Our Human Existence
Finding intrinsic value in reality
This is our existence and the biggest theoretical question of anyone’s lifetime seems to ask, why? Why did the giant machine select cherry, cherry, orange instead of cherry, lime, apple when deciding where life is to be placed? Did it also spin cherry, cherry, kiwi calling into existence creatures very similar to human, placing them on the same planet for us to one day discover each other? We have intrinsic reasons to truly understand ourselves for pushing forward everyday, it’s a way of finding value in our reality, but we also exist for reasons we are not capable of understanding or explaining, much like the legends we create and continue to keep alive.
Stories of our past are part of us on a deeper level, a way to teach, learn, and remember what made us who we are today. During the stone age especially, describing the world to others became necessary to ensure success. Knowing where and where not to go could mean the difference between living and dying - Our ancestors must have excelled at this in order for us to be here today, and their hard work still applies in the modern world as people seek to explore some of the more remote regions of Earth. Local knowledge of the land and its animals is crucial to avert potentially unknown consequences. In order to accurately reference parts of the world to others, mankind developed a communication system unlike anything else in the known animal kingdom.
Pictogram language on cave walls could teach offspring about encounters before getting into them. Planned hunts with multiple people could be strategical for everyone at once like calling plays on a football field. This huge step brought forth greater efficiency, less deaths, and more downtime to explore. It stimulated development of the imagination and a craving to figure out the world around us, eventually incorporating great detail of the outside world. Before spoken language, how would one describe large bats or mysterious shadow figures in the water to others aside from hand gestures?
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