what does it mean to be human?

we're going to try something new, okay? this post is more like a forum, i want to hear everyone's opinions. what does it mean to be human to you? and how would you fill the voyager space capsule? read the post to hear my opinion, then write your own in the comments section.

i think that what makes humans different from all other species is that we are the only species that feels a need to alter our environments. we want to grow, to nourish, to create, to love, maybe even to injure, we do all these things because we want to be known. we want to be remembered for having an affect on our world, and i'm sure everyone, even hitler, believes their affect is positive. we know that we are successful human beings when we reach the end of our lives and decide that we added more to the world than we took away. this is part of the lure of religions, they promise to make us eternal, be it in heaven, or reincarnation or what have you. it's no mistake we're called human beings, because that is our goal in life, to always be in at least one form. that's the main goal of evolution too, to keep our genes, a portion of ourselves, in existence. it's why most people believe in some sort of afterlife. it's also why we are fascinated with vampire and other immortals. we love the concept of existing forever, especially in perfection, because we are incredibly vain. that's how we like to think of ourselves, as perfect. this is the reason we say god made us in it's image, because it makes us feel more perfect and human.

how would you reflect what it means to be human? have you ever heard of the voyager space project? they sent two identical gold records into space, with recordings of what the researchers thought reflected what it means to be human. if i were filling that space capsule, i would put things that reflect the joy of being alive and the beauty of human choice. while there will always be dictators and tyrants, there will also always be people who protest their acts. for every slave owner, there were people who marched on washington. for every war criminal, there are people dedicating their lives to helping others. i would use the shuttle to show that although humans vary in their beliefs and attitudes, we have a great potential for good. although it probably wouldn't matter, because aliens would probably find our need to be known and leave a mark on the future baffling.

remember to comment your opinion!

freud and elvis: b.s. at it's best

first off, thanks for the feedback guys, i appreciate it. i'll try to get to the achievement gap soon, but until then, you might like an earlier post i did called "the world gap".

so, i was reading my psych textbook and the author (david g. meyers, not that you were wondering) wrote this about freud: "in the popular mind, he [freud] is to psychology's history what elvis presley is to rock music's history." i thought, "david, you're more right than you know." do you know why david is right? have no fear if you don't, because i'm about to tell you.

the big similarity between elvis and freud is that they are famous for making contributions they didn't really make and nobody knows about the admittedly smaller contributions they actually made. let's start off with elvis, shall we?

okay, so what is elvis famous for? being the king of rock 'n' roll, right? so let's just say the requirements of being the king of rock 'n' roll are revolutionizing music by creating rock and writing really original, cool music. well, elvis didn't really do those things. elvis didn't create rock, rock was around way before elvis, invented by black americans who just couldn't become popular with a white audience. he even admitted this himself, saying, "rock 'n' roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues." he also is famous for songs he only covered. elvis is attributed with covering 302 songs and writing only 133. many of the songs he is famous for, including "hound dog", "blue christmas", "mystery train", and "money honey" are covers. but elvis did make some important contributions to music, mainly in the form of the things i just listed. sure, tons of his work is covers of the work of black americans, but no one would have ever heard of these songs if he hadn't covered them. and because elvis took went through a lot of media slandering bringing that music to the public, later black artists were socially acceptable. while he did take perhaps a bit more credit than he was due, it was more by ommission than anything else. from all accounts, he was respectful of african americans and the debt he owed to them for his success. it's not elvis' fault that there was, and to a lesser extent, still is racism in america. but it is good for us to know the whole story.

now we move on to freud, a more controversial figure, mostly because his theories had no scientific evidence and were kinda sexist. here's a basic rundown of freud's theory: everything is related to our unconscious, which handles all of our socially unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. there are three levels of the mind, the id, which runs on sexual and aggressive drives, the superego, the more "rational" part of the mind, and the ego, which mediates between them to make decisions. so, nowadays we know almost all of this was just kind of, dumb. freud's theories have no real scientific basis, and yet he is one of the most famous "psychologists" (in a loose sense of the term) ever. freud also believed all women "acknowledged" their were inferiority to men. (not so much, guys.) so do we just call freud an incredible idiot who somehow managed to dupe tons of people into believing his whacked out theories? no. because without freud, would so many people really have gone into psychology? his notoriousness during the victorian era shocked so many people who thought they were sophisticated because he essentially said "nope. underneath your well composed exterior is a beast that only cares about aggression and sex just dying to break out." that shock is what made him so famous, and is probably the reason at least 100 people went into psychology. kinda good for a guy whose theories were complete b.s, don't you think?

so freud and elvis, two incredibly famous people who absolutely didn't do the thing they were famous for but made some contribution no one knows about. makes you wonder, who are the elvises and freuds of this generation?

state anthems/shameless plea for attention

so i want to start out by saying i have no excuse for not posting for so long except that it's summer and it's hard to do and i have a ton of work for psychology class and i'm beginning to feel that no one reads this blog. so if you do, i'd appreciate like a comment or something, cause it's easier to be entertaining when you know someone will actually be entertained. thanks.

and now, on to the real post

so by now everyone has heard jay-z's and alicia key's song about new york called "empire state of mind" (is that what you're supposed to do with song titles? i can never remember these type of writing rules). so thinking about it got me thinking about other state anthems (sweet home alabama, ect.). then i was like, well, does california have one of those? what would that be? hotel california? california by join mitchell? nah. neither are mainstream enough. i kinda want the postal service to write one, but that just may be cause i'm listening to the postal service right now. if you don't know them, a great song is called "nothing better".

that's all i have to say for now, so i'm gonna go all shameless public radio on you only possibly existent readers and say, if you care about this blog, fund it by showing support so i don't feel like no one's out there listening. can anyone tell that i'm tired :)?