Dr. Katherine Pollard, postdoctoral alumna of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering and the UCSC genome browserdiscovering in 2004 the HAR1 gene, a distinctive difference between the two genomes of humans and apes. The sequence coded not a protein but an RNA. HAR1 works to ensure the proper structuring of neurons in the cerebral cortex, establishing the hypothesis that the new HAR1 gene helped make humans human. 

With such a tiny bit of DNA difference, does that mean we are entitled to act like beasts, and commit violence and aggression against those humans with whom we feel we have superiority over or with whom we disagree, or are we equipped to think and behave at a higher level as a primate? 

Perhaps we can think, reason, doubt Bronze Age imperatives that continue to hold human into a primitive realm, or ... we can move beyond Bronze Age thinking into the 21st Century and make our decision based on critical thinking and that which makes humans and all the Earth flourish. 


The genetic codes of chimps and humans are 99 percent identical.

What Makes Us Human?



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Replies to This Discussion

I don't think humans and other life can florish at the same time.

The human population has more than doubled in my lifetime, directly or indirectly causing  loss of habitat and extinction of other life.

From the point of view of other life we are vermin.

Napoleon Bonaparte, There are those who have a low opinion of people and some even consider them lice running around destroying life on Earth. Others think people are a bother.

“People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. ”
~ Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

I don't share that opinion, I think humans have been tricked into thinking they are at the top of a pyramid of everything, they have dominion over all that exists and nature is here to be tortured and stripped of everything of value, including other people and their labor.
A tremendous change is coming, not some magical or miraculous event, but by awakening to the reality that human beings are a part of something so large, so magnificent, so wonderful, that we need to treasure it and each other. We will come to realize that war is not the answer to conflict nor is violence. There are skills we can learn to settle our differences and solve our problems. We will understand we can't pollute our nest without destroying life as we know it.
Earth will continue whether human beings will, or not. For those who see all existence as booty for their treasury, they will be confronted those who recognize them as intolerable. And something that is intolerable is unsustainable. They can't win in the end. Their booty is soot and ashes.


I haven't read Tropic of Cancer. I don't understand the quote and how it applies to people. It might refer to Millers difficult times in Paris. I don't know.

The bible teaches idiots that they have dominion over the plants and animals of the world and that people can be enslaved.

I don't see a tremendous change happening, the human population is exploding and causing the extinction of other species and climate change. It can only escalate.

It amazes me that Millers book was banned for 25 years in the U.S.


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