Posts by Richard Howard2

The element of time—how long a specific link lasts—isn't really the point here. Everything moves at a glacial pace, sure, but what happened was still a definitive turning point.

Indeed, the situation involving Adam serves as an excellent illustration. Abstract reasoning remains one of the most vital components of this entire process.

Over the last fifty years, the average emotional and intellectual capacity of people in Western civilization has... let's just say, regressed significantly.

You really ought to read more closely; you've completely misinterpreted my point.

I am discussing human nature and our innate cognitive-emotional abilities, not the structure of society. If an individual possessed modern weaponry and industrial manufacturing back in ancient times, their behavior would be identical to how they act today.

That falls under the umbrella of societal influence, which is not what this thesis addresses.

Even so, I still haven't quite grasped the mechanics of how this all works, nor how we reached this particular point. What exactly was it that breached the barrier?

Exactly.

That was merely an illustration; you know perfectly well it’s foolish to take such a statement at face value.

If my memory serves, Homo sapiens has been around for roughly a million years. That missing link—that specific, elusive moment of divergence we struggle to grasp—actually occurred several million years ago.

Here is a thesis I’ve been mulling over:

Once a human being reaches a certain level of development regarding the question of whether we are fundamentally different from animals, their emotional and intellectual baseline remains essentially static. It hasn't moved an inch through history.
The misconception arises because people look at the massive disparities between societies from a thousand years ago and our world today. They mistake progress for evolution. In reality, what we see is simply the byproduct of civilization—the ability to pass down knowledge and build upon it across generations.

Strip all that away, and the human animal is identical. Take Eratosthenes, for example. Even though he lived two and a half millennia ago, his raw intellect was likely equal to any top-tier scientist working in a modern American lab today. The only difference is that he was building on the collective intelligence of his era, just as we are building on ours.

There is no actual movement.