A question so many people have asked but don’t know how to answer. Between the four most important texts read, The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall, Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger, and In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais, this simple yet complex question is answered in the smallest ways. Asking someone what it means to be human can get you a huge variety of answers, from foolish to thoughtful. Most people can’t answer this question with thought because it 's too dense for them. Jonathan Gottschall implied in his book, The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human, that we are all just animals that go through life living off of our own made up and sometimes truthy stories. …show more content…
The way humans interact with each other, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, it all stems from different sections of the human brain. Funny how a thing that weighs a few pounds has so much power to it. A switch of a nerve and someone is completely different. Experimenting with different things is also what makes us human. We find errors and fix them, we feel something we don’t like and we do everything we can to not feel that way again. We are human and we are bound to make mistakes. Being human is having faith in ourselves and each other to do what is right. Being human means to feel so many emotions at once you cannot explain it in words. That is what it feels like when asked “what does it mean to be human?” There are so many different things that go into it, you just know what it is, but you can’t explain it.
In conclusion, being human involves too many things to explain at once. The question “what does it mean to be human?” can be studied and talked about for years. The books The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall, Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger, and In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais, give us just a small glimpse of what it means to be human. Being human is feeling emotions, learning from them, exploring, and many other things. What does it mean to be human? Well, it means to be
Being human means to be unique and to be constantly striving for a better life. The community is shaped by every individual’s desire and path to acquire a life worth living. The individual’s desire for a fulfilled life is molded by the interactions and experiences one may encounter. It is through these experiences, that one discovers his or her place within their community. However, just because the individual is striving for the best that life can offer, does not mean that the ideas and morals of the individual coincide with that of the collective community. Through this potential dissonance between the human and community, one may find that the achievement of a life lived to the fullest is brought about by the resolution of conflict between
Physically, humans consist of muscle, bones, blood, cells, but how do we really classify what makes a human a human? What if someday a scientific finding occurs and we learn that we can move a person's brain to another person's body, or into an robot. Are they still the same person or even a person? Opposite sides would say no, because the flesh is not the same or even there at all, but those sides are forgetting all the memories that the brain possess.If a person is aware of their conscious and unconscious minds, they are human.
What does it mean to be human? To most people it means being high on the food chain; or having the ability to make our own choices. People everywhere have a few things in common: We all must obey Natural laws, and we have preconceived ideas, stereotypes, and double standards. Being human is simply conveyed as human nature in “The Cold Equations”, by Tom Godwin, where the author shows the common ground that makes each and every one of us human.
In order to define personhood, one must first define a human. A Human can be thought about in two different senses, a moral human sense and a genetic human sense. In a moral sense, humans can be thought of as a person who is a member of the moral community. In a genetic sense, humans are merely any physical being categorized as a being in the human species. From this one can conclude that a person is a human in the moral sense. Furthermore, characteristics of a person must be defined in order to differentiate moral beings from genetic humans.
What is a human person? How do human beings relate to God? Who am I? Why do I exist?
The question: What does it mean to be human, is a centuries-old debate that is still relevant today. In A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau argues that inequality has no connection with the true state of human nature because humans are essentially animals with the ability to act by freedom. Similarly, in The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, Darwin states that humans are biologically animals but with moral and social qualities, hence proving his claim that species are not created but rather they evolve gradually with the help of natural selection. In The Communist Manifesto and The Economics and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx believes that human nature is a function of labour and in an unstable capitalist society,
Fantasy writer Philip Pullman says, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” Stories have been central to how human history has been shaped and remembered. On a grand scale, stories have been a way to pass down culture and remember history. On a smaller scales, they have been used to spend an entertaining evening or- often in many cultures, put a child to bed. While the power of a stories is one that has gone generally unnoticed, William Cronon urgently calls us to pay attention to stories. As Cronon argues in “A Place for Stories”, the manner in which a story is told influences what futures generations will both learn and recall on their own.
Mueller expresses how stories allow children to achieve the impossible, such as flying when they are incapable and discovering the unknown. Stories give a life to the people who are unable to live, and that is one of the reasons why imagination is so essential to our world. The sharing of tales bring genuine joy to people without the need of materialistic items; it gives people the chance to relate to the author on a common ground. The sense of shared joy and mutual connection brings people closer together and expands on relationships. People begin to feel as if they are apart of an imagined community, which is a community in which people perceive themselves to be apart of, through common interests or relations from media or works of literature. Communities such as these allow people to connect with each other, despite never crossing paths. It allows the birth and the strengthening of relationships, for when people begin to converse with others, the first thing they do is find common experiences or interests that they share. In addition, a quote from Mueller, herself, adds to why we tell stories: “Because the story of our life becomes our life. Because each of us tell the same story but tell it differently, and none of us tells it the same way twice.” Tales are devised with the incorporation of the narrator’s imagination; it is a way to
Since human kind gained the ability of reflection we have questioned our purpose of existence. What makes a human, human? Four philosophers, representing four areas of Philosophy, attempt to answer this question. First is the Dutchman Soren Kierkegaard and his book Sickness unto Death, who is considered the “Father of Existentialism”. Prevalent through all of Kierkegaard’s work was his constant goal to move people closer to God and thus closer to discovering their authentic self. Therefore, our relationship with God is what makes us human. Next is Jeremy Rifkin and his book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in A World in Crisis who believes that humanity is defined by our ability to empathize with other humans whether
What does it mean to be human? Sure, one must have the usual physical features such as fingers, eyes, arms, hands, feet, etc., but what does it really mean? Must the human be able to speak? To take upon the actions of themselves? Whatever it means, it can be interpreted in any way from anyone. The physical attributes of any human can be compared to those of our evolutionary ancestors. However, it is possible to believe that there are many characteristics that make a human, but only six define the true, ideal human.
Humans are extremely complex and unique beings. We are animals however we often forget our origins and our place in the natural world and consider ourselves superior to nature. Humans are animals but what does it mean to be human? What are the defining characteristics that separate us from other animals? How are we different? Human origins begin with primates, however through evolution we developed unique characteristics such as larger brain sizes, the capacity for language, emotional complexity and habitual bipedalism which separated us from other animals and allowed us to further advance ourselves and survive in the natural world. Additionally, humans have been able to develop a culture, self-awareness, symbolic behavior, and emotional complexity. Human biological adaptations separated humans from our ancestors and facilitated learned behavior and cultural adaptations which widened that gap and truly made humans unlike any other animal.
The fact that we are aware of the world around us and we decide what goes on is a fundamental ability of being human. It is mentioned multiple times. We decide who we are and where we stand in relation to the world around us because of this we have a certain power over nature even if it is not just because of our physical adaptations (Cartmill & Brown, 2012). We are human because we have both genes and traits and this makes us unique. It gives us the ability to see and interpret things differently. We are able to look towards the future and guess what is going to happen and in so doing we are able to plan ahead (Weiss, 2012). We are curious and want to learn, we want to know what is going to happen and we ask questions. We are human because we are aware of ourselves, our emotional state and where we plan to be, what our intentions are. This awareness of self allows us to be much more aware of others, to be empathetic. (Dunbar,
What makes us human? What underlying characteristic differentiates humans from animals or Gods? Where does the essence of humanity lie?
What makes us human? What is it that we are made up of? I know a human has a body made up of two legs, two arms, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and two ears, but that is not what makes us human. Human beings are made up of feelings, the ability to think, communication, and many other elements. Feelings show the way we feel between each other and is the reason for our survival. The ability to think is so important because just because we can think doesn’t always mean we do think. Communication is essential to human society. These are some of the elements I consider to be the most important of being human. Feelings, is something that makes us humans. Feelings, is one important element that makes us humans because that is how we can relate how others feel and that is the
Humans may be one of the most complex species on this earth thus far. We are the only known species who contemplates their existence so deeply and writes novels worth of work on it. But what exactly does it mean to be a human and how is our humanness defined? For centuries philosophers have written countless works on what they believe makes a person truly humane and how we differentiate between those who are “bad” and those who are “good” humans. In a world that is so subjective and that has so many opinions, routes, and options this may be one of the hardest concepts to define.