Humanity and Perspective

Perhaps the biggest question we have discussed in class, which relates to every single text we have read, is what makes a human a human, and how are we distinguishable from other nonhuman entities? I think that We3, Unflattening, and the TED talk really contribute a lot to this discussion. We3 seems to imply that animals have integration skills, that is, they are able to logically reason and deduce – something that Descartes argued against. This is demonstrated when Bandit declares, “is coat not we,” showing that the dog not only has a concept of self but also is able to logically deduce how to free that self from the limitations of he machinery imposed upon him (105). Unflattening is all about the human form and how the human mind adds texture to an otherwise flat existence. Scott McCloud’s TED talk explains how humanity capitalizes on this ability by expressing it throughout art, science, and history – specifically, through some variation of comic. One of the most interesting parts of the talk for me was the point that comics have existed for centuries, albeit through perhaps different forms; he shows that “comics represent a temporal map” (9:30). Perhaps what divides humans from nonhuman entities more than anything else is not necessarily our ability to integrate information, but our ability to express this integration in incredibly complex ways. McCloud points out that humans have three visions, the vision of the unseen and unknowable, the vision of the already ascertained, and the vision of the future, which can be proven (5:35). These visions, while arguably specific to humans, are the foundation for the perspectives of humanity – in art, science, history, etc. We can only know what we know and what we definitely do not know (and these things we try to know).