What is \"human\"? (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 05:03 (5512 days ago) @ dhw

One theory (I can't remember where I read it) is that bipedalism freed the hands, the hands began to use tools, and the brain grew larger as a result of the extra mental activities involved. This suggests that the thought came before the enlargement, and raises the questions: where do thoughts come from and how can they enlarge the brain? The alternative would be how does an enlarged brain create thought, and if that is the way it happened, why did the brain get bigger in the first place? Of course it did get bigger, and we're here to prove it, but I'm not sure if we need a palaeoanthropologist, a neuroscientist, or a philosopher to sort out how it happened, and to tell us what "human" actually means.-My eyes shoot open. I can't see anything yet because my contacts are dry and my vision is blurry.-*blink* *blink* *blink*-Squinting I lean up slowly and quietly... if I disturb the dog he'll think its breakfast time. Six a.m.-F--k. My alarm clock goes off in half an hour. -I lean back and take a deep breath. If I go back to sleep now, I'll be 3x as tired. -I close my eyes anyway, driven by my enjoyment of sleep directly sloughing off my own observation that I'm going to be more tired.-After waking up, feeding the animals, slogging down a quart of water and a pint of coffee, I stare for a bit at this interesting post by dhw. I put my computer into hibernate.-***-8 hours later I come home. After working a bit more on a program, I set it down and consider a bit more on what it means to be a human. Some might say that being a human means I can reason. That is something taken for granted since Plato. But that's not all that makes me human. You see, in my grand apostasy of my youth... I took all these things for granted; there's something much more relevant to being human than being able to reason. This thing was instilled in my in my 12 years split between martial arts and Soto Zen. -I take a deep breath and know I'm here... in the now. I lay back and think about how I can communicate the idea of being human without being too pedantic... and it hits me. I'll write about my morning, and then my afternoon. -My time spent studying my ancestor's old pagan path, though filled with blood, was also filled with a very human wisdom...
Man is a slippery and mercurial creature. Whatever he says he is--he isn't, and whatever he says he isn't--he is. -What makes us human is something that cannot be stated plainly. It isn't logic, it is that primal light that some would call "soul."

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"