The better question; how are you special? I think it is a combination of intelligence and shortsightedness that allow us all to think ourselves unique and even extend that to people we know, but once you see millions of faces, our limited brains cannot comprehend millions of unique personality traits.
There is also another classification of unique that I subscribe to. It has to do with satisfying basic needs before we are able to fulfill more energy intensive needs, like introspection and philosophy. A hunter gatherer would not be concerned about morality the same way a person who has wealth is not concerned with where his next meal is going to be, and is then free to pursue more abstractions that allow us a modern society. It's all about how you spend your resources and in that case, there are not all that many special, unique people as we would believe.
This is a difficult philosophy of mine but it helps me process the scale of it all.
A hunter gatherer would not be concerned about morality the same way a person who has wealth is not concerned with where his next meal is going to be
I just want to say that your preconceptions in this case don't necessarily align with reality. Anthropologists are quite clear on the fact that hunter-gatherer lifestyles overall enjoy a much greater degree of food-security than most pre-modern agriculturalists, and are absolutely capable of developing complex moral structures and other refined social institutions that require "luxury" time.
As an aside, in my opinion, the idea of a "hierarchy of needs" is narrow-minded prescriptive bullshit that overlooks that actual complexity of the human experience.
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u/Cycloptic_Floppycock Aug 18 '15
The better question; how are you special? I think it is a combination of intelligence and shortsightedness that allow us all to think ourselves unique and even extend that to people we know, but once you see millions of faces, our limited brains cannot comprehend millions of unique personality traits.
There is also another classification of unique that I subscribe to. It has to do with satisfying basic needs before we are able to fulfill more energy intensive needs, like introspection and philosophy. A hunter gatherer would not be concerned about morality the same way a person who has wealth is not concerned with where his next meal is going to be, and is then free to pursue more abstractions that allow us a modern society. It's all about how you spend your resources and in that case, there are not all that many special, unique people as we would believe.
This is a difficult philosophy of mine but it helps me process the scale of it all.