What are We and Science?

Does science helps us know more about ourselves? Or should the question be, what does science tell us about ourselves, understanding that understanding the question is half the answer. To accept this question means we must understand what science says about us, and we are allowed to have extrapolations from the evidence. What is a human being, what are you, what am I? Where are we from and we are we going.

This is an interesting question, because we must remember that our outlook on life is based on past relationships. A book one has read is part of their past relationships. Questions one has asked themselves are as much past relationships, for one to ask themselves what am I and try and answer it makes them understand hopefully what is happening to them. One can ask the question what my society is, my country my nation one looks at its history, written or oral. They can then place philosophical arguments for where they should be, where their society should be, where their country or nation should be, their role and purpose, their societies purpose, their nations purpose and role in the scheme of things.

You and I, no matter what our society is what our community is for one to listen to this podcast, you are a human being, for one to read the transcript of this podcast one is a human being. Octopuses, monkeys, whales, elephants, ants are not at this moment capable of doing human things like complex languages or reading and writing. That is just not how things have turned out. When you ask what am I? at its depths it is asking what is a human being? What are we, where do we come from, what is our purpose and role in the scheme of things? To ask what a human being is, one is asking, what is the background and ultimately the purpose and role of this thing, this discrete package of information we have categorized as a human being.

Now, an adult must ask and be aware of their personal history, where they have come from and what role and purpose is their life by looking at their surroundings. One must then ask from understanding their history and the origins of their society, what is the role and purpose of their society given humanity and the history of their society. For example, I am from Impangezitha, that is my history, I must ask myself what my role is my purpose, what role and purpose would I like for myself. To be a functioning group with progress, those who come from Impangezitha must ask what their role is, their purpose, to seek knowledge and grow knowledge base of planet, or wait for other societies and groups to do the discovery, creation of patents, we all must ask ourselves our roles, our roles give us a clue of how we want to survive, our mode of survival or living.

But truthfully humanity is a little bigger than those from Impangezitha, or a Chinese, English, Indian, Native American, Latino, Japanese, Zimbabwean, Amharan, Gujarati, Han, when we ask about humanity, what is a human we are asking a much deeper question. This is because when we ask what a human is, the answer must tell us where we are from and hopefully where we could be going.

Many creation myths exist out there that tell us where a human being is from. Taoism says that after creating the first god Pang Yu died and the maggots that ate his body turned eventually into human beings.

The Sumerians believed their gods, the Anunnaki created human beings to be slave for the gods who where here to mine. Hard work, why not make humans to do it.

Adam and Eve of Middle Eastern mythology, similar to the Sumerians but not the same, here the first humans created from dust and purpose was to be overlords of all other forms of life and to reproduce and spread out. We are going to space, plenty of space.

Some San people of Southern Africa believe that humans were created by a great god and lived underground and communicate with all the other animals, but when brought to the surface mistrust came about and we lost ability to communicate with each other.

Some Hindus believe in creation as the original primeval one having a relationship with themselves because they do not want to be bored.

At first, Viracocha the creator god of the Incas made humans but left them in the earth, like the San people. Then humans were called out.

In Yoruba myth, Obatala, a god created humans out of boredom, like some Hindu myths.

There are so many creation myths and they are all interesting. I mean some Celtic creation myths have the gods creating humans from the bark of a tree, that created a war between the gods and 2 humans remained a male and a female. Think of Adam and Eve.

Some Polynesian myths have a bird giving arms, legs and a soul to maggots to create human beings, beings coming from maggots like Taoism. Japanese are the result of gods procreating. Imangezitha my people are said to have come out of a basket that fell. So much interesting things. Don’t feel left out, I could go on and on, all our creation stuff is interesting.

Myths and mysticism helped ancient humans to understand who they are and what their role and purpose was on this planet.

Myths and mysticism suggest a human is more than the environment they come from, they are special and created to be special. Humans are created after everything else is made but is created from the surroundings, be it plants, the soil, but the human is created from nature in most instances, in some instances a direct child of the creators.

Myths and mysticism, what does science tell us what we are? Most myths talk of humans being created from their surroundings; this is where the similarity ends with science in a manner. Think about it, if we are created from the soil or from a plant, it means we are made from the same material as that soil or plant. All information is made up of the same things, we are made up of the same basic materials as a plant, the soil, a rock, water, stars, planets, dinosaurs, all information is made up of the same stuff.

What does science say a human being is and what does it suggest is the role and purpose of a human. What a human being is can be answered, but the role and purpose of a human being is left to broad interpretations. Philosophy of science, and that too is a good thing. Our purpose according to mythology was to serve the creators, what does science suggest, it will be a suggestion.

Let us be simple and start of with what a human is according to science. We start with science before philosophy of science because we must first with what can be verified by observation before we make speculations, and again, those speculations must be trajectories of our observations.

A human being is an information package and all the qualities of an information package apply to a human being. All human beings are discrete information packages, you are who you are, a unique and discrete information package. You can be isolated and observed, these big tech companies are analyzing users all the time.

Humans can be used to tally or compute. 15 humans plus 15 humans is thirty humans, 25 humans times 25 humans is 625 humans. Just watch the precision stadium exhibitions in North Korea as humans make pictures of the leader, of the North Korean flag, something learnt from the Soviet Union.

Humans can be used for measuring, the distance from the earth to the moon is so many humans, a television is ten hands wide and 5 hands in width.

A human being is a consistent information package. One will not be a lion or a tree tomorrow, one will be a human being no matter the wishing and false science, false science for a political end.

Humans are the result of random events, just simply, what if your parents never met.

Humans are independent information packages, they exist because they exist, if you are there you are there and there is nothing anybody can do, sure they can kill you, then you are not there.

Human beings can be used to tell the time, the suspects description is somebody between 30 and 35 years old, or looked around 65 years old. Scientists working for the police services often can guess the time of death. Hair becomes white with time. When we cut our nails, they grow back at a certain rate. I will see you after 60 000 heart beats.

Though we are like all information packages at the very basics, to understand the universe, better that we are alive. We are not the only living things, life can be classified into flora, fauna, fungi, and micro-organisms. We would be classified as fauna.

Even though we are fauna, a human is unique from other fauna due to the patterns of our DNA. But all life is about DNA. Humans share 98.5% of their DNA with chimpanzees for example. We also share 60% of our genes with a banana, 40% with an apple, 50% with most fungi, seemingly all life has a common ancestor, scientifically we are distant cousins to grass, mushrooms, dolphins, over hundreds of millions of years all adapted to what was seen as best way to survive the planet, not me, scientific suggestions.

This scientific pondering of a human being as opposed to asking what a human being from the mindset of myth and mysteries, the unknowable is always a mystery can be said to have officially started with Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin gave us the idea of evolution. What we must ask ourselves is it still a theory of evolution or is evolution now an established fact and thus no longer a hypothesis but with evidence it has transcended that.

The theory of evolution suggests that life was a random chance, and from the beginning life has been finding a way to survive on this planet and has kept on adapting branching out into different life forms. This idea does not defy what is established around what information is, all information packages are random the result of random events. After a while, one suspects what evolution offers is highly credible. The funny thing is, even if we are created by some all powerful being or beings, it was a random event, they decided to at that moment, they could have postponed it to now, or did it a little sooner.

Evolution is about life as coming from Charles Darwin. But everything evolves to its surroundings, a rock is smoothed by a river, the rock is forced to adapt to it surroundings. Most things are constantly evolving, the universe is always evolving with the times. Just to allow us to open our minds, back to the human being.

Charles Darwin had first coined the term survival of the fittest. But wouldn’t the fittest be the ones least likely to change, that environment is working for them, that is an argument that one can and should put forward for discussion, why change if one is the fittest?

The least fit at that moment are the ones to adapt or be destroyed by their environment which is harsh towards them. If the cheetah can catch fast antelope, why would it adapt any further unless it’s prey got faster or built in new defences.

All the technology we see around us is human beings attempting to survive as best as they can to their surroundings. Our very clothes are technology, they allow us to adapt to our environment. All that smelting, drilling, factories, weapons, medicines are the result of humans adapting to their environment in a manner that human DNA allows. The DNA of a mouse does not allow a mouse to make atomic bombs and cough mixtures.

Being an information package means we can not escape the first law of everything. All information is in a relationship, all relationships lead to a loss of freedom due to the energy costs involved. Not as bad as it sounds, energy costs, thank the universe that all those quarks, electrons, protons that makes us up have lost their freedoms, sometimes the result is yourself and me. When we have relationships with our wider society we can have offspring, get food, socialize, all these cost energy.

To maintain ourselves as an information package we need energy, and we get this energy from food. We generate heat to keep optimum operation temperatures, we have an electric grid, we have sensors to understand our environment, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin for touch. We have a mind that interprets all this information from our senses, and we make decisions based on our external environment.

Religious interpretations often say our purpose is to serve the gods, take care of the other life as we are the superior life form and to survive.

What would science suggest is our purpose. Let us not be naive, we must ask ourselves what our purpose is, what is the purpose of humanity. These are philosophical questions, does science help. Our purpose in the universe at this moment is exactly where we are as human beings. Your purpose in life at this moment is exactly what you have done in life. Life is not as simple as if I can think it will be. Others use others for their own purposes, that’s why we have so much hatred on this planet. Think about it, a kid mining in a mine in the Congo, no matter what they wish or think, they must mine, cruel as it is, that is their purpose at that moment, we should change this, but that is unfortunate reality and must be accepted. That child, no matter the potential to do great deeds does not have people behind them strong enough to change their purpose. Other people are feeding their children from this child mining, their purpose was to be fed in such a manner. Just a fact.

If you are robbed, that was your purpose to be robbed, what one does is up to them, and what they do would be their purpose in the future. Our actions and actions of others determine our purpose.

But, given that humans might be on the first steps of traveling the galaxy, but moon and mars first. One says might because these are random events, a giant asteroid might destroy the earth soon putting changing our future purpose. When we get to the moon and Mars, that would be our purpose, to spread life into the solar system, otherwise we would not be there.  Spreading life into the solar system inevitably will cause heat, all heat comes from photons, wherever we go we will intensify the photonic cycle.

Our purpose is defined by how we use our abilities, we can learn and acquire knowledge that can send us to the stars. But when we get there say Mars or the moon, we choose our purpose. We can choose to wreck these planets environmentally to get resources we need, then our purpose would be to spread life throughout the solar system and galaxy as well as destruction because we never learnt. Yet cosmic rays have far more readily resources than any planet, this is where we should get our hydrogen, oxygen, and other resources from. We choose what our purpose is depending on what we desire and what we see or role as.

I hope this relationship got one thinking over and above the everyday mundane. Ultimately our purpose is determined on past relationships and how we handle relationships in the present. One decides on how to act ultimately.

Science if one looks at it and accepts the facts around science would appreciate that science screams peace and life, we should look into that next.

Bhekuzulu Khumalo

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