Yes, we're animals. But we're also humans.

In which I consider the added value of being a member of Homo sapiens

I’m thinking about Facebook these days. And the research they did that pointed to the highly profitable effects of divisiveness.

I’m thinking about our national politics, where deliberate polarization is now the name of the game.

I’m thinking about our addiction to outrage.

And I’m thinking about the common justifications for these dastardly phenomena. “We’re hard wired to be this way.” “It’s genetic.” “It’s about survival of the species.” “This is just how the brain works.”

All very interesting, of course. Brain science. Genetics. Evolution.

But it seems to me that these approaches to human existence, the ones that focus on what science is able to tell us based on physical evidence, necessarily fix us in the “animal” bucket. “We’re just animals, after all” is a statement that our sciences can easily confirm. And that people who want to justify their mindless, uninterrogated, anti-social, backward behavior get to fall back on.

I don’t know. It seems pretty obvious to me that I’m more than just an animal. More than just some neurons firing, more than an instinct, more than a drive to survive (a drive so many humans ignore through their thrill-seeking or outright self-destructive behaviors). However I compare to other animals, there is one quality I possess that adds incalculable value to my existence:

I am conscious.

I am self-aware. I know (if I pay attention) what and when I feel. I notice other people and, if I’m lucky, can mentalize, or make predictions about what’s going on inside them. I can daydream, imagine, visualize, fall into reverie and remember what happened when I did. (Which is amazingly powerful because the things-I-know-that-I-don’t-consciously-know can emerge into my consciousness this way and therefore be of use to me.)

I can make decisions, strategize, analyze, interpret. I can be mindful. I can make myself meditate, exercise, hold my tongue, try an experiment, breathe in order to settle down. I can repair, go meta, wonder. I can observe myself.

This is just a partial list of what my consciousness affords me.

Other animals might have consciousness, too. I cannot say. What I can say is that human consciousness is not trivial. It is a game-changer. It actually makes us responsible. To ourselves. To others. To animals and plants and rocks. To the planet.

I’m really frustrated by people who allow themselves to live unconsciously. To become addicted to social media, to electronic devices, to self-righteousness, to outrage. To hate and polarization. To simplistic, dichotomous thinking, to right vs. wrong, in vs. out.

I’m not saying the urges and emotions that lead to this kind of behavior are wrong. No no. Urges and emotions arise and offer us crucial data about ourselves and others.

What I’m saying is that we as members of Homo sapiens are responsible for paying attention to these urges and emotions, for Going Conscious on them, for doing emotion work and making deliberate decisions about what we’re going to do with them. Even when Facebook is treating us like snarling beasts or twitter beckons seductively or the news cycle reveals yet another unbelievable example of how idiotic human beings can be.

As Confucius once said (and I paraphrase and shift his meaning just a little bit), we must begin our spiritual and political work at home. Inside ourselves, first and foremost. Imagine if everyone took that responsibility, this incomprehensible gift of consciousness, seriously.

Wow.