Get serious -- Criegod 18:19, 5 June 2012 (PDT)
I've only listened to the first hour of this. And i liked it. But i thought it was fairly typical, as a critique of the idea that human beings have, in general, regarding their particular "uniqueness" among the animals, in that a fair amount of the critique really couldn't be taken too seriously; but, rather, is a reflection of a sort of anti-human bias. I can understand feeling this way, but it doesn't make for an objective critique.
The problem is that an objective critique would do a much better job of pinpointing the real differences between human beings and other animals, and not taking the easy (short-circuit) way out by citing how abominable the results of the exercise of many of our abilities (not necessarily unique, whatsoever) have been.
When i relisten, i will note specifics where i feel the critique falls short: stopping at the easy jibe and failing to go further into exploring the nature and ramifications of the real differences.
It is my view that the real differences lie virtually totally in the domain of human possession of a written language and the consequences of that. Cetaceans, in my view, can certainly reason every bit as well as we can, in any domain of importance to them. Take away the cerebral cortex and, in terms of feeling and emotions, i don't think there is one whit of meaningful difference between humans, dogs, rats or what have you. So we accumulate stories and information in ways (using a mechanism) that no other animal does or can (i suppose). Having stories written down, having them persist independent (to some extent) of any particular individual or individuals, this has far-reaching implications for what kind of culture develops. I think there may even be something fundamentally wrong where the culture/institutions can "take control" over individuals themselves. The written word is a dead thing and perhaps we'd, ultimately, be better off without it, but (in my view) it is certainly what makes us "unique" (culturally, really; not individually).
As an aside, i have long-believed that a serious error people make is in assuming that whatever uniqueness human beings have in their culture and its manifestations is automatically conferred upon themselves as individuals. Apparently this applies to people who don't know how a computer works, don't understand the basics of widely-used human technologies, don't really understand basic scientific principles... etc. This is a serious problem, actually, because it means that people, as human beings, are really not what they think they are. Thus their willingness to believe all the crappola regarding human "uniqueness". Because our culture has accumulated knowledge (via the written word) and this has enabled so many things beyond the understanding of virtually all individual human beings, this leads people to think that this is their (as an individual) accomplishment. Or if not theirs, it could be theirs -- and is, by proxy. But this is wrong. The culture is an accomplishment that no single individual could ever accomplish, encompass or understand as an individual. Therefore the existence of all so-called marvelous human accomplishments are not the result of any uniqueness in human nature that exists at the level of the individual. This is perfectly clear.
"Uniqueness" -- Criegod 20:09, 6 June 2012 (PDT)
Answering my own objection (talking to myself)... i have a problem with my last sentence. Human beings are unique... different from any other species (as even individuals within a species are themselves unique, in some sense). Humans are unique. So what. So are monkeys and rats and cockroaches. Uniqueness has no value judgment associated with it. Superiority does. Thus we unpack the real meaning of "uniqueness."
This type of analysis often gets caught up in attempting to find unique attributes with which to ascribe human "uniqueness" (mostly accepted as a given because of the magnitude of the change we have wrought upon the world and ourselves). It seems a bit wrong-headed to think that there is any single attribute that is so different from that attribute in any other animal that we can ascribe our "uniqueness" to this attribute. What really is responsible for the unique amplification of our abilities and nature is a particular combination of attributes. The dexterity to write, the vocal arrangements to speak, the frontal cortical areas to build models and use language, etc.
More on "uniqueness" -- Criegod 22:03, 6 June 2012 (PDT)
Bringing together a number of different evolved attributes to create something more than the sum of its parts is evolution's strategy when an animal is not particularly well-suited to any particular (fairly static) environment. This is probably the reason why we human beings are the way we are... having come from the forest and lived on the savannah, and then losing the environment that best suited us due to climate change. I don't understand the exact nature of the environment that fit us well enough to survive as neanderthals (say... still quite the generalists), then not so well, so that evolutionary pressure was on us to be still more adaptable, but i believe it had to do with the end of an ice age. (?) And at this point, farming became something we "chose" to do, rather than chose not to do (even though we knew how) because of cultural changes; changes in human organization; changes brought on by climate. A fascinating subject, which i don't understand the details of. It would make a good show.
The greater sum of the parts, it turns out, provided us with more adaptability than we needed. But "waste not, want not"... and so we've collectively attempted to use every bit of our abilities (i think the "ruling class" pushed us into it, frankly, for their own benefit) and the result has been domination and destruction on a grand scale. We could have survived doing much less, and been better off for it. So why the positive valuation of "work"? It has to do, i believe, with a process of expropriation driven by "elites" which originated with the first permanent settlements, farming and excess production. This is the "uniqueness" of human culture that so differentiates us from other species which, being naturally better suited to their environment, have no real need for all this manipulation and changing of it to suit them (until they go extinct, of course).
The survival value of the tools of manipulation that humans have evolved (intrinsic and man-made, individually and culturally) have synergized into something far more powerful than strictly needed for survival. This is not really an accomplishment of human beings so much as sheer happenstance. The "uniqueness" of human beings comes from the fact that the particularities of our social nature, and the emergence of a "disease" growing out of the gap between our evolved and our human-created social structures, results in unequal and unfair class-based social structures that motivate the "ruling-class" that seemingly inevitably emerges to focus far too much of our accumulating cultural capability along an axis of domination and control.
This story may have some holes in it, but i like it and continue to work on refining it.