Things I need to learn, #117 and #118: Moderation; and learning to monitor and respond appropriately to my own needs, physical, psychological and mental
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That's a really interesting thought -- thanks for posting it! I suppose, using the visual metaphor of the pyramid, that the point at which we are forced to attend to the needs in the bottom tier is when what we have of them has shrunk enough that the rest of the structure becomes unstable. But 'prevention is better than cure', so I guess what I was thinking in the above post is that it would be good for me to recognise when these resources are starting to be depleted to the point of instability and to address them before the whole thing falls over!
As for our 'animal nature' (I usually call it 'biological nature' or 'biologicality') and whether it is uniquely human to transcend it, or one is 'more human' the more one does so, again there are lots of interesting points to think about. I often feel resentful of my biologicality, even as I appreciate embodiment -- for example when I get sick, or when I am forced to attend to biological needs while I'd rather be doing something else.
The question of what it means to be human, or what makes us human, is one that crops up often in my research (looking at the human/non-human animal boundary, as well as the human/transhuman boundary). The problem with 'human' is that it is a concept with many possible overlapping meanings -- biological (in terms of the human organism and human species), cultural, political etc. I think the question we should address first is why we want to know, why we want to create a definition of humanness. The answer, to my mind, often seems to be because we want a way of recognising who we mean by 'us' and creatures like 'us', and to do that we need to define what is important about 'us'. In the context of attending to versus resisting biological needs, I think if anything it is the desire to transcend biological nature, rather than our actual ability to do so, that is what makes us unique -- or even more basic than that, the capacity to recognise that we have a nature (that is partly biological) and to have preferences about that nature, whether those preferences are to submit to it or struggle against it. On that argument, we are equally possessed of the qualities that make us unique and important; we choose to exercise our preferences in different ways, but we are both able to choose.
As for our 'animal nature' (I usually call it 'biological nature' or 'biologicality') and whether it is uniquely human to transcend it, or one is 'more human' the more one does so, again there are lots of interesting points to think about. I often feel resentful of my biologicality, even as I appreciate embodiment -- for example when I get sick, or when I am forced to attend to biological needs while I'd rather be doing something else.
The question of what it means to be human, or what makes us human, is one that crops up often in my research (looking at the human/non-human animal boundary, as well as the human/transhuman boundary). The problem with 'human' is that it is a concept with many possible overlapping meanings -- biological (in terms of the human organism and human species), cultural, political etc. I think the question we should address first is why we want to know, why we want to create a definition of humanness. The answer, to my mind, often seems to be because we want a way of recognising who we mean by 'us' and creatures like 'us', and to do that we need to define what is important about 'us'. In the context of attending to versus resisting biological needs, I think if anything it is the desire to transcend biological nature, rather than our actual ability to do so, that is what makes us unique -- or even more basic than that, the capacity to recognise that we have a nature (that is partly biological) and to have preferences about that nature, whether those preferences are to submit to it or struggle against it. On that argument, we are equally possessed of the qualities that make us unique and important; we choose to exercise our preferences in different ways, but we are both able to choose.
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