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The Human as a Failed Concept - Coggle Diagram
The Human as a Failed Concept
The Great Silence
Forms of Silence
Extinction
Graveyard
Deforestation (Rain Forest)
Increase zoonotic and emerging infectious diseases
Myths die with species
"They just weren't paying attention."
Lack of imagination in certain areas
Gilbert et al: what we investigate is defined by our paradigms
Listening for responses from the galaxy
Intelligent life
On Earth
Nonhuman species capable of communication
Parrot
Irene Pepperberg
"You be good. I love you."
"It's hard to make sense of behavior that's so different from your own."
Vocal Learners
Imitation to get attention
Is this a good way to find intelligent life?
I speak, therefore I am.
Pathway to the divine
Ascribed importance to unique skill
Outside Earth
Fermi Paradox
Cosmic microwave background
Reverberation of 'om' (Brahman Hindu)
On Being Human as Praxis
Human as hybrid: bios and logos
Western genre of human "excises the world's most marginalized"
Humans as storytellers
Macro-origin stories
Biblical
Adam/Eve, Garden of Eden, Original Sin
Darwinian
Survival of the fittest
Sylvia Winter
Man1 -- homo politicus/religiosus
Man2 -- homo oeconomucus
Normalizes accumulation as a means of (economic) freedom
Capital is indispensable
Scientists & Scholars
Neurochemical behavior regulatory system
Biocentric (humans as purely biological beings)
Ken Liu
Humans make sense of the world through stories
A Symbiotic View of Life
Holobiont replace individuals
Anatomical Individuality
Symbiodinium (algae) and coral
Developmental Individuality
European Blue Butterfly (Maculinea arion) and ants (Myrmica sabuleti)
Physiological Individuality
lipid metabolism, detox of xenobiotics, pH regulation in colon, vitamin synthesis, intestinal permeability
Genetic Individuality
Japanese strain of Bacteroides Plebeius can metabolize complex sugars found in seaweed
Second type of genetic inheritance
Mammals get it from maternal reproductive tract + licking/grooming
Immune Individuality
Immune self/non-self discrimination
Prevent basophil-induced allergic response
Evolutionary Individuality
organisms selected as "multigenomic associations"
internal immune surveillance of symbionts (colonization, limitation, persistance)
To say algo is NOT an individual --> question of what defines an individual?
To have a definition of an individual is too stagnant?
"What counts as 'self' is dynamic and context-dependent"
Our paradigms influence what we think is worth studying
Our paradigms influence the limits of our imagination
Paul Farmer: failure of imagination
Unintentional "cherry-picking" data
Looking for patterns in the noise
Making a comprehensible story
The Dawn Of Everything
Hobbes
Predetermined: humans destined to live a life that is "nasty, brutish, and short"
Steven Pinker "The Better Angels of Our Nature"
The rise of inequality associated with rise of cities (not farming)
Chooses sensationalist data and stories and images
BIll Gates recommended
"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster"
Rousseau
Looking backward to explain today
Jared Diamond "Guns, Germs, and Steel"
Geographical (environmental) determinants of inequality
Agriculture
Sedentary lifestyle
Surplus of food to feed people who can specialize
Standing army
Craft trade
Buereaucrats
Origin of inequality
A better question: how inequality became such a big issue
Or has it always been an issue, and we are only choosing to grapple with it today?
Ted Chiang: "They just weren't paying attention"
Discovery
"One must simplify the world to discover algo new about it"
Building on previous discoveries require taking the simplification as a starting assumption
Impoverish History
Failure of imagination
Paul Farmer on
On Pursuit of Happiness
The mistake: thinking freedom, equality, democracy belong to the Western tradition
When many people have chosen to live with indigenous (and escape Western life)
Case studies (not population survey)
"Security of smaller chance getting shot with arrow vs security of knowing ppl will care if you are shot"
But even American vs European (France) have different paces of life
When do we group people vs. individualize?