I have often stated that we human beings are on a process,
a journey from animal to animal/human to becoming fully human…
but what does this actually mean?
well, we haven’t changed physically for several hundred thousand years…
so the journey from animal to human isn’t a physical change…
it is mental, emotional, psychological changes that allowed us to
travel down the road from animal to animal/human…
let us look at cows, what are the inherent possibilities for a cow?
see one cow, you pretty much have seen them all…what do cows do?
well, they do cow things like eat, make baby cows, do all the bodily functions
of cows… and they can wind up on your kitchen table in one fashion or another…
that pretty much lists all the possibilities for cows…there just isn’t a whole lot
we can discover new about cows at this point…and the same could be said
for just about any animal… dogs, goats, cats, elephants, marmots…
the list of possibilities for each of the listed above animals is limited…
each animal has their tools, be it claws or horns or speed or strength…
all animals have some sort of tools which allowed them to survive…
to prosper…
and yet, look at man… what sort of survival tools do we have?
we aren’t fast, we don’t have sharp claws, we aren’t that strong,
physically human beings don’t have much in the way of survival…
physically, we just don’t have the tools of other animals to survive…
so, how did human beings become the top of the food chain if it wasn’t
a physical tool?
it is this very lack of a physical tool that allowed us to survive…
we aren’t fixed in our use of a physical tool…in other words, if we
were fast like a cheetah, then our tool of survival would be our speed…
we would be dependent upon our speed to allow us to survive and we
would have no need of seeking or creating another tool to let us survive…
as an animal, we would be at a dead end, be unable to grow anymore because
we have an excellent tool of survival that allowed us to focus on that
survival tool and not look at any other tools we might need…
every aspect of our survival, our very instincts, would be about
using our speed to get away and survive…
but we humans, we don’t have any great speed, we can’t depend upon our
speed to survive in the wild…
so, what tools did we use to survive a million years in the wilderness?
well, certainly not any physical tools, so it must have been our mental,
psychological, emotional tools which allowed us to survive…
the very tools that allowed us to survive, are the same tools that allowed
us to go from animal to animal/human…because it isn’t physical tools
that allowed us to go from animal/human… it was the emotional,
psychological and the mental tools we have, that allowed us to
grow from animal to become animal/human…
it was internal growth of us that allowed us to grow or become animal/human…
we don’t have a fixed tool in which we can turn to, to save us from harm…
and over the million years of becoming, of going from animal to animal/human,
we have refined and cultivated the tools that have allowed us to become who we are…
and depending on the situation, we can use different tools of salvation that
allows us to navigate any given situation… for example, we have our rationality,
that is a tool we use… we also have our emotional tools… for example,
we have such emotional tools like self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation,
empathy and our social skills that allow us to exists in our evolutionary state
of community with others…recall, human beings are social creatures…
we cannot survive on our own… we must engage with other people to survive…
and that takes social skills…human beings we call men, have a different set
of social skills then women do…this is purely a survival skill… if both men and
women had the same social skills, then we might develop blind spots that might
prevent us from seeing danger…everything we are or that we do, comes
from the long million years of survival in the African wilderness…
so human existence comes down to the question of what skills do we have
that allow us to survive? one of the greatest skills human beings have
is our ability to adapt to ever changing situations…we can adapt to the changing
environment in all kinds of weather conditions, from the extreme cold of the Artic
to the heat of the desert to the jungles of south America to the plains of America…
it is an adaptability that few animals have… and this adaptability isn’t
just a physical trait, it is an emotional, psychological and mental trait…
the key to human survival comes from the fact that we don’t have
any specialize tools or skills to survive… we don’t have speed or
claws or great strength to protect us, so we use our general, overall
skills to advance and protect us…
it is our lack of specialization that allowed us to survive…
the growth we have made from being animal to animal/human has been
because we aren’t not specialized animals… it is in our emotional,
psychological, mental general skills that has allowed us to grow from
being animal to animal/human and this lack of specialized skills
and our emotional, psychological and mental skills that will enable us
to grow from animal/human to fully human…
or to say it another way, the way we will grow into being human doesn’t lie in
our physical abilities but in our emotional, psychological and mental skills…
and that is why it is important to understand our questions of existence…
because it is by those questions and the answers we find, that will
allow us to become human, fully human…
“who am I?” “what am I to do?” “what should we believe in?” “what values
should we hold?” “what should we spend our energy on?”
those are the questions that will lead us to understanding what it takes
to become human, not just animal/human…
the process of becoming is a emotional, psychological, mental process…
that is why some beliefs that we have are so important…
which is why I hold that the tale of Daedalus and Icarus is the
most important tale we have… sometimes, sometimes we should
travel in the middle because that is where it is the safest…
but sometimes, sometimes we must throw all caution into the wind
and try to fly to the sun… reach for the stars even though there is no chance
of success… we must try…for to reach becoming something more, we have
to reach beyond ourselves and reach for something that might be impossible to
reach… we cannot be animals and not even try because we might be afraid or scared…
it is within that willingness to gamble everything on a toss of the dice is
what made us human beings… to play it safe, that is being animal,
to dare more is to be animal/human and to be out on the limb,
that is human, fully human…
the greatness of human beings isn’t found in the safe behavior
of the crowd but in the reaching for the impossible…
look at the “great” human beings and they are great not because they
sat at home and play it safe… no, they dare to reach for the impossible…
and that is what made them great… it wasn’t a physical attempt that
made them great but they achieved greatness because they challenged
the status quo and they reached for the stars…and that is a mental,
psychological and emotional answer, not physical answer to the question,
how do we become human?
reach up if you want to grow as a human being…
if you want to be an animal… that is very simple, just stay
at home and risk nothing, challenge nothing, dare nothing…
and animal, you shall remain…
the possibilities of being human requires us to challenge and to risk…
do you have what it takes to challenge and risk your faith, your beliefs,
your indoctrinations?
the search for becoming lies within us, not outside of us…
Kropotkin