The following are submissions to Share Your Spark! Tell us what YOU think makes us human in text, photos, artwork, or video by submitting your spark. Go to Share Your Spark!
–
I keep thinking about it, but everything I have come up with also occurs in the animal kingdom. Art, language, tools, emotions, music, building on former knowledge (my cat did this!), even learning from one another. Yet the one thing I could think of that we, as of yet, have no proof with any other creature is the belief of the divine. Our understanding of God, in any form you wish to give her, is what I believe makes us truly unique.
–Sara Schulz
Lake Geneva, WI
We all became human when we no longer were hairy little beings swinging from trees and throwing poo at each other, now we are naked beings walking upright throwing bombs and oppression; thankfully most of us have evolved further and no longer have this primal trait… my human spark is being a good father, friend, brother and companion to my beings in this world.
–Ian Smit
Worthington, OH
I’m sure curiosity, the unmoved mover inside us all, is the basic human spark. From the “hot stove” to the first kiss, it’s what leads to pain, and pleasure then peace and suffering. In humans discovery is predicated by curiosity but as a paradox of truth it’s our universal child-like wonder that’s waiting to be discovered as we’re born. So then from there: fire, the wheel, language, the Earth’s horizon, space, love, life, and death. The monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey: 2001 is a symbol for our common internal muse of basic curiosity. It brings us each into existence and somehow as it begins to die, we begin to die. Beyond that, over time, curiosity has taken our human race into the halls of science, religion, and philosophy. It’s the tiny living spark at the near end of a long waiting fuse.
–Brad Burkley
Diwaniya, Iraq
What makes us human is our ability to care for one another. We anthropomorphize nature and deify it but compassion is not a physical law but a human construction. There are not many vegan Tigers that fight for equal rights and fair wages. Human nature is your Aunt Katrina that bakes you chocolate cookies. Physical nature that other Katrina, merciless hurricane. I choose Aunt Katrina.
–Chris Hellstrom
Staten Island, NY
What makes us human is our delusion of superiority amongst all the living beings in this planet we called Earth.
–Syntia A.
Phoenix, AZ
Loading ...
What makes us human, is our ability to read.
Back so many 10K years ago,we learned how collecting seeds,planting them within our domains,and irrigating them provided grains, which made breakfast.Meat in the morning bad.Oat meal good.Irrigation good.Try squash.Umm.Squash good.What makes us human is our inner ear & eye wiring to our advanced brain and our opposable thumbs, which work together to observe, perform deductive reasoning, and plant and irrigate seeds.
Back so many 10K years ago,we learned how collecting seeds,planting them within our domains, and irrigating them provided grains, which made breakfast. Meat in the morning bad. Oat meal good. Irrigation good. Try squash. Umm. Squash good.What makes us human is our inner ear & eye wiring to our advanced brain and our opposable thumbs, which work together to observe, perform deductive reasoning, and plant and irrigate seeds.
This is a “toughie” as it would have to be something that is found in every “normal” human being [and there will be huge debates about this] and certainly normal in every human culture…while at the same time absent in our nearest non-human relatives and other mammals (and all other organisms). I think it’s probably the combination of features more than any one…language- which gives a way to communicate about events in the future or the past. That places us in a world of symbols…bound with other humans in a human society.
The capacity to see oneself as another organism might (and also the belief that one can enter the mind of other non-human organisms) . This was useful both to play the Machiavellian chess-games in the social world, but also to make a good hunter…since it allows one to predict an animals movements and responses (including anthropomorphizing and personification). But this also allows us to impose minds and purposiveness into inanimate objects (”Damn Car!”) or into nature or the power behind nature [the "deity"].
But other organisms constantly surprise us – ants raise aphids like we do cattle, and harvest fungus like plants. Apes make tools, mentally map their environments returning to fruit trees as they go into fruit years down the road. Japanese macaques passing on inventive ways of manipulating food from one generation to the next.