My Perspective on Humans

We characterize ourselves as being humans, but what does this terminology imply? What makes us humans so special? From a biological point of view, we are beings that have evolved from micro-organisms after millions of years of evolution. We are simply the life form that has adapted the best in order to survive the longest as a community. All what we are now is the result of the accumulation of many events in the past. Our instincts have developed to favour our survival and we developed a large array of social skills in order to live within our evolving community. Each of the traits we inherit to this day are derived from the previous behaviours of our ancestors and from the random processes that modify our genetics.

The need to interact with others and our social perspective have evolved from this natural process. We interact with people in ways set up by social norms that have been set up through generations and generations. We want those who surround us to respect us, we want to be well perceived in order to fit in our society. People have a great influence on us and our actions no matter where we live in this world. From the moment that we are children, we imitate the behaviours and emotions of the people who surround us. We learn from those around us what is good and what is bad. We learn from what is already there and then we interpret it. I shouldn’t hit my brother because my parents will get mad, I should read a book because my grandmother will praise me. All we are doing is taking what is already there and giving it a meaning that fits in with our emotions. Our creativity comes from linking these facts together to create new ones. (Our personality is mostly shaped up during our childhood for the simple reason that is harder to unlearn what you have learned rather than to learn something new.) As we live our life, we inevitably become an average of the people that surround us. (Now that everything is so accessible through the internet, the number of people that influence your life are a lot bigger than it used to be, but the people that are in your entourage will have the greatest influence on your actions. You can think of it as a weighted average.) Humans are different from one another in the sense, that each one of us has a slightly different DNA structure, which permits us to analyse things slightly differently and the accumulation of those changes have a big impact through time. If we were to be in the same body as Hitler and lived the same experiences as him since he was born, we would inevitably act the same way he did. All that is different between us is our experiences and our genes which help us interpret our experiences differently.

People within a similar culture identify with one another and share a common set of values and beliefs. Each generation, every individual brings in their own creativity and forces the community to evolve by the averaging law. As time moves on and the community becomes bigger, each different individual contribution carries less weight overall but still impacts their local environment. At this point, there are many different local environments in that community and they eventually branch out to form their own community but with the same founding values (we are all governed by the initial founding rules to ensure our survival). As time goes on, different cultures are created, and people think about problems from different perspectives and abide by different rules. If enough of us believe in something, then it becomes the truth. A typical example would be considering a 100$ bill. In reality that bill is just a piece of paper but since our whole system attributes value to that specific piece of paper then its value becomes a truth. That piece of paper now holds a value that is comparable to other things that we have decided to believe in. That is to say that our beliefs and actions are governed by our society no matter how hard we chose rebel against that fact. We are a tiny part that that big organism that is human life. Our contributions are small, but each one of us helps expand this organism deeper into our world by living different experiences. Ultimately, we are no different from other life forms, we all have the same roots and physically branched out at some point.

Now what makes humans so special? We are the most dominant species on this earth because we have developed into surviving better. We have developed a bigger brain which allows us to be more conscious. And now arises the question of what is consciousness? We are all created from the universe itself which evolved naturally into what we are today. Our existence is one possible path out of all the other infinite possible paths out there. We are the universe itself that has slowly evolved by creating structures out of chaos and over time given itself the capabilities of slowly understanding itself. (I believe that consciousness is the accumulation of these capabilities and a form of structure in which information can be comprehended). Once that stage is attained and we are no longer occupied in fighting for our survival, then what? Why do we continue to evolve and try to understand ourselves even better, isn’t this just a never-ending loop?

To be continued in the next article: structure vs chaos.

AK