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“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story
"Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over, someone has killed father."
WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?
All species on Earth, including humans, are unique.
Yet our intelligence and creativity go well beyond those of any other animal.
Humans have long communicated through language, created and appreciated art and music,
and invented complex tools that have enabled our species to survive and thrive, though often at the expense of other species.
Weighing only about three pounds when fully grown,
your brain stores your every memory, generates your every thought and feeling and allows you to manage your world.
More than any other part of the body, the human brain--and its capacity for symbolic thought--sets us apart from all other species.
But what sets us apart from one another?
Every human brain has the same parts:
But each of us is different from one another. You from me. Kanye West from Martin Luther King.
Is it our nurturing versus our nature?
Or is it the conclusions at which we arrive from observing the world around us?
Eleanor Roosevelt
had an unhappy childhood, suffering the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age and became the champion of the downtrodden.
Lizzie Borden
had an unhappy childhood with her father and stepmother and ...
Well you know how that ended.
Both affluent families. Both childhoods tragic and grim. Two different outcomes.
Is Art the key to what makes us human, what makes us different one from the other?
Art gives our thoughts substance. It provides us with the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that define our reality for us.
We are as much the result of our art as our art is a result of us.
Is Art what makes us human? Or is it our capacity to laugh, to laugh at ourselves?
Mark Twain thought it was laughter ... and blushing, for Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to!
We are wonderfully strange creatures with a necessary dependency on art. Anyone who denies this fact faces grim consequences.
ReplyDeleteArt is important. It can reflect the times in which it was created, or it can represent a historical event. If it's a new style, it causes the viewers to shift their thinking.
ReplyDeleteWriting and art are two avenues of creativity that can live long after their creation (as can architecture).
That said, I think it's our ability to bounce back after life throws us a punch that illuminates why humans are still around.
This episode of "Through the Wormhole" was fascinating.
ReplyDeleteSteven:
ReplyDeleteIndeed. We are marvelous complex mental structures dependent on more than we realize on the surface.
D.G.:
I agree: resiliancy has been a major factor in the human race surviving as a species.
Michael:
Not having cable, I do not get THROUGH THE WORMHOLE. But I imagine Morgan Freeman makes a riveting narrator!
interesting and thought provoking. i'm going to have to chew on this one-my brain is too tired for deep thinking :P although i will say that i believe art, in some form or another, is essential to life.
ReplyDelete