HUMAN NATURE
The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
Life on our planet has a single origin. As different as plants and animals may seem to us today, every living thing on our planet has common ancestors. Life comes from a common trunk.
The human being is one of the 8.7 million living species that inhabit this planet. He belongs to the animal kingdom, to the class of mammals, to the subgroup of primates or hominids, and is a cousin/brother of the monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees, with which he shares 98% of the DNA. He is the child of a still unknown father, having been born 5 million years ago in East Africa, more precisely in the deepest and longest valley on our planet, the Rift Valley.
Unlike other living beings that have evolved little or nothing at all over the past millions of years and have lived and still live today in the same habitat, the human being has evolved to the point of transcending his original habitat. He left Africa a little over 200,000 years ago and colonized the entire planet not only geographically, but also in terms of dominating all other species of living beings.
Why did only our species evolve? Since we and we alone are, in Karl Marx's view, the moment when nature gained consciousness of itself. It is a mystery that science has yet to unravel. We know that through evolution, we are descendants of a primate that, in order to satisfy its needs and to survive, instinctively began to adapt to its environment, then seeking to make the best use of the environment’s resources. It first lived like the animals in symbiosis with nature.
In his effort to know the environment in order to better adapt to it, the human being developed his cognitive abilities, to the point of taking possession of his environment. This is the way the Homo sapiens came about; now, more than adapting to the environment, they sought to adapt the environment to themselves.
What defines us as human beings
Millions of years of evolution have made us human, without ceasing to be animals. Biologist Konrad Lorenz has found numerous similarities between human and animal behaviours. Many of our reactions and decisions when faced with life-threatening situations are more animal-like than rational.
At the end of the day, we have not lost the reptilian brain common to all vertebrates, nor the mammalian one common to all mammals. These brains predate the authentically human one, the neocortex, and are, so to speak, closer to our being, because the reptilian brain that commands all vital and survival functions is always connected; the mammalian one is almost always connected, but sometimes disconnects; the neocortex is almost always partially disconnected. So, for a behaviour to be authentically and genuinely human, the connected neocortex must disconnect the other two, especially the reptilian one.
In this sense, there are characteristics that seem to be uniquely ours, but are in fact common to other animals close to us on the evolutionary scale; the only difference is that in us they are more developed. For instance:
- Acquiring knowledge and have the ability to transmit it socially through some form of language, other animals, like the orcas, also have it. Adapting to the environment and the changing conditions of life, many animals are also capable of this, like the cockroach that defends itself from all the poisons we invent to kill it;
- Living in community, other animals also do this, like the ants, lions, ducks, geese, bees, elephants, chimpanzees. The only difference is that ours is more complex and perhaps more democratic, where, of course, democracy exists;
- Loving our children to the point of giving our lives for them, noble as it may seem, this is something we have in common with any mammal, it is pure maternal instinct. What we truly have that is unique is everything that is located in the neocortex, the largest of our three brains. Let us then see what is uniquely human and identifies us as such.
Self-consciousness – cogito, ergo sum
Only the human being gains self-consciousness, around the age of 6 or 7. Self-consciousness is the splitting of our psyche into two, which allows us to be observers and observed, the ones who know and at the same time the topic of our knowledge. "Know thyself," Socrates shouted in the early days of Western philosophy.
This self-awareness of ours does not only concern the present. Since human life takes place in three times that are always interactive, this self-consciousness extends to the past as historical memory that gives us feedback of who we are: the knowledge of our talents, values, defects, and limitations such as death. Only human beings are aware of their own finitude, that one day they die and cease to exist, at least in space and time.
Knowledge of the past, of who we really are, is then used by our reason to extend into the future and program it, using the imaginative capacity and abstract mind that only humans have to project beyond the immediate. Certain philosophies of the Far East urge us to put both the past and the future aside. They forget that those who live in an eternal present, without a past or future, are animals not humans.
Cogito, ergo sum – Descartes’ maxim, “I think, therefore I am”. In the pure present in relating with others, society, the physical and geographical environment, self-consciousness, or reason works like a computer, that analyzes, collects data about a given problem, and projects possible solutions.
In addition to self-consciousness and reason, human life is based on two values: freedom and equality.
Freedom
While all animals live in symbiosis with nature, which regulates, governs and guides them by means of their instincts, the human being is the only animal that has emancipated himself from nature. Freedom, autonomy, independence are the values on which the human life of the individual, of the person, is based. As we said, there are other animals that live in society, but in these societies the individual does not exist for itself, it is a slave of the society to which it belongs.
Man is free in relation to others, he is not anyone’s slave, nor does he live for anyone else, but for himself; he is free in relation to his animal substratum, because he has the power to control his basic instincts and postpone immediate gratification.
The human being is the only one who holds his life in his own hands, who has power to give it a meaning and a direction. He has free choice, free will, which allows him to decide on the totality of his life, as well as on each of its parts. You can make mistakes in the decisions you take, and you may have to pay for the harmful consequences of your choices.
Part of freedom in relation to the environment, to others and to oneself, lies in the ability to transcend oneself; in relation to matter, through scientific and technological progress; in relation to material things, by developing the spiritual self, both in his relationship with God and with things and others, expressing himself symbolically through culture, art, music, religion, habits, customs, clothing, etc.
Equality
The human being is an intrinsically social being, is born from a loving relationship, grows up and becomes an authentic human being only if he or she is loved unconditionally, and always lives as a member of a family, as part of a community, organization or institution. Individually one is either a father or mother, son or daughter, grandfather or grandmother, aunt or uncle, nephew or niece. There is no human existence beyond these categories, and belonging to any one of them, puts you in a relationship with the others.
The other person is another ‘I’; not a ‘you’, not an external entity, strange, foreign, distant, but my neighbour, so close that he or she is another ‘I’, an alter-ego, from which the word altruism comes from. Love is the highest value in social life, to live is to love. Empathy, mercy, and compassion are what hold individuals together in groups.
What is due to me is due to him, because he is a human being just like me and we all come from the same common trunk born in the Rift Valley 5 million years ago. Equality and coexistence in society are based on the principle that my rights are my neighbour’s duties, and my duties are my neighbour’s rights.
Life in society makes individuals citizens with rights and duties. Law is born to govern society, and ethics, which discerns what is best and more appropriate, defines the guidelines of social behaviour. Life in society created written and spoken language for communication between individuals, with the aim of working as a team to foster unity, peace and harmony.
Can human nature change?
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So, God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:26-27
We were created in the image and likeness of God and if God does not change, then human nature does not change either. If human nature changed, then God would have to incarnate again and again throughout history, in each of these hypothetically ever-changing human natures to also be for these generations the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Since human nature does not change, it is God and his Word collected in the Bible that inspires and leads to God, both the men who lived 2,000 years ago and those who will live 10,000 years from now, if we still exist as a species.
Human values are proof that human nature does not change, neither in time, from one generation to another, nor in space from one culture and another. The concepts of justice, truth, honesty, fidelity, love, compassion, etc. are invariable over time in all cultures. The feeling of love that Cleopatra and Mark Antony experienced is the same as that of Romeo and Juliet experienced years later, as lovers experience and will experience in every time and place.
Separated by time, place and culture, the prophet Amos and Bishop Oscar Romero used exactly the same gauge to discern what is just and what is not. Mahatma Gandhi used the same concept of nonviolence that Jesus used centuries earlier. The peoples of the Fertile Crescent built pyramids and offered human sacrifices to their gods. But just like the Sumerians and the Egyptians in the fertile crescent, the Mayans and the Aztecs in Central America also built pyramids and yet these peoples never knew of each other’s existence.
Human nature, what the human being essentially is, does not change. In philosophy, the essence, the being does not change; what changes are the accidents, the variables, the circumstances. Our understanding of human nature may vary and change, just as we may discover in ourselves talents that we thought we did not have; yet they were already there, though unknown to us. We may acquire new ways as we adapt to our environment, for example, losing our tails because we no longer climb trees, but what is essentially human remains unchanged in time and space.
CULTURE
How is it that human nature does not change if we have diversity of cultures and languages, and language is considered to be the soul of a culture? There are two factors that caused the diversity of cultures and languages throughout human history.
The first was the absence of communication between peoples. For this same reason, in an increasingly globalized future, the diversity of languages and cultures will cease to exist or will be greatly attenuated. The second was the geographical factor: different peoples lived in different latitudes and longitudes, with climatic differences.
The diversity of cultures and languages would therefore be the adaptation of human beings to different geographical topographies. For example, it is not the same to live on the mountains as by the sea; as for different climates, it is not the same to live in the tropics, with two seasons, as to live in a temperate zone with four seasons, or in the Arctic.
The indigenous peoples living in the Arctic have numerous words for "snow", while in Ethiopia, in Africa, the same word is used for snow as for frost, which are two different things. On the other hand, we notice that the languages of the Nordic peoples because of the cold factor are more consonantal, and the mouth barely opens, while the languages of the tropical peoples are more vocal, causing the mouth to open fully.
The colour of the skin, eyes and hair, the shape of the eyes, nose, mouth and lips, as we have explained in previous texts, are also an adaptation of human beings to the environment in which they have been living for at least 25,000 years. If a tribe of Pygmies from the Congo were to move to Norway today, 25,000 years from now, they would be indistinguishable from the Norwegians.
Barring some minor differences, the adaptation of human beings to their environment is common to other animals. The adaptation of the environment to themselves, creating culture, is proper only to human beings. Only humans create a culture as an “artificial” habitat, in the correct sense of the word "ars facere", making art. In this sense, man is a cultural being, because he is not content with what nature gives him but creates a second nature in which he lives in, that is culture.
The human being made in the image of God is a creator like Him. The only difference is that while God creates out of nothing, the human being creates by combining and mixing the elements of creation. Culture is like the house that the human being builds with elements that nature supplies. Nature does not give houses, it is man who builds them; the diversity of houses represents the diversity of cultures, because it points to the place where they are built - sloped roof where it snows, flatter roof where it does not snow. The same can be said of clothing and everything that the human being makes, invents or manufactures with his creative mind, to make life more comfortable.
The tree is nature, wood, chair, and table are culture; hair is nature, hairstyle is culture; sound is nature, words and music are culture; fire is nature, anvil and barbecue are culture.
The Tarzan myth teaches us that in humans, the cultural factor is more important than nature. If a human baby is raised by chimpanzees, he will be like a chimpanzee. On the other hand, if a baby chimpanzee is raised by humans, with the same education as a human baby, it will never be human. If in a sparrow’s nest, we place a masked weaver's egg, when this masked weaver is an adult it will not make its nest as a sparrow does on top of a branch, but like a masked weaver, suspended from a branch. The human being is born an animal and becomes human through education and acculturation. The animal is born already practically in an adult state, it needs no time for socialization.
Culture is at the same time the adaptation of the human being to the environment and the adaptation of the environment to the needs of the human being. Culture is this interaction between the environment and the human being, and the human being and the environment.
WORLDVIEW
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:31
We can use the biblical text of the creation of the world as a metaphor for the relationship between worldview and culture. Culture is God's creation, looking at it and seeing it as good is God’s worldview of what he has created. God who is love has a loving view of all that he has created, out of love.
God created the world, and man from the world created by God created culture. Worldview is man's view of what he created. Unlike God, not everything he creates is out of love, and since he creates many things out of hatred, like the instruments of war, in the end he cannot say that what he has created is good.
To paraphrase the expression "God made the world, the Dutchman made Holland", God made the world, man made culture, man adapted or customized this world, like someone customizing a computer to meet his needs.
The worldview is an abstraction of culture, because it makes culture an object of study. Worldview is the knowledge that I have of my culture, the mental image or representation, consciously or unconsciously, that I have of my culture.
Every human being has a worldview, because it is what guides him in life. At the same time, the worldview possesses us, because whatever we do or think, we do it within and in the context of a worldview. In this sense, the worldview seems to encompass culture because it is a set of ideas that an individual has about the world, and these ideas are the product of the culture in which he or she is embedded. As our culture goes, so will our worldview or view of the world be.
The worldview is the basis of all cultural manifestation that is made up of motivations, assumptions, beliefs, commitments, certainties, and ideas, through which reality is experienced and interpreted, from the subjective-private level to the objective-institutional level shared by society.
Conclusion: Human nature is what we are, our essence, culture is our existence at a particular time and space. Worldview is the sense we make of our essence and our existence.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC