I Think Therefore I Think I Am...

What Makes us Human?

So... This mental tirade of thought was brought about by a Vlogbrothers (Nerdfighters forever!) video with the same title... After giving the question some thought this is the answer I came up with: I honestly think it's greed that makes us human. That sounds bad but it isn't really. If you think about it for a minute, all that curiosity is, is the hunger for more knowledge, which makes it sort of a greed as well. I have talked about curiosity before but this greed is not curiosity for curiosities sake. Curiosity can be observed in other species (even humans) as well, but nowhere else on earth can you observe greed as well as in our species. We do horrible things for power that no other species does. We wage wars, we allow others to live in poverty even though we could change things, and we ruin lives just to satisfy our never ending lust for the material. The greed after money or power we see in our world today is always greed after something that didn't exist before us humans walked the earth. What if we apply our greedy human nature towards aspects we don't have an influence on, ones we can only understand and really use when we share the learned knowledge with others? The word "greed" is defined as an "intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food." While cases of greed in a single person usually lead to horrible things occurring, a collective greed that fills the whole human race is probably essential to our survival. We learn new things and then use them to make our being on this earth better for us. When we've used greed to learn new things we've left earth, cured diseases and come closer to understanding the universe. Those are positives. Greed is not purely a bad emotion like we're always told. It is simply a natural emotion and, like all emotions, can be used to make the world a better place if we don't let it consume everything else we can feel, like compassion, or sadness, or joy. In short, to quote Gordon Gekko: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." ...Sometimes.

I would absolutely love to hear anyones thoughts on this and whether you agree or not! Just drop me a line by scribbling into the margins of my digital notebook right here! Until next time! Cheers!

~Jan