Who are We? ~ Tim Gier

[Carolyn Bailey]

It is an accident of nature that we are here alone, if we can think that we are alone at all, as if humankind are the only “we” who matter.

There was a time, and not that long ago, when other hairless apes walked the earth beside us, sharing the same places, living similar lives, fearing the same fates. It’s mere chance that we, the “wise man”,Homo sapiens, survived while others perished, a simple twist in the fabric of reality which led us to where we are and no-one else seems to be.

But that is not how it had to be, and depending on how one conceives of other minds and animality, it may not even be truly how it is, but what if Neanderthal still slept and dreamed in the same nighttime of mystery, the same deep slumber of majesty which engulfs in our quietest solitudes, what if others were with us still?

Would we see the animal even then as so different from us as yet we do? Confronted with our own “otherness” would we yet distance ourselves so thoroughly from those we now look down upon from atop our evolutionary tree?

The continuum of all life branches out before us, yet disconnected we refuse to see, like us, not like us, who are we?

 

http://timgier.com/2011/03/17/who-are-we/