| | Dostoevsky, once said:" I wish I had one person I could talk to like I talk to myself.
I don't understand why people, even academics don't understand the basics of who we humans are, as animals, and how we got here to our modern civilization.
If I ask that question of even college graduates, few will have much of an answer.
Think about it, we humans have been around for about 300,000 years with this brain, but lived pretty much as our animal selves until about 15,000 years ago, when we settled down, started growing crops and keeping livestock and trading which resulted in learning and sharing knowledge.
And so we started our march to today's civilization where we have pervasive democracies, the rule of law, civil rights and can understand quantum physics!
But whereas we did get here by learning, that was not the main event, per se, the main event was our learning to think abstractly. We are not born doing that, we must learn it.
Until about 100+ years ago 99% of the human species lived as concrete thinkers, with only a few thinking abstractly, then when we instituted categorical compulsory public education around 1918, and our societies became more complex, abstract thinking increased exponentially.
When Nietzsche first read Dostoevsky he said tears came to my eyes, as I had found a brother! Because that level of intellectual sophistication was rare in the 1800!
And those two were among the smartest people of the late 1800's, but their ideas today are commonplace.
And comparing instinct to abstract thinking, we are born with pattern recognition, but probability is tough for us. We must learn it, but we can.
Anyway, I have always felt the big problem is that it is considered in bad taste to ask:" what kind of animal are we"?
This stuff should be taught in high school.
And we probably know more about the Uganda Kob than the human animal, at least the average person. |
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