There is a clear difference between
humans and other animals. There have been debates about whether other animals
have souls. Where do dogs go when they die? A more haunting question, however, would
be: what if there is no such thing as a soul? Consider yourself. You are, of
course, a person. Now imagine you lost your arm in an accident. Are you still a
person? What if you lost your heart, or your brain? What constitutes you, and
what would no longer be you. Perhaps now it sounds more reasonable, that you are just an aggregate of different
parts. There is no self, and the you
of present is quite different from the you of years past. This is actually a
fundamental Buddhist principle dating back to around 400 BCE, known as anātman, or non-self.
I do not necessarily follow Buddhist
teachings, and frankly disagree with several of the core principles upon which
it is built. But since learning about it, I have found the explanations of
non-self and consciousness quite compelling. The idea is that humans are
dynamic. There is no part of you that persists without changing. Now, modern
neuroscience has shown that neurons can survive the lifespan of their host. Still,
the general concept is just that we are not so much entities, as ever changing
parts and mental states. Consciousness, for instance, is what most would define
as a person’s being. But it is not something
that we are born with, it is merely the culmination of our experiences.
This is another case of the Buddhists
being ahead of their time. The idea, proposed well before respectable
psychology, is that consciousness is a result of mental formations developed
from perceptions of sensations caused by interactions of the physical world.
Remember, matter interacting in space. Living organisms developed with senses.
In humans, these include sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, among others.
Other organisms might have any combination of these as well as others that we
couldn’t easily comprehend. However one senses the world, though, it happens
first through physical interactions. Let’s take sound for instance. Hearing is
the ability to detect disturbances in a medium that cause vibrations. When an
appreciable vibration of air molecules occurs, it propagates outward. When it
enters the ears, different mechanisms exist that attenuate and amplify the
signal, and ultimately it is received through transduction via stimulation of
tiny hairs within the inner ear. The characteristics of the sound, the volume,
pitch, etc., are actually different physical characteristics of the vibration
such as the amplitude and frequency of the wave through which the vibration
propagates. The signal, once received, is sent through a network of cells to
the brain, where it is analyzed and perceived. Hearing a sound is our perception
of the vibrations in the air.
The next step, mental formations, is where
things get really interesting. This is all of our associations with a physical
object. For instance, imagine a cat. A person can hear a cat meow, feel a cat’s
fur on their hands, see a cat move, but how does that cat make them feel? For
someone who was attacked by a cat in the past, they might feel uneasy seeing a
cat. For someone with a pet cat for which they care very deeply, they might
smile when they hear a cat meow. These associations are built over time from
our experiences and encompass almost every aspect of our day to day lives. The
last step would be consciousness and this is essentially our awareness of
objects and ability to discern them. In studying psychology one would find
countless subtleties around perception and mental associations, but the core of
our consciousness is the sum of our experiences.
What makes humans so much different from
other organisms though? Certainly, any creature capable of sensing the world
would have perceptions just the same. Humans, and some other animals evolved
with a sense of self-awareness. We are not only conscious, but aware of our own
consciousness. Furthermore, we are aware that others are both conscious and are
aware of our own consciousness. This issue becomes very complex, very quickly,
but suffice it to say, that self-awareness develops over time in much the same
way that consciousness does. This can be seen in young children gradually
discovering that the reflection in the mirror, is actually them; the baby
picture of them, was them at a point in the past; and that an observer with closed
eyes cannot see them, but an observer can see them whether or not they close
their own eyes. This awareness and ability to discern is what has allowed us to
create societies and work cooperatively toward common goals. There is one more
thing that sets us apart, though.
The last area we need to cover is
communication. Humans’ greatest trait has always been communication. Someone
might say humans are smarter than other animals, but that is not just a natural
trait. Human knowledge is a collective, and the sum is far greater than any one
part. Our ability to communicate allows us to teach one another, and not just
horizontally. I mean, of course, that I can teach you something, and you teach
another that same thing, but also, I could teach a child something, and that
child could grow up and then teach another child. Most of our knowledge is
vertical. It has been accumulating over years for as long as human’s have been
communicating. You probably couldn’t put together a lightbulb if someone was
holding a gun to your head. Yet, here we are, in a world full of lightbulbs. It
is all just knowledge passed down. Other animals do not have this same luxury,
at least not to the same extent. Sure, parents can teach their young some
things, but for the most part every life is learning the same things first
hand, making the same mistakes their ancestors did. Imagine if cats could just
tell their young about roads and cars, and they could in turn pass that down to
their own kittens. After a few years, you would be hard pressed to ever find
another cat dead on the road. So, don’t think we humans are so developed, we
were simply given the luxury of a few millennia worth of experience in a few
decades. We are the effect of all those before us, and ultimately everything is
just cause and effect.
That is the purpose of this writing. All
too often we look at the world and see it for what we have come to expect of
it. We forget what is real. Cats are not good or bad or smelly, they are organs
and systems, they are consciousness, they are experiencing and judging and
expecting. There is no right or wrong there is only expectations and effects.
This series will go on to look at some more applications, but the bulk of it
all is here. The next time you see something that is just completely beyond
belief, take another look. Look at the causes, look at the expectations, and
remember that at the end of the day it is all just matter interacting in space.
Anything more than that is just what you chose to make of it.
-AMS
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