Every human is unique in terms of their worldview. Every society, every community, every suburb, every village, town, city, county, state, country has a unique identity. Every culture, race (ethnic grouping) also has a unique identity. Yet there are certain universals seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all narrower divisions. Some of these universals are mysterious; some not so mysterious. Here are just a few of them.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
Isms: We all feel more comfortable with our own kind. We tend to associate with others our own age, our own race, our own sex, our own religion, our own nationality, etc. Those who differ significantly from the standard ‘me’ get isms attached. Racism; sexism; nationalism, etc. are cases in point. It’s all discrimination on the grounds that someone else isn’t virtually your clone physically and/or in terms of worldviews (belief systems).
Music: Music is an art form designed for the ears. There probably hasn’t, isn’t or will be anyone of any race, creed or culture, male or female, old or young, who hasn’t, doesn’t and won’t respond positively to music of one type of another. Exactly why however is a bit mysterious. Music, apart from bird calls and other animal ‘noises’ wasn’t part of our natural primate ancestral background. You could hardly call crashing surf, thunder and howling winds musical. And while bird vocalizations and animal sounds have survival value – species recognition or identification, warning/danger cries, use in mating rituals – ‘humans’ even multi-tens of thousands of years ago didn’t need to sing or strike rocks or blow across reeds to communicate. Though the saying “music sooths the savage beast” must have some significance, music appreciation seems to me to be more by design than by natural evolution. However, if we appreciate music by design, who was the designer and then what was the possible purpose behind that appreciation? If all music vanished from human society overnight, our life and civilization would still go on. Music is peripheral to our survival – then or now.
My (fill in the blank) Right or Wrong: The blank could represent spouse, child, family, town, county, state, country or even planet if faced with an alien presence or threat. That applies equally to other belief systems like religion or sports team. The logic of course is faulty in the extreme, but that is beside the point when you’re engaging in your debate.
Mythical Creatures: There is no human culture on Earth that hasn’t stocked a make-believe zoo with all manner of fantastic creatures. From dragons to thunderbirds, griffins to the hydra, Grendel and Pegasus, unicorns to hellhounds, they’re all there and a whole lot more besides. Modern equivalents like Godzilla are clearly marketed as entertainment and fictional; not so marketed were the ancient beasts of ‘mythology’ according to our ancient ancestors. Why did they have a need to ‘invent’ so many weird beasties? Why did they believe these creatures existed? Perhaps the alternative explanation is that these mythical creatures weren’t quite so mythical.
Rank Has Its Privileges: Are all men (and women) created equal? Not on your Nellie! In very society, past and present, and no doubt future, there, have been, are and will be the haves and have nots. That’s nearly as universal and certain as death and taxes.
Rebellious: All humans tend to be rebellious. It’s just about as universal as it gets, and I don’t mean kids throwing temper tantrums or something confined to teenagers. ‘Thou shall not’ usually gets interpreted as ‘Thou shall’ if I can get away with it! I mean who hasn’t exceeded the speed limit now and again; parked in a ‘no parking’ area or overstayed their parking time limit; dropped that piece of litter when no one was looking; engaged in inappropriate Internet use at work or maybe nicking a few pens and paperclips; failed to return a borrowed library book on time; or told the occasional ‘little white lie’? What about fudging just a little bit on your tax return and declaration?
Resurrection: We’ve all seen the Sun ‘die’ at dusk only to be resurrected at dawn. The Moon ‘dies’ at New Moon, but then comes back gradually growing brighter each night until it’s Full Moon, then starts to slowly ‘die’ again until it does ‘dies’ again – death and resurrection. Some plants ‘die’ in the winter, but are resurrected in the spring. A lawn that’s been killed (mowed) usually survives to grow back again. A lizard can lose its tail but seemingly that tail is resurrected and grows back. So, viewing all these things, it’s not surprising that humans think that they too will be resurrected after death.
Symmetry: Humans love symmetry, which might tend to reflect nature as nature often exhibits symmetrical traits. A sphere has perfect symmetry; symmetry in two-out-of-three dimensions might be a cylinder; human’s exhibit symmetry in only one-out-of-three dimensions; left-right. But symmetry isn’t confined to just geometry though that’s probably the main kind of symmetry that one finds in nature apart from the biological like predator vs. prey or male vs. female. Humans apply symmetry to things that are relative and/or the more abstract – right vs. wrong; tall vs. short; black vs. white; heaven vs. hell; up vs. down; hot vs. cold; yin vs. yang – the list could be extended for quite a few more examples from politics to economics. However, as a general rule-of-thumb, for any concept humans conceive of, they will also conceive of an equal-and-opposite concept. Symmetry seems to be in our genes.
Three ‘R’s’: Humans can be both literate and numerate. My cats couldn’t read the most basic three-year-old primer, no matter how much instruction I gave them. No cat can read and understand the word C A T; their paws aren’t equipped to put pen to paper and ‘typing’ or pawing on a computer keyboard is going to create gibberish. Still, cats specifically, and the rest of the animal kingdom in general, get by thank you very much without any need to read or write or calculate/crunch numbers. In fact, many ancient human societies or cultures never developed writing at all, and therefore reading, though they probably did calculations for various purposes, even if just in their head. Still, the odds are pretty good that the human species would exist today even if none of us or our ancestors ever had developed an ability to read and write. Yet being literate and numerate is one of those universals of the current human condition.
Time: All life forms on this planet, except those companion animals we’ve forced into adapting to our ways, set their biological clocks by natural time, usually the rising and elevation and setting of the Sun; the duration of daylight. To a lesser extent, the rising, setting and phases of the Moon play a role. All life forms on this planet, apart from those who live their entire life in eternal darkness – deep inside caves, deep underground, or in the abyssal depths – probably have the concept, assuming they have IQs high enough to have concepts, otherwise an awareness, of a day – sunrise to sunrise – or more likely half-days – sunrise to sunset, and sunset to sunrise. They certainly have no awareness or concept of, nor requirement to have any awareness or concept of, a second, minute, hour, week, month, year, decade or century. These are all manmade constructions of no use and of no interest to other living things. So, while nearly all living things are aware of ‘time’, only humans, universally, have turned natural time (night and day) into artificial time – like time zones. Every culture has had a go at forming a calendar – how many units per day; how many days per week; how many weeks per month; how many months per year, and finally what to do with the leftover residue. Even in terms of the ‘day, there’s nothing natural about midnight – one could take any point and call that the end of the old day and the start of the new day, as apparently we have some sort of need to label the days that other living things don’t need to do. Ditto that idea when it comes to the end of our labelled year. There’s nothing special about New Years Eve. It’s a totally artificial concept. Only humans attribute some sort of uniqueness to it. To everything else on this planet it’s just another ordinary moment in a lifetime of ordinary moments. And Daylight Savings is as artificially phoney as it gets even if it does have, or at least did have, some practical application. Birthdays are another artificial and phoney concept. If anniversaries have any meaning then your ‘birthday’ should be the anniversary of your conception, not when you were hatched. We may also observe the birthday of companion animals for various reasons, but to them, it’s a non-event that has no real significance to them even if the concept had occurred to them. They require neither birthday card nor birthday presents and don’t feel insulted when they don’t appear.
Trade: Trade is a universal of the human condition. It’s just exchanging what you have (skills, money, goods, crops, etc.) for what you need or want (money, food, sex, other goods and services, etc.). That trait, bartering, buying and selling, exchanging goods and services has gone on seemingly as far back in history as records allow for. There are no parallels that I am aware of existing in the animal kingdom, not even among our closest primate ancestors. Animals often share, but they don’t engage in commerce.
Visual Art: Visual art are art forms designed for the eyes, though they could also be natural like scenery – sunsets, cloud forms, seascapes, etc. Art appreciation is universal, although it’s often a case of different strokes for different folks. Paintings obviously come to mind, even Playboy pinups; eye-catching or pleasing architecture qualifies; 3-D sculptures obviously; dancing, the theatre and in more modern times cinema. The issue here is why art appreciation like music appreciation is appreciated or has a resonance at all since art appreciation has no obvious survival value. There’s little to be gained standing around admiring the striped patterns on a hungry tiger that’s got an eye on you that has nothing to do with its art appreciation. However, it would be interesting to be able to communicate with some of the higher IQ animals (birds and mammals) to find out if they appreciate the beauty in a rainbow, those northern or southern lights (the Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis) or the stalagmites and stalactites that’s in their cave. Do flying birds have an abstract appreciation of their aerial view or is it just so much ho-hum? At least we suspect that pigeons in the park appreciate the statues they sit on!
Worldviews: I’m right; you’re wrong, even if it’s just opinions at stake. Today, there are no doubt a zillion debates that go on, on Internet message boards around the world that X is better than Y or vice versa. At least, despite the vehemence, nobody gets physically hurt! That’s not of necessity in a face-to-face barroom encounter, or High Noon on the highway – road rage. Every day in every way, say over morning tea breaks at the office water cooler, over breakfast or dinner at home, differences of opinions make themselves known in no uncertain terms. The human trait of loving an argument; ever willing to engage in one at the drop of the proverbial hat, is a universal one. It’s perhaps another side to territoriality. You stake out not a physical territory, but a non-physical one, yet defend it just as passionately. It’s even been formalized in debating societies or in public debating forums and political institutions like Congress or parliaments.
In conclusion, many of these human universals are pretty unique relative to our animal kin; many appear to have had little or no role to play in our evolutionary survival. Many are therefore somewhat anomalous. But let’s not forget about all those gifts from our alien ‘gods’. If true, that really would help explain a lot of these anomalies.
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