Thursday, September 11, 2014

What is being human?

        Many people ponder over the question of what it means to be human.  Being human is what makes us smarter than every other animal on this planet.  Humans are known for being more intelligent on both the emotional and logical levels.  No other animal has built skyscrapers or created fire.  This great intelligence comes with a price though.  Lots of people around the world deal with many psychological issues such as depression and eating disorders.  Individuals can slowly loose interest in life and the word around them or care to much about what the world thinks of them.  It is difficult to find meaning in ones life.  Some never find meaning and struggle through life for long periods of time.  I believe the key to finding meaning in ones life is to find what makes you happy and embrace it.  The only problem with that though is that some have trouble finding what makes them happy or they are afraid to embrace it.

        One of the ways we confront these issues is by creating art.  We create art to express our emotions and feelings that we cannot put into words.  It helps us cope with the difficult feelings in our life and it helps us calm our minds.  Lots of times talking helps you get through some of these troubles.  This is the case because it gives you a way to express how you feel.  Artists do this same thing but they just do it differently, like through painting or writing.  They don't look at the world that much differently than everyone else they just express themselves differently.

        "Our insistence on cognitive knowing may already have already robbed us of some of our capacity for being human."  To this quote means that at some point we may take technology to far.  We will eventually remove ourselves form the world around us.  This is bad because one of the main characteristics of being human is our awareness for the surrounding world.   If eventually we reach a point were we would rather live in a virtual life then our own real life then there will be no point in even living.  We need to learn how to appreciate life as individuals rather than try to escape it when things get rough.  Their will always be bad times in our lives but we have to try to also look at the good times in order to get through it.

2 comments:

  1. I agree that technology is removing ourselves from the world around us but I dont think that humans are that amazingly intelligent were destroying the world we live in with polluting it. We can stop easily but we wont because it gives them money.

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  2. Your comment on the fact that being human is basically defined by our intelligence was engaging. I really like the comparison between us and other creatures based on a measurement of intellectual capacity. This is so accurate, yet I had not thought of this prompt in that manner. I also viewed the quotation from a different perspective, and interpreted it differently. I like how you brought up the issue of how technology is affecting us differently and negatively. Very insightful.

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