What does it mean to be human?
In the beginning of this class I would have immediately answered being human means to be human. The DNA, mitochondria, the atoms all define us as human, simple as that. As I mentioned before, the 1.5% DNA difference from bonobos makes us human. Though I still believe that fundamentally DNA and atoms make us human, I think I now understand another layer of that question. Rather than asking, "what does it mean to be human" I think the question really means "what does it mean to be a person"? In the end, humans are humans, but what makes that human a person? A nice simple, clean, answer such as consciousness, or empathy is like a card pyramid, it seems sufficient and stable but with an easy blow, it falls down. More and more research shows animals actually capable of consciousnesses. Elephants show signs of grief, dolphins can laugh, and quokkas are always happy. Many may argue those do not actually prove animals have sentience but nonetheless, animals may not be so different from people. And then what about humans who can't feel empathy? That would mean sociopaths would not qualify as people. Perhaps to fully answer this question, one needs to look at how other animals are defined. But that goes back to biological DNA differences. It seems nearly all paths lead to circles, complicating any hope of finding an answer. And maybe, there exists more than one right answer.
A few months ago, I wrote a little bit about a physics idea, called the Mediocrity principle (also known as the Cosmological principle). David Quinn, implies this theory throughout his book Ishmael, in regards to the way the Leavers live. According to the principle, humans are no more special than anything else. They are mediocre and as Quinn would put it, succumb to the same laws of nature as the rest of the world. Even Jared Diamond paid tribute to this theory stating "to science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image[...]From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species." If humans are nothing special and since everything is made from the same atoms as everything else, maybe we cannot properly define what is human or even what a person is without defining everything else. In that nothing specifically separates anything from each other, it just all falls under a Theory of Everything (T.O.E.). Interestingly, science is currently trying to discover this T.O.E. and once again, support the Mediocrity principle, or as Diamond puts it, humble our "smug self-image." But that would be an extremely meta approach and frankly, makes me feel a bit uncomfortable and confused.
In order to simplify the question, lets look at the Takers and how we can define them as people or not. As supposed "creators" and "rulers" of the world, many people may attribute the ability to destroy and create to be a defining characteristic of person-hood. In an address, Quinn himself stated "It's important for them to understand that it's not being HUMAN that is destroying the world. It's living THIS WAY that is destroying the world." So being a destroyer or savior doesn't define us. What about our ability to create a culture? It's fair to say other animals do not posses as complex of a culture as we do if any at all. Animals don't paint or sculpt, write fancy poems no one understands or even think about deep philosophical ideas (that we know of). So if we create culture and our culture defines us as people. Quinn defines a culture as people enacting a story, so human's invent culture and culture creates people and we all play a part in enacting that story. After all, as Rueyser wrote, "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." So if the universe is made of stories, and culture means people enacting a story, and culture defines person-hood, then maybe the T.O.E. is one big story the whole universe is enacting.
Reflection:
Within my own group of three, I selected all four readings and I read and annotated all of them. I also provided questions to the final script and wrote most of the "Ishmael group" answers on the script as well as the final question. As for the whole group, I tried to make sure everyone got their work in. The idea and themes themselves were really a group effort though and most people contributed to it. In the beginning I thought a whole class group project would fail but in the end it turned out a lot better than I expected. The idea of having a whole class project with smaller groups of three or four worked really well in that it was easy to assign each group work to contribute to the final project. Honestly, I do not think this project would have work as well or as easily as it did without Google drive. Overall, I would say things worked out smoothly for the amount of time and the amount of people. More time could have been spent on developing a larger theme and making sure the questions flowed together, rather than separately themed questions. I think we had a good group of seniors that luckily worked well together. For any group project, it really just comes down to the people and some help from Google.
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