What makes us different from the rest of the animals?
I came across an interesting article in the April 2006 issue of Discover magazine. The title is the 2% difference. The article discusses the human vs. chimp genome; that they (or we) are only 2% different from one another (at least as far as our DNA is concerned). It further goes on to say that chimps are "sentient," "can learn to logic operations with symbols, and they have a relative sense of numbers. Yet those behaviors don't remotely approach the complexity and nuance of human behaviors...there's not the tiniest bit of scientific evidence that chimps have aesthetics, spirituality, or a capacity for iron or poignancy."
So, then the author goes on to ask the question, "What accounts for those differences?" So I must ask the same, what does account for the differences? Is it really just a mixture of chemicals, produced at conception by our biological mother and father with as yet unknown properties? Or is it much more?
The singular most advantageous part of our existence over that of chimps or the myriad of other life forms on this planet is our ability of the written word. Yes, other animals communicate and yes other animals can learn to "talk" to us and yes, they do impart feelings, emotions, and a host of other wants and needs but we have something they don't - the ability to form coherence in a structured language to impart that which no one can quantify or understand - information.
As sure as you are reading this today, I'm imparting information to you; I'm creating. It may be my opinion or purely conjecture, nevertheless I'm imparting information. You can't touch information. You can't know how much there is. It has no observable mass or structure, and yet here it is. You can "see" information for you know it when you do, but nevertheless it's mysterious and you describe how to know it when you see it, but you just do.
Information is analogous to a ghost, an apparition - some will see it, others do not. Some believe it's there whereas others who cannot see call them foolish and insane for suggesting that a ghost is present or believing it.
So what is information and more importantly, why are we different from the chimps with just a 2% variation in DNA?
Perhaps the words we write on paper, our language, is our spirit. It's our spirit that we impart to one another. I'm giving a part of myself. I'm creating that which has not existed before. Sure, someone else may have come up with this idea, wrote about, but until now, has this particular set of words and sentences have never been arranged is such a fashion to describe the idea and impart this "information" and "knowledge."
This might also explain how we can fall in love with someone we've never seen or heard or touched, but only read their words. People fall in love on the internet daily and they've never seen one another face to face and have never touched. Why is that? Perhaps that comes under the same qualifier that makes us truly different than the chimps - that we can impart that which makes us unique in this world to another; the chimps cannot.
Since we are incapable of ever "being" someone else or living in their body or experiencing what they experience, i.e., we will never be anyone but ourselves (just as we will never be a chimp either), language, especially the written word, gives us the ability to impart our most sacred and precious gift to another human - our life. We can give our life in the service for our country and we can give our life to literally save another, but we can give of our very essence that which makes us who we are daily by the words we speak and the language we write.
The pen is mightier than the sword for in words, wars have been waged and battles won. Laws are erected and countries demolished. Lives are shattered and homes are built. None of these things has occurred or will ever occur without the written and spoken word.