What Makes Us Human

When I was younger but still old enough to have piles of papers cluttering my desk, I would watch my dog, Honey, roam aimlessly from room to room and, when she got tired of that, settle down on the carpeted floor of my living room, and I would think what bliss it must be to have hours upon hours of free time, to the extent that you could see no other thing to occupy them but daydreaming.  It was then that the obvious question came up: do dogs dream?  How capable are they of abstract thought, of creation and invention and imagination?  What would life be were it composed only of endless hours you could not fill with pondering and wishes, unless they were wishes for food and walks and scratches behind the ears?  How dull to be a dog, I concluded, to whom everything is just as it seems.

Abstract thought, an essential building block of humans, is also an essential part of my area of interest.  Philosophy is based upon the intangible--that which can only be imagined and depicted verbally.  George Orwell is among my favorite authors because his writing focuses on concepts he dreamed up, and yet which are just near enough the bounds of reality that they are believable.  I love to make the impossible plausible: it truly makes anything seem possible.  The mind's ability to believe what it has not seen fascinates me above all else: its ability to realize that which does not exist.  Abstract thought is the foundation of modern human life--of our system of government, our societal values, our individual morals--and exploring that capability and all it entails thrills me because it's among, in my opinion, the most powerful capabilities on earth, and the crucial dividing factor between us and other animals.

That said, abstract thought, for all its relevance, distracts from the present and can distort our perceptions of reality.  It is more often helpful than detrimental, but can be a cause of pain if we rely on its faculties too heavily: as Dumbledore advises Harry, “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”