World is very old. Human beings are very young. Carl Sagan

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June 3, 2017
Topic: “What makes us humans?”
__Ethical Culture Café Twin Fairfax VA
Summary: “What makes us humans?” This essay is intellect
stimulation follow up from the thoughtful & open small group
discussion hosted by the Northern Virginia Ethical Society at Café
Amouri, Vienna, VA (Penny University Coffeehouse Monthly) last night--
Thursday evening June 1, 2017.
Intro a Synthesis of the legacy of Three Great Minds for What is
Essential for Survival of Human Specie on Earth:
Is it our genes that evolved few millennium years ago, drives us,
homo sapien specie? Are we really the imperial animal --similar to other
Primates such as Chimps & Bonobo who are 98% similar genetically the
Great Apes.
With recent cultural evolution of nation states on earth, in
recorded history of 2 millennium out of 6 millennium, from Egypt &
Babylon to 20th
Century, kings & princes have exhibited highly
territorial, genetically driven tendencies that triggered centuries of war
and man’s inhumanity to fellow man.

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Mankind as existing today is one family as we have known now
through science during the past several centuries. There is only one
human specie exists today, called Homo sapiens. But scientists called
human paleontologists have learned about human family origins before
recorded history of mere 5000 years or so.
It takes a great mind of science such as Richard Leaky, a human
paleontologist from Kenya in Africa to educate us about the startling
preciousness and importance to survival by use of that one gift that no
other life form acquired, i.e., human intelligence.
From Leakey’s classic book, “Origins Reconsidered: In Search of
What Makes Us Human” (Anchor Books, 1992), I share some thoughts
that are surely critical survival of human intelligence as the only
conceivable instrument to overcome the challenges of human survival in
the 21st
Century.

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To understand the preciousness of life itself on earth, another great
mind, a scientist & scholar and the legacy left behind is required. I am
discussing non other than the late Carl Sagan (1934-1996) who have
helped us understand more about the vast cosmos and a small creature,
human beings that we are in the context of that vastness of the universe.
Sagan’s classic book, “The Dragons of
Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence” (Ballantine
Books, 1977, paperback)
So far there is no evidence that intelligent life form, or even any life
form exists anywhere in the universe other than here on earth. Our trek
outside of our fragile world, earth, has just begun. Using radio telescope
technology of present and future, can contact be made with some
“intelligence” similar to our human intelligence that surely exists in the
vastness of the Cosmos?
This is a thought on which the great mind of Carl Sagan have left
behind a legacy that surly deserve thoughtful consideration for this and
future generations yet to come in the 21st
century.
“But today we do not have ten million years to wait for the next
advance (on human intelligence as is the past record). We live in a time
when our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. While the
changing is largely of our own making they cannot be ignored. We must

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“adjust, adopt and control or we perish …” Introduction, page 4, The
Dragons of Eden.
Celebrating Ethnic Diversity at Fairfax, VA Hometown USA

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The third great mind, whose legacy is relevant is the design of a
Rural community in America called Walden Two, a classic fiction written
by B.F. Skinner (1904-1990), a Behavioral Scientist. Walden Two design
allows us to design a prototype, a pilot community or modify an existing
community that maximizes the “nurture” side of the “nature vs. nurture”
debate that is on going now for several centuries. That is human beings
are surely a product of both our genetic inheritance that evolved over a
long period of time, and also we are a product of our environment and
culture, the “nurture” side of this debate as to how family and cultural
environments shape and molded us.

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Carl Sagan has noted in his book that humans are the only life form that
has a long period of “childhood” when our young are mostly dependent
on their parents and the supportive community to grow to adult hood.
This is a genetic evolution that has allowed “human intelligence” to be
used at its best, not due to genetics but due to the “nurture” elements
that shapes and mold us during this “lengthy childhood” that allows
“human intelligence” to be used during the remainder of the life
expectancy of that child.
So, human being are programmed by our genes to learn from our
environment much more so than any other life form due to this long
childhood for which we are programmed by inheritance of our specie,
and written in our genetic inheritance.
“The imaginative brain—our
Means of pursuing equality—
Developed long after those
Deeper primate motives devoted
To unfair shares and unequal
Access to controls over genes
And privileges. …..“
“The Imperial Animal”
by two anthropology scholars,
Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).
Related Topic for Penny University Café Twin: What is Wisdom?
Avi Dey
Cafe Twin Fairfax VA
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