The Origins of Creativity

Culture started about 1m years ago, around the nocturnal firelight of the earliest human encampments.
History is the story of cultural evolution, prehistory is that of genetic evolution.
The informed interplay between competition and cooperation is the flywheel of a successful social organization.
Three neural routes activated in the brains of human and other advanced primates during social interactions:
- Mentalizing - goals are formed and appropriate activities planned to meet them
- Empathizing - Putting oneself in the skin of another to access their motives and feelings and anticipate their future actions.
- Mirroring - The individual senses the mood and emotions of another, and experiences them to some degree. Leads to imitation of successful strategies by others and is part of sympathy and mercy.

Increases in brain size:

3m years ago - brains grew from 400cc to 600cc in Homo Habilis
1m years ago - to 900cc in Homo Erectus
300k years ago - to 1,300cc in Homo Sapiens

These changes are due to a shift from a primarily vegetarian diet to one with substantially more meat:

Changed the entire gastrointestinal system, from mouth to anus
move from searching and feeding independently to cooperating during forays
The advantage of carnivory was strengthened by the control of fire.
About 6m years ago, we split from the chimpanzees/bonobos
The ancestors of our species developed the brain power to connect with other minds and to conceive unlimited time, distance, and potential outcomes. This infinite reach of imagination is what made us great
The forming of campsite and control of fire brings the group together tightly in the long evening hours before sleep. They neither hunt nor gather, nor have any other reason to venture out into the surrounding. They draw close and communicate where there is no other choice. This period in the daily cycle is the time to tell stories, raise status, tighten alliances, and settle scores. The first is the life-giver. It warms and feeds the people. It creates a sanctuary of light, around which nocturnal predators circle but dare not enter. Firelight is the Prometheus that shone upon the gods and brought humanity closer to them.
Daytime talk is focused on practical aspects of travel and the search for food and water. People working together talk about the food they seek. They also gossip back and forth in a manner that helps to stabilize their social networks. The subject matter is highly personal.
In the evening, the mood relaxes. In the chiaroscuro firelight the talk turns to storytelling, which drifts easily into singing, dancing, and religious ceremonies. Storytelling, especially among the men, turns frequently to successful hunts and epic adventures, their dominant daytime activity.

What is language:

The highest form of communication, an endless combination of words translatable into symbols, and arbitrarily chosen to confer meaning. They are used to label any conceivable entity, process, or one or more attributes that define entity and process.
Language is necessary for human existence. It is the basis os society, from the simples to most complex. By inquiry and knowledge made possible, our minds are able to travel lightning-fast through space and time, and, with increasing scientific precision, visit any place on the planet and beyond
The mind assembles experiences and constructs stories from them. It never pauses. It evolves continuously.
The capacity for language is universal and instinctive, but grammatical rules are mostly learned. The attention of infants from 12h out of the womb to spoken sounds is instinctive as are their initial infantile sounds

What is the human umwelt - that part of our environment we are able to perceive by our unaided senses?

We sense fewer than 1/1000th of one percent of the diversity of molecules and energy waves that constantly sweep around and through us.
We are primarily audiovisual, one of the few animals, along with birds and a smattering of insects and other invertebrates, that depend on sight and sound to find their way.
In vision, we can see only photons and no more than a razor-thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum (from the low end with red (excluding infrared) and up to just short of ultraviolet
In sound, by comparison with many animals, we are close to deaf.
In smell, we are virtually anosmic.

Thinking is made of:

The processing of sensory input
The reflexes
Paralinguistic expression (facial expressions, hand movements, and laughter
Symbolic language
Taken together, along with decisions at the checkpoint centers of the subconscious brain, they summon memories that help form future scenarios in the conscious mind.

Two enlightenments:

The first was the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the 5th/4th centuries BC
The second was from the 1630s to the 1780s, with Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire

We need a third:

The meaning of humanity - why we exist, and why we are the first of our kind on earth
The nature of consciousness, how it originated, along with the origin and proliferation of life as a whole
Why are there two (or more) genders?
Why is there sex?
Why must we die of old age, why are we fixed by an exact schedule of genetically programmed growth and decline?
In the age of AI, what is a human being?