thinking does not make us human, because without it, with the right genes, senses, and behavior we could build a city, without thought.
No. What I think makes us human is creativity. An ant, can build an ant hill, but it does not put gargoyles on the sides. Oh yes, gargoyles are primedieval ways of scaring off our psychological demons, but they at touch of creativity we have. Now, we all know people are creative and artististic and many a mind has said art is what makes us human.
This depends on your definitioin art, modern art plays with our perceptions, for those who take the time to look at it. Good modern art goes one step further and takes the mundane or catalogued and displays it to our focus. Yesterdays stones at a construction site, are tomorrows, focus point. What we walk by or pass and just glance it, we just say oh yah thats normal or ignore it, is if focused on interesting. However, my point is that art just focuses you on what is around, creativity in art is different.
Creativity is our ability to take all that we sense in real time and then think, more importantly, imagine. For example, you see two oranges and a tooth pick. On sheer behavior like an ant, we would charge and consume the orange. In modern art, the tooth pick would be aranged in a dry out orange. Focusing on the passing of time, the mundane objects, and maybe making a joke on death or time. In creativity though, you take that tooth pick, attach it between the two oranges, and make wheel on an axle, roll it forward, now imagine a wagon pulling your grain.
We as humans make one extra step, that is connecting what is around and imagining a nonexistent, potential future.
We imagine, we can conjure up words, images, past, and make an idea, a dream, of the future or what we want or just random combinations. Be these combinations sounds, sights, numbers, anything, we create!
Now take god. If all things are possible we have infinite creation, but some things are limited, colors sometimes, useful numbers, but you know if we make something that works with our physical universes set of constants and rules, we can conclude that there are limitations.
In other words, what if creativity was not unlimited to due physical rules, such as fire is hot and gravity...
If there is limited creativity then either a god created the rules, closing the infinite, creating the binary, and thus life and our false conciousness. If there is a god then, all things have already been created and if they may not exist physically the mere thought is drawn upon an unrealized creative bank. The fact there is not infinity, that there is binary or something, the natural laws, glue together the infinite. This binded material has to bind by rules or physical natural laws, and thus what is the infinite is no longer, it is confined to rules, to space, to time etc.
Thus this constriction limits the unelimited, creating a Finite set of properties or items. Once ideas are contricted to a space, the limited numbers, puts a set figure on what can be created.
Either humans pull from this box and for our purposes may be unique, what if others pull, what if though this box of ideas and limited creativity is god. What if the Hindus are right that the ininite beyond the box is a god itself but the all knowning thing that infinity is? However, none of this will answer the next important question, are we unique and therefore, death is either another consciousness or a hallucination? However, it could still be permanent infinite nothing where sleep must yield our clues...though our saviour in this future debate is life itself.
Todays post is on some recent thoughts I had. I know that most of what I am talking about probably has a name in philosophy and has been thought of before. In all my years studing anthropology, psychology, working in business, and busting my ass off, I have thought what makes us human.
It's a classic question and at the heart of any person who thinks. I thought a lot about language, particularly the fact I am not fluent in any, besides English. Words, representations, are sounds and we constantly talk in our heads. This may be mistaken for consciousness, and when you think that the common ant, without thinking, can build an ant hill, you can conceive words are probably not so imporant. Thinking does not make us human, because without it, with the right genes, senses, and behavior we could build a city, without thought.
No. What I think makes us human is creativity. An ant, can build an ant hill, but it does not put gargoyles on the sides. Oh yes, gargoyles are primedieval ways of scaring off our psychological demons, but they at touch of creativity we have. Now, we all know people are creative and artististic and many a mind has said art is what makes us human.
This depends on your definitioin art, modern art plays with our perceptions, for those who take the time to look at it. Good modern art goes one step further and takes the mundane or catalogued and displays it to our focus. Yesterdays stones at a construction site, are tomorrows, focus point. What we walk by or pass and just glance it, we just say oh yah thats normal or ignore it, is if focused on interesting. However, my point is that art just focuses you on what is around, creativity in art is different.
Creativity is our ability to take all that we sense in real time and then think, more importantly, imagine. For example, you see two oranges and a tooth pick. On sheer behavior like an ant, we would charge and consume the orange. In modern art, the tooth pick would be aranged in a dry out orange. Focusing on the passing of time, the mundane objects, and maybe making a joke on death or time. In creativity though, you take that tooth pick, attach it between the two oranges, and make wheel on an axle, roll it forward, now imagine a wagon pulling your grain.
We as humans make one extra step, that is connecting what is around and imagining a nonexistent, potential future.
We imagine, we can conjure up words, images, past, and make an idea, a dream, of the future or what we want or just random combinations. Be these combinations sounds, sights, numbers, anything, we create!
Now take god. If all things are possible we have infinite creation, but some things are limited, colors sometimes, useful numbers, but you know if we make something that works with our physical universes set of constants and rules, we can conclude that there are limitations.
In other words, what if creativity was not unlimited to due physical rules, such as fire is hot and gravity...
If there is limited creativity then either a god created the rules, closing the infinite, creating the binary, and thus life and our false conciousness. If there is a god then, all things have already been created and if they may not exist physically the mere thought is drawn upon an unrealized creative bank. The fact there is not infinity, that there is binary or something, the natural laws, glue together the infinite. This binded material has to bind by rules or physical natural laws, and thus what is the infinite is no longer, it is confined to rules, to space, to time etc.
Thus this constriction limits the unelimited, creating a Finite set of properties or items. Once ideas are contricted to a space, the limited numbers, puts a set figure on what can be created.
Either humans pull from this box and for our purposes may be unique, what if others pull, what if though this box of ideas and limited creativity is god. What if the Hindus are right that the ininite beyond the box is a god itself but the all knowning thing that infinity is? However, none of this will answer the next important question, are we unique and therefore, death is either another consciousness or a hallucination? However, it could still be permanent infinite nothing where sleep must yield our clues...though our saviour in this future debate is life itself.
posted by Chuck Deggsy at 9:02 PM
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