Chapter 19: The Astounding Sameness of Human Animals
Hello again, hypothetical baby who I am striving valiantly to help by imparting thick gobs of hard-earned wisdom. This is Chapter 19 of a series of writings that some people doubtless feel is way too long already. Yet this is ONLY Chapter 19 and I will keep imparting until I get to Chapter 100. You can find all of the finished chapters listed here.
Baby, you and I have spent a lot of hypothetical time together, that’s for sure. And I’ve come to like and respect you, even though you have yet to say a single word. Sure, it’s not an ideal conversation, but you, in your unlimited hypothetical patience are allowing me to process and share some of the ideas I had to learn the hard way. Today I’m going to break some important news to you: You are not special in the grand scheme of things.
I know. I know. You would silently protest at this point if you had any understanding of what I was saying to you. I will now address your hypothetical objections. Yes, I know that you are special in the sense that you wouldn’t have been here at all unless the sperm that helped create you was the fastest swimmer out 200 million sperm. Sure, let’s have a round of applause for that sperm! And yes, that is interesting that you wouldn’t have been born if any one of your 1,000 great great great great great great great great great grandparents hadn’t had sex at exactly the right day and hour. I’m not going to hit you with a low blow, explaining that if you hadn’t been born, someone else would probably have been born instead of you. It seems so crass to say that, but look, there are almost 8 billion people on this planet and those things that you think make you “extraordinary” are also true of everyone else. Further, we ain’t hurtin’ for people. You want people, we’ve got lots and lots of people here on this planet.
So yes, you are lucky that you actually made it onto this planet, but that doesn’t make you any more special than the other 8 Billion. If Martian Anthropologists watched us from afar, I absolutely guarantee that they would never ever write in their green-colored journals that you, or anyone else, was special. To them, we would look like a bunch of ants running around. Getting born, growing, procreating and dying by the millions. Take a look at the World-o-Meter. Today so far, there have been 375,000 births but only 157,657 deaths. So far this year, 23 Million people have been born and 9,986,531 have died.
Those Martians would look at each other and exclaim only this: “Will you look at all of those human animals!” before taking a big scoop of us in the middle of the night (only a few hundred thousand, so the rest of us don’t notice) and taking them back to Mars to use on scientific experiments.
But you are still look at me with sad eyes. You badly want to be special. I’m so sorry I can’t help you. Donald Brown searched the literature on human societies for evidence of universals, which he summarized in a book chapter titled “The Universal People.” Here are some of those universals:
Value placed on articulateness. Gossip. Lying. Misleading. Verbal humor. Humorous insults. Poetic and rhetorical speech forms. Narrative and storytelling. Metaphor. Poetry with repetition of linguistic elements and three-second lines separated by pauses.
Words for days, months, seasons, years, past, present, future, body parts, inner states (emotions, sensations, thoughts), behavioral propensities, flora, fauna, weather, tools, space, motion, speed, location, spatial dimensions, physical properties, giving, lending, affecting things and people, numbers (at least one, two and more than two), proper names, possession. Distinctions between mother and father. Kinship categories, defined in terms of mother, father son, daughter, and age sequence. Binary distinctions, including male and female, black and white, natural and cultural, good and bad. Measures. Logical relations including “not”, “and”, “same”, “equivalent”, “opposite”, general versus particular, part versus whole. Conjectural reasoning (inferring the presence of absent and invisible entities from their perceptible traces). Non-linguistic vocal communication such as cries and squeals. Interpreting intention from behavior. Recognized facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt. Use of smiles as a friendly greeting. Crying. Coy flirtation with the eyes. Masking, modifying, and mimicking facial expressions. Displays of affection.
Sense of self versus other, responsibility, voluntary versus involuntary behavior, intention, private inner life, normal versus abnormal mental states. Empathy. Sexual attraction. Powerful sexual jealousy. Childhood fears, especially of loud noises, and, at the end of the first year, strangers. Fear of snakes. “Oedipal” feelings (possessiveness of mother, coldness towards her consort). Face recognition. Adornment of bodies and arrangement of hair. Sexual attractiveness, based in signs of health, and in women, youth. Hygiene. Dance. Music. Play, including play fighting.
This is the tip of the iceberg. Here is a much longer list of human universals. https://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm The list goes on and on and on.
Lee Cronk had a lot to say about this enormous collection of human universals in his book, That Complex Whole, p. 22. He said, “If, as cultural determinist dogma would have it, culture is all-diverse and all-powerful, why are there any such universals? Why aren’t human cultures more diverse than they apparently are?” He concluded:
If the world’s cultures were only half as diverse as they actually are, it is a safe bet that we cultural anthropologists would still be making our living by emphasizing that diversity and downplaying what we all have in common. The world’s cultures may be diverse, but diverse compared to what?
We human animals are afflicted with the “narcissism of small differences.” When we notice tiny differences between ourselves and others, they look immense. We amplify differences between ourselves and others. That is how we are wired.
The narcissism of small differences is the thesis that communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of British anthropologist Ernest Crawley. In language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, a narcissism of minor differences.
What does all of this mean? First of all, you should be humble. As I explained in Chapter 14 (“You Have Almost No Understanding of What is Going On“), What-you-see-is-all-there-is (WYSIATI). You are focused on your own little corner, a part of the planet that looks huge to you but small or nonexistent to everyone else. Think about this next time you are tempted to butt in line or, in fact, when you try to take advantage of any other person in any other way. How much does it bother you that children are being forced to labor in order for you to enjoy your electronic devices? How have you successfully numbed yourself to the fact that the people making many types of our food, often children laboring on other continents (e.g., to make chocolate) are being treated miserably? Physically and emotionally, you are virtually a carbon copy of everyone else. The main difference is that you got lucky in various ways (this will be a topic in an upcoming chapter).
Second, think of this Chapter next time you are tempted to criticize something else for something you consider to be morally lacking. Whenever you are tempted to criticize someone else, claiming that you would have done better had you been that person, ask yourself how are you so sure that you would have done otherwise? Had you been a German citizen under Hitler’s reign of terror, how are you so certain that you would have acted differently than most German Citizens? We all want to assume that we would have acted like August Landmesser, but this photo shows how unlikely that would have been.
In conclusion, I’m not criticizing you. Nature has done an amazingly job designing you as a human animal. You are a member of the most interesting species of great apes. But you are special only in the sense that all human animals are special. I’m not telling you to quit trying to be special. Keep trying! You’ll accomplish some noteworthy things in your own little corner of the world . . . just like most everyone else. And eventually, you’ll be one of the many people in cemeteries who considered themselves to be indispensable. Just like everyone else.
