Human beings are symbolically complex beings. The large brain and head of human beings co-evolved with an upright posture and smaller hip girdle. We are born comparatively neurologically challenged compared with an animal. Most of our brain development (90%) happens after birth. We are not born a fairly autonomous individual as for example a horse is. A lot of our sense of identity and our ability to relate to the world is strongly influenced by symbol manipulation and from our culture. This is also part of the reason why we are particularly susceptible to becoming traumatised if we are not given proper care as a child.
In a sense human beings are strongly symbolic cultural animals. Our enlarged cerebrum can be used to separate us from the earth. But it was probably originally used to connect us to the earth through placing us within a interconnected vast matrix of stories. This vast living network of stories connect our human community to the landscape, to the ancestors and to every animal and plant. Our capacity to symbolize also manifests as elaborate ceremony and cosmology when we are in our ecological niche as hunter gatherers.
When we are removed from our natural environment and its immanet imbedded network od meaning our capacity to make sense of the world becomes disturbed and we dream up things like our scarcity based money system, the ecocidal industrial growth culture and a mythology which says we are separate from the earth.
jason hine 