#humankind

[palatinewolfsblog]

"Caring for others, whether people or animals, is what makes us fully human." - Jane Goodall

[wormy-wizard]

I work at a movie theater.

And personally? To be in the tickets booth, and see young girls, teenagers, adult women, coming in to see Barbie,

the most highlighter pink outfits, some of them coming in with the dolls they’re dressed as, laughing to each other, cheering for each other,

to see the men they’re coming to see it with, dressed in pink, cheering them on, taking their pictures with smiles and cheers in the lobby at the photo op

touches something so deep in me

I can’t say any nuances of the movie that haven’t already been said, but like, fuck man, love is so deep and so kind and to be able to see glimpses of it from behind my little ticket desk makes me a little less nihilistic.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

"Some twelve thousand muskets were double-loaded, and half of those more than triple. One rifle even had twenty-three balls in the barrel — which is absurd. These soldiers had been thoroughly drilled by their officers. Muskets, they all knew, were designed to discharge one ball at a time. So what were they doing? Only much later did historians figure it out: loading a gun is the perfect excuse not to shoot it. And if it happened to be loaded already, well, you just loaded it again. And again.

— Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

[luvingsunshine]

sapiens: a brief history of humankind

[beccawise7]

Intentional living is powerful ~ never underestimate the power of little actions. ✌️

Have a beautiful day!

~beccawise7💜🖤

[ashuriah]

We really don't think about the incredible thing that is verbal communication enough. While the universe is full of marvelous processes that we are barely on the cusp of comprehension, let's turn our attention to the power and versatility in human verbal communication.

A single syllable can convey so much. But before we get ahead of ourselves, think back to the very beginning. Primitive verbal communication is an instinctual behavior that begins as soon as we exit the womb. We cry to alert our mothers to our needs for warmth and sustenance. It becomes a learned behavior that we use regularly to receive attention or express displeasure. This is simple learned cause and effect using the biologically programmed safeguard processes we were born with.

Amazingly, our brain works fast to find more of these cause-and-effect patterns. We quickly understand through practice which sound sequences lead to which outcomes. Eventually, we manage to grasp our first words, often the labels for the most prominent factors in our lives: our parents. Through great coaxing and assistance we squeeze out a "mama" or "dada" and begin our trek into the world of speech.

Now, let's look back on what we've already accomplished in the short time since we've been born. Not only is our fleshy little head computer maintaining daily functions and attempting to calibrate the body that's doing so much growing, it's constantly taking in our surroundings and trying to process that data into understandable information. On top of that, we've begun to understand that certain sounds can mean certain items, people, or concepts, and that this goes both ways- we can manifest that which we desire through selective sound patterns just as easily as we can predict what is coming our way through reception of said patterns.

As we grow, we learn more sound patterns, eventually discovering the term for these patterns to be "words". We learn more words, and through repetition, neural pathways are formed that allow us to almost reflexively speak these words without any thought or conscious effort at all. They run paths so deep into our minds that we will know and understand these words and this language until death.

But it is not all about what we can speak, it is also about what we receive! We take in so much information on a daily basis because the people never stop talking and we never stop listening. The meanings we assign these words run as deep as the neural reflex structures they're built on and it allows us to visualize everything we hear as quickly as we hear it; bringing forth lively images and understanding of sentences we have never heard before.

When you combine these processes and functions, you are given an unending number of possible combinations in which you can arrange the circumstances and information to the point that there will truly never be two identical instances of interpersonal communication. I will not even attempt to summarize that topic of conversation anymore than the simple mention of it already does.

I believe the point I came into this post to make was that sometimes we need to step back and take a look at the accomplishments we as an individual have achieved and how incredible it is that we did so, as well as the fact that we didn't do it alone, but as an entity: humankind.

I'll post something later about the power and responsibility of communication.

[without-ado]

Humankind l Trent Parke l Magnum Photos

From The Emotions of the Sun Project