Everybody needs a boss one way or another

Life’s bizarre, every time I write along these lines, my musings, each time I look back at how my life, thoughts and opinions have developed I find them to have developed in ways that I couldn’t have guessed. I also find frustrations in the difficulty in recording/conveying ideas. There is such a difference between the spoken and the written word. The more complex the idea and often the more important and meaningful it is, the harder it is to put forward the ideas and ensure that they are more than just fleeting thoughts. What I’m describing are some of the trappings of what could be called the ‘human condition’. Most of us, most people, spend most of our lives like any animal. We do the basic things eating, sleeping, finding mates, general everyday life. In this respect we are nothing special. We are animals like any other just getting on with living. However, we do differ from all other life significantly, we have moved from adapting to the world around us to adapting the world to suit our needs.

Whether there is any one particular facet of what it means to be human that is completely unique to us, i.e. our primate relatives may display the same trait to a lesser or greater extent. The sense of the greater is, in my opinion, one of the most important and defining human traits.

In all human societies we hold the idea of the greater. This could range from looking at those with a higher status in the society as the greater e.g. an emperor, to a mythological being with ‘super-human’ powers or even just looking at oneself in the greater scheme of things.

Despite life’s limitations and frustrations we, humanity, have achieved a great deal. I believe it to be our insatiable curiosity that drives us forward, that need to comprehend the greater, what is beyond, why might we be here? Without that urge I think we would never have got off the starting block. True, we may well have come up with practical technological innovations to ensure our survival and make life easier, though what makes us special is our imagination that is provided by our sense of the greater.

Without it we would never have gone to the moon, be able to get our heads round seemingly illogical subjects such as physics or have come up with the arts. Organised religion, empires, the things that change the world fundamentally require innovation and imagination and I believe that this unique spark (for whatever reason we have it) will either make or break the human race.