[[Daily Logs DG]] [[Morning Pages Index]] Prev [[26-04-2024]] # 27 April 2024 Saturday [[Morning Pages 27 April 2024]] ## Day Planner - [[Book - The Birth and Death of Meaning An Interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man]] Re-reading this on [[27-04-2024]] - Humans come from the mammalian line of evolution. The long infantilization period allows their brain to develop for an extended period. Living in a social group, humans are motivated to survive, which leads them to learn to work together and develop social codes and rules. To remain in the group, humans have to be sensitive to each other's gestures and emotions, which requires them to have a sense of self-awareness and awareness of others. - Furthermore, humans have different interactions at different stages of life due to the absence of a distinct mating period. These complex social interactions stimulate the brain to develop in a complex way. Humans use symbolism to organize their social groups, rather than depending on strength or energy. This includes creating "roles" and "status" that inform each individual's function and place in the social group. Coming of age means understanding one's position in the context of society. - Unlike baboons, who rely solely on food, humans nourish themselves mostly on self-esteem. This sounds a bit like "man does not live on bread alone, but on every word from God." - Lower level organisms have direct reflexes, while higher organisms have conditional reflexes, like Pavlov's dogs. The highest organisms exhibit symbolic behavior, which means they can choose to react based on the meaning of symbols they attribute. - There is a beautiful quote that says, "Nature provided all of life with water, but only humans could create the symbol of H2O, which gave them command over water, and the word 'holy,' which gave water special powers that even nature could not give." (page 7) This quote highlights the power of human beings to attribute meaning to symbols and how it has enabled us to interact with the world in a unique way. Next Day