In 1 sentence: What defines human?
 

In YOUR mind, in just one sentence what defines a human being and what makes us unique (as far as we know)? I'm not looking for the Oxford English Dictionary definition unless that's what it is to you but YOUR personal opinion.

Our ability to love.

Our ability to Kill

Nice one there Glenn. I will do mine.



Reason.

Very apocalyptic there Arista, I love the contrast we already have with yours and Glenn's answers.

To process abstract thought and reasoning.

Conscience

Adaptive

:)

Big brains and opposable thumbs.

What defines humans is our incredible ability to imagine we are civilised and enlightened while we lay waste to a large proportion of the planet, kill each other in great big bloody batches and ******* each other over for a percentage of the profit.

Logos, mythos, emotion.

Give any animal intelligence and it would end up doing the same, nature is destructive, and humans are part of nature.

Simple minds never fails to make me laugh :joker:
I can never tell if hes being serious or sarcastic

If my Aunt had balls Chewy she'd be my Uncle. We, unfortunately have the capabilities to pull those actions off, maybe that's what makes us unique.

About what? :joker: I'm in the serious debates section Hadouken I would never be sarcastic :shocked:

Oh now I'm embarrassed

:joker:

DNA

Our ability to look at ourselves as better than others when in fact that makes us worse human beings.

I think our feelings.

That's a theory I guess, not one I agree with though. There's no evidence to suggest that intelligent animals are anywhere near as destructive as humans. There are only a couple of animals on the planet that kill for the sake of it, and the most dangerous is the human.

generally speaking humans don't kill for the sake of it either (although there's always exceptions to the case, as there are with other animals too) Humans kill for land so do most animals when they're protecting their territory, humans kill for power so do animals

You are right but I would like to think we should know better. We have the ability to decipher right from wrong allegedly but unfortunately I will never be able to show my cat that I deem her hunting mice unacceptable.

But how do you know animals don't have a sense of what's right and wrong though? Your cat hunts mice, humans hunt too

Lots of humans kill for the sake of it, moreover, they kill for fun. Hare coursing, fox hunting, badger baiting, stag hunting, grouse/pheasant/duck shooting, fishing... anything where something gets killed but isn't eaten is killing for the sake of it.

Their ability to be the most wonderful kind person and the most vile cruel person,we think we are the superior being,I'm not so sure.

Here,here .

The problem is Niamh I cannot sit my cat down and say to it "you don't need to kill those mice because we have all the food you need. Please stop because I don't appreciate dealing with the result."

It's not her fault and I will not chastise her for it she simply does not understand and she will continue to do it.

Whatever we do we can always sit and logically think whether it's the right thing to do or not and if we aren't capable of doing that ourselves there's always someone else who can stick their oar in and let us know :hugesmile:

Animals do that as well though, cats often hunt for fun, so do dogs, one of my dogs favourite pass times is to get into the field and chase rabbits or rats or birds or anything that moves really......he doesn't eat them after. I don't agree with any of the "sports" you've listed don't get me wrong but it's not true to say animals don't do stuff like that as well

Pets do hunt smaller animals for fun because they're following their instincts, despite being fed by their owners. If they were living in the wild they'd live on what they hunted.

It makes me a bit sad that humans have so much capacity for good but so often turn it to evil. We find out what makes the sun work... and we build a bomb out of it. I'm sometimes surprised we've made it this far.

We aren't out of the woods yet Livia, still plenty of time for us to turn Earth into a char grilled wasteland. :(

But you could say the same for humans tbf, we used to hunt for food at one point in time as well

And now we torture, trap, shoot, gas, poison... we stuff tubes into geese and force-feed them so that rich people can eat their livers, we cut the fins off sharks for soup and throw them back into the sea still alive, we club, poison and gas animals and skin them, sometimes still alive, so some rich tart can wear a fur coat, we chase stags on horseback until they're so exhausted they collapse and we watch while they live on for minutes while dogs tear them apart. It's a little more serious than tossing a mouse around for an hour.

I've not even started on the napalm and mustard gas yet... and the gassing of six million people because another group of people didn't like them.

What makes me laugh is those people that go bear hunting with a ******ing rifle on a raised plynth in the middle of a tree and think they are some sort of warrior. Why don't they try taking on a bear with a kitchen knife, see how many pelts they come back with.

Oh I know and you're right, I'm just saying that animals have tendencies like ours as well, if they were more intelligent and had more capabilities who's to say they wouldn't turn out just like us?

I agree Simple Minds. I just don't understand the mentality of someone who has to kill something to make them feel good.

I killed a spider the day before yesterday, i won't lie.........it felt good :laugh:

Don't you disagree with me or I'll come over there and slap you around. Because I'm human, and I can.

I won't really.

Good job you're not superstitious... I mean, with spiders being lucky, and it being dreadfully unlucky to kill them and all...

Am I the only one on here who likes spiders? I can't be...