GS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Thumb, Encephalization
Document Summary
Humans unique highly developed brain and opposable thumb. Woman buys tomato with money, throws one tomato out, tomato is taken to island of flowers, garbage is sorted through to find food adequate for pigs, what is considered inadequate is left for humans. What places humans after pigs in priority for selection of food is lack of money/owner. May function as predisposition/tendency, but doesn"t necessarily determine. Swings both ways the outcome: e. g. war and conflict, but also peace and amity, e. g. shaping/changing environment to provide for basic needs, but also destroying our environment. To be fully human is to: recognize non-animalistic, non-biological, non-material, cultural/spiritual aspects of ourselves. Humans need meaning, recognition, respect, and dignity. Meanings that humans attach to universal features varies across time (history) and space (societies/cultures) No one individual/society exists as an island in increasingly integrated world. Distant past and future shape us as individuals/a species. Cultures give rise to different kinds of societies that shape us into different.
