A facebook comment string set me to thinking. (Comment strings can be either really boring, entertaining, weird, or surprisingly thought-provoking. Sometimes the latter turn into comment wars.... but now I'm getting off track.) To get to the point, I think that we, as humans, should all ask ourselves this question: What are we? Our answer to this question can have quite an effect on how we view life in general and the kind of decisions we are going to make. Here are some answers that some people have come up with or learned:
- We are pre-determined animals that act on or try to fight primal drives, but never really succeed in subduing them.
- We are beings created out of nowhere by the gods and are bound to fate, the will of the gods, and a little of our own will.
- We are beings created out of nowhere by God for His purposes and therefore have a natural desire to follow Him, though we may choose otherwise and suffer the consequences.
- We are intelligences, eternal beings, who chose to follow God's plan for us so we could return to Him and become gods and goddesses like Him. We have the choice to continue to follow that plan, though we may choose otherwise and suffer the consequences.
Now, these are just a few, and I'll admit that I don't know what a lot of different religions or philosophies teach about what we are, but you can use them as examples as you understand them.
So far, I see a pattern here. All of these beliefs involve a certain degree of free will or agency. You can see how it increases as we go down the list.
Here are some of my thoughts on the subject. Have you ever thought, “Man, why do I do stupid things like that?” or “Why am I so lazy? I wish I could do better.” Weaknesses are easy to point out in ourselves, but why would we even wish we could be better if there wasn't a better that we knew about? I am convinced that we are something more than animals. We may have some carnal drives, but here are a few points of evidence of another, higher part of our nature:
- We naturally seek and desire something higher.
Since we can remember, we humans have looked up at the sky and thought of gods with superhuman qualities who live in splendid dwellings and who, some way or another, have the ability live forever. We try to reach perfection and find ways to improve everything from our living rooms to computers to society at large. Some philosophers say that this is just an extension of the things we do understand or it is because we always want more, more, more! We're never satisfied. We seek gratification, and once we get what we want, we get bored with it and want something else. That goes for some things. We eat a good candy bar, and we want another one. We watch a movie, and as soon as the credits roll, we want to watch it again (unless it was a stupid movie like Twilight). In some cases, our wanting more is an indication of our search for perfection, rather than just satisfying our perpetual, carnal appetites. We break our PR for a mile run. We want to break it again. We play a piece on the piano with no mistakes. Now we want to add dynamics and expression and memorize it. We make a great scientific discovery. We realize there is still more to discover and want to pursue the inquiry further. We answer a question and see that there are more questions to be answered, so we try to find the answers.
Notice the difference between these pushes for more. It would be very easy to pop another candy bar into your mouth without even thinking about it. It would be pretty easy to push play again or to keep the movie for another night. What's an extra dollar? This first kind of drive leads to repetition, and in the worst cases, addiction.
The other push for more involves more work, and it leads to expansion and higher levels. Even if we never quite reach perfection in our imperfect state, it's always the ultimate goal. Like a lot of philosophers in the rationalist school say, how could we have a concept of perfection and of imperfection if there were no such thing as perfection? Plato thought that our spirits once lived in a perfect place, and that is why we have an idea of perfection and are always seeking perfection and, for example, trying to surround ourselves with aesthetically pleasing things because of their perfect proportions.
Now, cheetahs and gazelles can run pretty fast, faster than humans. I don't see any of them with stopwatches trying to beat records. They're either trying to get lunch or trying not to be lunch. That rockin' robin can get his tune right every time, but I never heard of a robin locking himself up in a practice room for hours a day and drilling the more difficult passages. Actually, he's just fighting over territory or trying to get a girl robin.
- We find patterns and order in nature and seek to order our lives and other things.
I know how easy it is to let my room or apartment get cluttered and messy. That's the lazy part of me. There's also the part of me that gets sick of the mess and spends the afternoon cleaning up and organizing. This kind of thing also applies to humanity at large. We start a society and everything looks like it'll be dandy. Then corruption somehow creeps in and messes things up for everybody. Then people get sick of the corruption and revolt and reorganize everything, hoping for a perfect or near-perfect society.
We not only try to organize, but we get pretty excited about finding organization in nature. We've found mathematical proportions like the Golden Section and functions and sequences that create pleasing and/or functional patterns. We learn things about the amazing organization that allows a living thing to function. We lots of patterns in the table of elements. We find order in colonies of social animals. Wait a minute! What about those other animals that have organized “societies”? What sets us apart? The fact that we are aware of our organization and that we can see organization in things beyond ourselves, the fact that we experiment and ask questions about our organization. I don't see any bees setting up congresses and revolting against Queen Georgina III because of nectar taxes without representation. I don't see ants worrying about how many calories they should be taking in or measuring the proportions of a dead fly they bring home for supper. Everything they do is by instinct.
We have the ability to wonder and ask questions about ourselves and our place in existence.
Animals are generally concerned with their own survival or the survival of their pack/herd/flock/whatever. They dedicate all of their time to this. A lot of people do the same thing. Some people are still in the hunter-gatherer mode where they have to spend all their time finding food, providing shelter, and defending themselves. Even those of us who live in an advanced civilization often just go through the daily routine of work, eating, sleeping, and taking care of hygiene with a few leisure activities thrown in if we have time.
Sometimes, however, we can't help slowing down for a bit to wonder why we do what we do and what our place is in the grand scheme of things, if there is a grand scheme. In the very act of wondering if we are more than animals created by chance phenomenons in nature, we indicate that we are something more than your every-day-run-of-the-mill animal. We have this natural hunger to know our purpose and whether or not life is even worth the bother. We wonder if there is a purpose in existence, or if the universe is just a cold, impersonal existence that doesn't care if we succeed in life or not. There are four three basic answers to these questions:
1.What kind of a stupid question is that?
2.Life has no meaning. We live and die, and that's the end of it. Everything we do is “dust in the wind”.
3.Life has an objective purpose. There's a game plan, and we have to learn the object of the game and try to succeed at it.
4.Life doesn't have any objective purpose, but we assign our own purposes to our own lives.
I suppose an in-depth discussion of these three answers is for another time.
We ask lots of other questions about ourselves, such as: How can we know things? Can we know anything? Is everything just in our heads, or is there really something of substance outside of us? Are we just physical bodies, just spirits, or both? What the heck are we? Etc. etc.
These are hard questions to ask and hard questions to answer. Sometimes we don't want to face them, and we just want to go on living without being bothered by them, but we can (and I think should) ask these questions and try to answer them.
- We look beyond ourselves by speculating and discovering.
We not only ask questions about ourselves and our place in existence, but we inquire into things beyond ourselves. We may begin by making up stories that explain how things work, or we may experiment or reason about how things work using observations and discoveries. We look under the surface of the ocean, into the microscopic world, and up into the stars. Some discoveries we make directly benefit us in various ways, but a lot of them do nothing for us but to satisfy our curiosity. There's the story about how curiosity killed the cat. If the cat could have escaped danger, he would have. But would he have sent in a robot probe to observe for him and answer his questions. Right now, we know we can't survive on Saturn, but that doesn't mean we ignore it, and never look in it's direction again. We still want to know, so we send things in to do what we can't do so we can find answers. This takes a lot of money and effort -- and a lot of math, but we still do it.
- We have rational abilities.
It's pretty obvious by now if you've read the above. Animals go primarily on instinct. We humans do to a certain extent, but with a little effort, we can reason things out and make reason-based decisions. We can also do math, music, logic, language, philosophy, etc. Some animals have limited rational abilities, but was there ever a dog who invented calculus or a pig who wrote a fugue?
- We have complex language and complex, abstract concepts and symbols. We assign meanings to things.
This is kind of a continuation of the last point. Reasoning involves abstract concepts, and we need language to express those concepts to each other. Words and other things serve as symbols of abstract concepts. Now, some will point out that animals have ways of communicating to each other. Bees do their little dance that says “Hey! There's a good patch of flowers 100 feet to the southwest of us.” I never heard of bees or dogs or chimps discussing the concepts of justice or love. A lizard is glad of some sunlight to warm him up in the morning, but he doesn't look up at the sun and see it as a Platonic symbol of truth and enlightenment.
- We are consciously creative.
We marvel at what some animals can build and create, but they build the same things over and over again, generation after generation, never consciously changing or experimenting with new artistic ideas. We humans, however are very conscious of our art and design, and it changes from culture to culture, age to age, and now decade to decade or less. As an example in Western culture, we went from post-and-lintel architecture to round arches to Gothic arches, etc. There are even different kinds of arches in different cultures, like the corbel vault used in pre-Columbian America. All of these designs were meant to support structures, but since we didn't have a specific design programmed into our brains, we've had to experiment and create and see what works. We also go beyond the functional and create designs, sounds, stories, etc. that are pleasing to us and/or have meaning to us.
- We have a concept of morality.
Now, I can just hear somebody saying, “We just made up morality. It doesn't really mean anything. There's no objective morality.” The same sort of person would be quick to point out that anything we do that would be considered moral or unselfish is really for deeper, selfish motives. That may be true in a lot of cases, but not all. Think of the story of the plane that crashed into freezing water and the man who let everybody else – people he never knew before – be rescued first, at the cost of his own life. Anyway, the point is, animals don't even have a concept of morality, made-up or not. If they need to eat another animal, they'll kill it. It doesn't mean they're evil or that they have the ok from their conscience. We, on the other hand, have debates on whether or not eating animals is moral, or if abortion is moral, etc. The point is, it's easy to disregard morals and to pretend that we're nothing but amoral animals. It's hard to live up to moral standards, especially an objective standard, but if we tried harder to do it, society would be a lot better.
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Have you noticed a pattern? We do have a kind of nature that would make one think we were only animals, and it's usually the nature that is easier for us to act on. Then there is something else inside us that makes us want to be better, to create, and to find answers. We have those desires, but it usually takes us a lot of effort to act on them and ignore the carnal drives that get in the way of them. Still, we can do it, and many of us have.
Here again are some of the answers to the question, “What are we?”
- We are pre-determined animals that act on or try to fight primal drives, but never really succeed in subduing them.
- We are beings created out of nowhere by the gods and are bound to fate, the will of the gods, and a little of our own will.
- We are beings created out of nowhere by God for His purposes and therefore have a natural desire to follow Him, though we may choose otherwise and suffer the consequences.
- We are intelligences, eternal beings, who chose to follow God's plan for us so we could return to Him and become gods and goddesses like Him. We have the choice to continue to follow that plan, though we may choose otherwise and suffer the consequences.
So, I'm ready to eliminate the first answer. We are not mere animals, and we do have a degree of freedom. How much freedom, though? If a god or gods did create us out of nothing for their own purposes, and/or we are governed by fate, we have a limited amount of free agency. In response to the second answer, even if things beyond our control happen to us, whether it's fate or the will of a deity or just chance, we can't blame those things for the person we become. That's up to us. A lot of atheists ask in response to the third answer, “If God created us, why didn't He make us perfect? Why should there be all this trouble in the world if there is a God?”
Now, imagine that we really are free. The Restored Gospel has a way to explain it. We are intelligences, free and eternal, but not progressing to our full potential. God offered us a way to become perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent creators like Him. He created us as spirits, so we are His children in spirit, and have godlike tendencies. All of us here chose to go along with His plan and have a mortal experience and test. (There were some spirits who chose Lucifer's plan, wanting an easy in – so they got kicked out.) If we decide not to keep going along with the plan, we don't get to become like our Father, and if we break eternal laws, we are punished. Now, some people will complain about the idea of objective, eternal laws. They think they somehow make them less free – at the same time they're likely saying that we are pre-determined and not free at all. Actually, the idea is that these laws make us more free if we learn how to keep them. If we learn how to work with things of an eternal nature, we can become and do more than we could ever imagine now. So, even if we think we have a good idea of what we are, the really important questions that we must provide answers for are: “What can I become?” and “What am I becoming?” In this “enlightened” 21st Century, when a lot of influences are telling us, “It is your destiny” to join the dark side, don't forget the Greek watchword ârte and the Renaissance motto virtu. Be the best you can be.
