Excellent piece that touches on a diverse variety of thoughts! Each of the thirteen would make for a good conversation in cafe with one or two friends while drinking good coffee and sharing lemon and poppyseed muffins.
The question posed in the first definition is perhaps the most interesting, i.e. why are flowers beautiful? Flowers appeared ~130 mya while mammals appeared ~225 mya, so this cannot be coded in our "reptilian brain."
I like the answer posed "natural selection went too far", the only answer we currently have. To push the analogy, these traits that we take to define our humanity are probably our brains "hallucinating," trying to optimize some unnecessary group of functions. Why are flowers beautiful? Why do we believe in God? These are probably unintended consequences of our evolutionary brain. Yet these "bugs" define us and are the source of all that we find great about us.
The question posed in the first definition is perhaps the most interesting, i.e. why are flowers beautiful? Flowers appeared ~130 mya while mammals appeared ~225 mya, so this cannot be coded in our "reptilian brain."
I like the answer posed "natural selection went too far", the only answer we currently have. To push the analogy, these traits that we take to define our humanity are probably our brains "hallucinating," trying to optimize some unnecessary group of functions. Why are flowers beautiful? Why do we believe in God? These are probably unintended consequences of our evolutionary brain. Yet these "bugs" define us and are the source of all that we find great about us.