2. Subjects. We are aware of the world and, if marginally mature, aware of this awareness, self-conscious. With this come identity and distinction, time, place, wish and regret, near, far and never, totem and other, the concept of life and the meaning of death. The hands at Lascaux are our hands.
3. Talkers. Articulated, rule-governed systems of signs allow us a vast range of expression and communication, storage and development, and with these the cultural wherewithal to withstand and manipulate the unforgiving, primarily through the invention of ourselves as:
4. Users. By extending ourselves through levers of every shape, size, constitution and design, we expand our reach, and the purposes it serves, exponentially.
5. Choosers. Intention informs our every act. No goal is necessary, no success or failure mandated, no value guaranteed, no reference transparent once refracted through the prism of human attitude. Whether willing to admit it or not, people decide the course of their animal biographies.
6. Creators. A free, conscious, communicative and utilitarian animal will make what it wants, want what it needs, and need what it makes for as long as the world sustains this circle. When the circle breaks, we will decide to want, need and make different things. When creation is impossible, we will have been destroyed.
7. Cowards. Undetermined, we invent determinism. Unfounded, we demand foundations. Unrestrained, we shackle ourselves and each other. There is no value so small, no act so ineffective, no distinction so subtle nor decision so raw that we will not attempt to justify them transcendentally as necessities, as things imposed upon us, demanded by a will or power or logic or understanding or being greater than our own. We are the littlest gods ever made.
