Question: The genetic difference between a human and a monkey is very small, a little more than one percent. In other words, a human is ninety-nine percent chimpanzee. How could such a tiny change in a genome lead to a completely different stage of development? What is this one percent that separates a human from a monkey?
Answer: Human and monkey are two completely different worlds. If we talk about the physical body, man developed through all the levels: still, vegetative, animate, and human, and the monkey is an intermediate stage between animal and human. But this is only if we are comparing bodies.
There is nothing special in the physical body of a human. And although it is different because it doesn’t have fur like monkeys, the arms and legs develop differently, and the attitude to life is different, the main difference is not in this. The human is distinguished by the fact that he develops, acquires wisdom, and changes his environment.
Although animals also change their environment: construct houses for themselves underwater or on trees, it is purely instinctive according to the call of nature and doesn’t change from generation to generation. They live the way they were born according to their nature.
Hence, animals are an inseparable part of nature. They have no desire to change their environment or their society, to build some special artificial systems of relations that were not inherited from their ancestors and known before.
On the contrary, a new mind and senses develop in the human from generation to generation that oblige him to change the world. We can’t discover the source of this radical difference. We only see the consequences of it. Indeed, a person changes the environment, changes the world, and wants an upgrade.
He doesn’t agree to live like the chimpanzee that today lives the same way it did 100,000 years ago. Although the chimpanzee has an excellent memory and mental abilities, they don’t push it to develop.
This is the question: Why does a human have an ability to grow and desire to develop from generation to generation and within each generation? Why is this development different from person to person and from nation to nation?
We collect the experience and pass on all our achievements in culture, education, and science. We build an environment for ourselves, human society, government, and social systems. You can compare the modern world created by man with the one that existed a few hundred years ago.
All this came from the inner impulses of man, which is hidden from us. Why are we given such a desire, for what? After all, if we stopped developing, we would live like monkeys. But in every single human and in all of us together, every moment and at all times, lives the desire to advance.
In other words, there is a special program within us that demands its implementation from us. Therefore people develop in a mandatory manner. We see it in children who never get tired of playing with and have a burning interest in all the gadgets.
Each age has its own games. A child demands it from parents, and when he grows up he will certainly overtake them and will be even more advanced than they are. Nothing like this happens with any animal.
Here all we have to do is to ask: For what are we given this? After all, we can’t say that it makes us happier. Perhaps it would be better to freeze all our development at some stage in order to lead a carefree life? Nevertheless, we develop and build ourselves more and more. This inner aspiration is called the human in us. However, where it is leading us is still a mystery to humanity.
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/6/16