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I and We - stepmother nature
Oct. 27th, 2005 02:03 amI have been a little confuselydistractofootless over the last year. This is why, or a large part of why:
Evolution begets mindsets. We fear height, are cautious in the dark and revere tall things. We see faces in things. We assign praise and blame.
Our identity is likewise a product of environmental circumstance. Every language I know of, and maybe all the rest, has at least a first-person singular and a first person plural - Chinese lacks much in the way of singular/plural tags yet has both "I" and "We."
Evolutionarily speaking, a worker ant has no need for individuality. It dies when it dies, with no children but many siblings. It doesn't have sex and so has no drive to out-wit/charm/impress/fight a rival to get laid. It cannot favour its offspring. It could hoard, but the colony would suffer and, over time, its genes would be purged. Were you to talk to it, it would have no "I," though it might mention "The one who is talking right now." It would, however, have a sense of hive and wouldn't much care for those barbarians in the hill around the back of the shed.
A solitary predator needs no collective identity. A crocodile's "we" would be temporary at most. "We met, then we either threatened each-other or mated." That's it. Crocodiles could, in theory, cooperate, but they don't seem to do so.
Consider a bacterium in a colony, a tree, a fish in a school etc....
As humans, as social organisms, we walk the line between selfish and altruistic, we have thoughts and so words for both 'I' and 'We'. We need others and we are needed by others. We can cheat another or be cheated. We can kill or be killed, love or be loved, ignore or be ignored. We can find a good mate and raise our kids, or we can find one good mate and queitly have kids with someone else. We can gather food together and share it, perhaps snacking a little off the top, if only to lighten the load.
A completely selfish human is either quashed or killed by its own tribemates, or sticks around to bring the whole tribe down. A complete altruist gets used as a doormat. Surviving, flourishing, withering and dying through both the collective and the personal, we think of ourselves as both one and one among many. The balance is crude, complicated and probably shifts with circumstance but it is there in our thoughts.
Evolution begets mindsets. We fear height, are cautious in the dark and revere tall things. We see faces in things. We assign praise and blame.
Our identity is likewise a product of environmental circumstance. Every language I know of, and maybe all the rest, has at least a first-person singular and a first person plural - Chinese lacks much in the way of singular/plural tags yet has both "I" and "We."
Evolutionarily speaking, a worker ant has no need for individuality. It dies when it dies, with no children but many siblings. It doesn't have sex and so has no drive to out-wit/charm/impress/fight a rival to get laid. It cannot favour its offspring. It could hoard, but the colony would suffer and, over time, its genes would be purged. Were you to talk to it, it would have no "I," though it might mention "The one who is talking right now." It would, however, have a sense of hive and wouldn't much care for those barbarians in the hill around the back of the shed.
A solitary predator needs no collective identity. A crocodile's "we" would be temporary at most. "We met, then we either threatened each-other or mated." That's it. Crocodiles could, in theory, cooperate, but they don't seem to do so.
Consider a bacterium in a colony, a tree, a fish in a school etc....
As humans, as social organisms, we walk the line between selfish and altruistic, we have thoughts and so words for both 'I' and 'We'. We need others and we are needed by others. We can cheat another or be cheated. We can kill or be killed, love or be loved, ignore or be ignored. We can find a good mate and raise our kids, or we can find one good mate and queitly have kids with someone else. We can gather food together and share it, perhaps snacking a little off the top, if only to lighten the load.
A completely selfish human is either quashed or killed by its own tribemates, or sticks around to bring the whole tribe down. A complete altruist gets used as a doormat. Surviving, flourishing, withering and dying through both the collective and the personal, we think of ourselves as both one and one among many. The balance is crude, complicated and probably shifts with circumstance but it is there in our thoughts.
