But it’s true. When compared with every other cellular-based contraption that has attempted to infest this earth during the last 4 billion years, we humans are insanely unique in our creative & deductive capacities. This adaptive, powerful & broadly-applicable intelligence has rapidly-fueled humans’ abilities to:
• build amazingly diverse & complex tools & systems.
• discover & test the deepest physical underpinnings of our universe.
• work massively, dynamically & complexly together in our efforts to achieve common goals.
• explore & express what this journey means to us.
For nearly all of those 4 billion years that followed cellular life’s first appearance on earth, nothing came anywhere close to doing any of those things at the level of modern humans. And we’ve only been around for about 200,000 years. That’s almost nothing in the evolutionary scale of time. Beyond that, most of those abilities noted above didn’t really start revving-up the speed of civilization until about 30,000 years ago.
Think about that within an evolutionary scale. The earliest chordates, like the first, tiny roundworms—which is where humans’ vertebrate, nerve-based lineage really begins—appeared about 700 million years ago. After all of that time, the full glory that is human civilization has resulted from just 170,000 years of foreplay and a mere 30,000 years of getting down to business.
This whole outrageous (& now solar-system-spanning) Homo-sapien enterprise has blossomed in an amount of time that represents just .004% of the entire 700 million year history of chordates. In case you’re having a hard time visualizing that, let me help: it would look super-weird on a chart—and to depict an accurate amount of weirdness, the chart would have to be really, really, really big.
Why Am I Pointing This Out?
Reasonable question. I mean, yeah, that’s mind-blowing & everything, but so what? If you read my first few posts, you might’ve noticed that I have some deep concerns about where this whole outrageous Homo-sapien enterprise is headed in the very near future. It appears that the unceasing & explosive progress of human civilization has outstripped our understanding of how that progress is impacting our species (& the life-sustaining conditions of the planet on which we currently reside).
And here’s the thing about humans: if achieving a goal (like, say, changing the course of civilization) requires difficult actions, we’re most likely to be motivated to take those actions only when something really valuable is at stake. Thus, when most humans judge whether or not a difficult action is worth attempting, our brains are mostly interested in how much those actions are likely to impact our actual lives.
This means that when we encounter unique, challenging, long-term problems like climate change—whose worst consequences might occur long after we’re already gone—it’s extra-difficult to motivate humans to take those not-so-easy actions required to solve those long-term problems (especially if someone possesses a simple-but-behavior-shaping belief like: I don’t believe the problem actually exists).
So, if we’re really going to take the actions required to address problems like climate change, we must not only explore (& prove) how our progress is impacting us, but we must understand the genuine value of what it is we’re trying to preserve. In other words, species have of come & gone for billions of years—it’s the very nature of evolution—what’s really so special about humans?
To answer that question we have to take a step back from all this unceasing, myopia-inducing progress, and we need to look at what makes this ongoing experiment in humanity so truly amazing (& why we should be better temporary caretakers of this ongoing experiment).
6 Reasons Why Humans Are Seriously Fucking Amazing
I couldn’t resist. But now that I’ve engaged your brain’s inner list-junkie (which is really just another version of your brain’s inner rule-building-junkie) we’ll get right down to doling out your enumerated fix. When we talk about what makes our species so insanely unique, we’re talking about how the extraordinarily-evolved systems of the human mind have enabled an entire suite of breathtaking & singularly-Homo-sapien developments, including…
1. Language - The importance of language in the evolution of human minds & the development our uniquely-human version of consciousness cannot be overstated. For starters, our capacity for highly-complex & dynamic language-use is what allows our brains to generate & manipulate creative, complicated thoughts & problem-solutions. And that’s because (as discussed in Narrative Complexity, Essay #1) all of our thinking & problem-solving is primarily achieved via some form of internal dialogue.
Even when a problem is mostly physically-based (like fixing a sink) we are still silently-but-internally talking ourselves through those actions using words that we hear in our mind— turn it that way, okay, is that loose enough? (Unless the actions are highly-familiar & employ well-memorized motor scripts, which allows that internal dialogue to wander amongst other matters while you turn the wrench.)
Even when someone like Einstein was first contemplating something as creatively & spatially abstract as his Theory of Relativity, he couldn’t have conjured riding on a beam of light without first internally linguistically positing something like— wait, what if you could ride a beam of light, somehow travel that fast? Which was likely followed by more internal dialogue that helped to describe & manipulate Albert’s internal (but visual) spatial representation of the idea that was first spurred by those earlier words.
We think with words—they are the human mind’s most fundamental tool. And yet, this kind of constant word-based thinking is such an innate part of our being that we rarely ever account for the absolute power & necessity of language within the mechanisms of human consciousness. Oh, and without complex language, communicating complicated ideas between people would be, y’know, nearly impossible.
So, yes, complex & dynamic language is seriously fucking amazing.
2. Beliefs - We discussed several aspects of human belief systems in a post a couple weeks ago. But to bring any new readers quickly up-to-speed: a belief is basically a high-value & (seemingly) high-validity prediction trope that seeks to identify & judge a key subset of data within a “decision-equation” (essentially, within a predictive narrative). For example: I believe in forgiveness. In other words: in almost any setting, in any decision that can be reduced to choosing forgiveness or non-forgiveness, choosing forgiveness is highly-likely to lead to ultimately desirable results—regardless of specific circumstances.
Beliefs are the express lane of decision-making. They’re also a powerful way to help confine specific individual behavior within socially-defined boundaries—because we learn most of our beliefs from the people around us, which provides a viral way for socially-defined behavioral boundaries to be spread from mind-to-mind. In part, these beliefs help to shape behavior by generating future-or-current-action-inhibiting emotions like disgust (with others) and guilt (disgust with ourselves) when we witness, consider or commit belief-violating acts.
Ultimately, from a neural point of view, these belief systems (which evolved out of primitive mammalian disease-avoiding disgust mechanisms) provide a highly-efficient & powerful method for identifying overarching—but sometimes deeply-hidden—patterns in behavior & experience. Discerning these “larger truths” and broadly-applying them to a wide-range of behavior in a wide-range of situations (and our capacity to virally spread these “truths” within a society) has provided humans with an extraordinary, deeply-malleable tool for shaping our actions according to “proven” conventions & for making vital decisions with reliable efficiency.
Beliefs can provide us with faith in ideas that we “know” are true, but can’t always prove to be true. Which might sound a little crazy (& sometimes it is) but considering everything that they’ve helped humans to achieve (and considering that no other earthly creature possesses them) beliefs are still, undoubtedly, seriously fucking amazing.
3. Science - The same dynamic, modular neural systems that allowed for the emergence of complex (& syntactically rule-based) language have also aided humans in developing a capacity for complicated, rule-based causal logic—a capacity that has powerfully deepened our understanding of how the physical universe works.
In the beginning, “science” was as simple as discovering, for example, that certain kinds of thin branches grew more flexible after being soaked in water for a period of time. After more experiments produced similar results, this scientific, causal “fact” was added to our knowledge of the world—making it available to be used when solving future problems & creating new tools.
And what sets this “fact” apart from more random observations or conjecture is that it’s ultimately based upon repeatable & demonstrable evidence. In other words, in test after test, nearly every thin branch from that type of tree became more flexible after soaking it in water for a specific amount of time. These are the roots of the scientific method. And human brains are so well-suited to employ this seemingly-simple method of conjecture, testing & discovery that we’ve used it to learn all of this.
That repeatable & demonstrable evidence is one of the reasons why beliefs & science are often seen as incompatible or at odds with each other (even though they’re both vital neural tools and are actually designed to work in concert). Beliefs are useful because they help humans to identify larger, overarching patterns and make correlations between actions & results based on discerned & observed (but not entirely provable) evidence. Science—and the rule-based neural systems that it employs—are useful because they help humans to identify specific causal patterns and determine direct causal relationships based on that repeatable & demonstrable evidence.
And really, that last sentence is a ridiculous understatement—because it doesn’t speak to the absurdly vast range & number of specific causal patterns & relationships that humans have identified in the world around us (and even in the worlds way, way out there). Science has brought us nothing less than everything we know about our universe today. Without science, we’d know about as much as a chimpanzee (who hasn’t even figured out how to make fire).
All of which clearly supports the conclusion that science is, indeed, seriously fucking amazing.
4. Technology - Without science there could be no technology, but without technology, science wouldn’t be all that useful. Because humans do almost everything by using tools.
When that primitive human learned that soaking the branches made them more flexible, that’s science. When he decided to use those now-malleable branches to fashion, say, a cozy, secure (& possibly buoyant) new bassinet for his baby, that’s technology. He used his scientific discovery to make something.
When we think about the “modern world” most of us tend to define that modernity by, essentially, the kinds of technology that we employ. And those of you reading this are likely deeply immersed in an ever-growing pool of that technology—which has been a mostly-good-though-not-entirely-great development along this human journey. But those various aspects of technology’s impact are not what we’re here to discuss right now.
We’re here to point out that humans have been so ridiculously expert & prolific in creating & employing technology that—while other primates can take pride in using specifically-fashioned sticks to retrieve termites for consumption (mmm…yummy)—we successfully landed people on the moon & returned them safely to earth on our first attempt. Obviously, human technology is seriously fucking amazing.
5. Culture - It’s cool to make stuff that’s useful (& it’s useful to make stuff that’s useful). But if we modern humans are going to get around to actually being motivated to enthusiastically (or at least reliably) first make that useful stuff & then make use of that useful stuff, we generally need to possess a certain okay-ness & connectedness within our world.
The roots of those desires to feel good about ourselves & our place in our community come from the myriad emotional judgements that our brain is using to shape our behavior (discussed at length in Narrative Complexity, Essay #2). In the most simplified terms, discomfort or pain is intended to generate protective responses & initiate a search for alternative courses; pleasure is intended to generate performance-oriented responses & focus resources on supporting the current course.
In other words, working through (& balancing) all that pain & pleasure in a way that beneficially shapes the course of your life is necessary in order to reliable go out and assume your specific (& surely invaluable) role within human civilization. And all of the world-knowledge that science & beliefs have bestowed upon modern humans, and all of those peaks & valleys of an existence can lead us to feel deeply adrift in the sea of civilization.
Culture has given modern humans a broad archipelago of islands in that vast sea, places where we can be nourished, heard, saved. Our culture is the sum of all our rituals, literature, philosophy, art, clothing, jewelry, music, dance, theater, film—every human creation intended in some way to express some personal vision & embodiment of our interaction & experience within this world.
It is the most poignant quality of our civilization: that we engage in these deep, but seemingly-frivolous explorations & expressions of what this journey means to us. And the poignancy comes from the fact that these cultural expressions of our journey do not seem frivolous to us at all—that they seem, in reality, to drive right to the very center of what it truly is to be human.
Our species should undoubtedly take great pride in all that science & technology have brought us. But in the twilight of our kind, whenever that comes, those that are left will likely revere (& find comfort in) those great remaining artifacts of human culture much more deeply than any of the magnificent tools that they have left at their disposal.
This profound place at the center of our species, its capacity to explore abstract & existential aspects of being, and its immense power over our psyche certainly makes human culture seriously fucking amazing.
6. Society - Do you know how to build a power plant? Make t-shirts? Diagnose malaria? Fix a refrigerator? Launch a new brand of laxative? Curate a painting exhibit? Teach reading? Tear down a bridge? (You get the idea.) Well, somebody out there knows.
And if that somebody is living in a well-functioning society, they’ve hopefully found some place where they are being adequately compensated for usefully employing that knowledge & their specific skill-set. After science, technology & culture helped humans to develop useful new pursuits, we needed for people to be able to actually pursue those pursuits. This is where society came into the picture.
Basically, a larger number & deeper specificity of different useful, species-benefitting pursuits led to a greater need for more complex cooperation between people within a community. Thus, humans diversified & specialized their roles, developed methods for spreading role-specific knowledge & skill-sets, cobbled together systems of exchange & interaction that allowed those diverse products & services to be distributed effectively within the community, determined rules that defined how those products & services would be distributed fairly (or unfairly, if that was someone’s goal), etc., etc., etc.
For civilization to actually become civilization, humans needed to develop (& learn to manage) vast, diverse, complex societies. Obviously, some of humanity’s myriad societal experiments have worked out better than others. But considering the fact that we now do live in a truly (& deeply-interwoven) global community, nearly every one of those previous or still-ongoing societal experiments has made at least some contribution to that thing we now think of as civilization.
And if our species couldn’t have gotten to this extraordinary apex in our insanely unique civilization without it, then it cannot be denied: modern human society is seriously fucking amazing.
This Is Who We Are
All of this—all wreaking its great beauty & havoc in just .004% of the 700 million year history of chordates on earth. All of it the ultimate result of 4 billion years of cellular division. We have no idea whether or not this kind of insanely- & suddenly-explosive model of evolution is common amongst this universe, but—if we’re looking at the only model we know—it’s clear that humanity is an extraordinarily-unique (& possibly very-difficult-to-achieve) development in the course of evolution on this earth.
And yet, there are arsenals of nuclear weapons, armed & at the ready—arensals that could obliterate all semblance of humanity as we know it. The skies fill with gases that are likely to make much of our planet only harshly-habitable and broadly-incapable of sustaining the swarming populations of humans that now exist. Global food chains are at risk of significant disruption. Ever-ingenious bacteria are beginning to overcome our science’s best defenses. The conveyor belt of oceanic currents that has been fundamental in stabilizing the climate during the rise of human civilization is showing evidence of possibly catastrophic stagnation.
This is where we are in the journey. 4 billion years to get here, 30,000 years of magnificence, and this is where we—the humans of the 21st century—this is where we stand. Are we capable, are we willing to do what our moment requires? This is the question that human history will judge us by.
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