Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
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Wait, is the big "Why," with a capital W, just us personifying nature? We're such social animals that we need to personify everything. People looking for a WHY are ultimately just expecting nature to act like a human being! We've evolved as social animals. We need to be used to thinking of actions having causes. Nothing just happens in a social community. If your food stores are suddenly and unexpectedly low, someone stole them. Oh, that nice tool/weapon? You got it from your brother-in-law. You owe him. We have evolved in environments where we need to keep social scores and disperse responsibilities. It's in our literal, social, and cultural DNA to attribute actions in our environment to people.
But then we also end up applying that to nature. It's pareidolia at a cultural level. And so we ask Why, with a capital W. Some might make fun of the ancients for personifying forces of nature and raisin them up as Gods. But we're no different. We do the same damn thing. We've just replaced the Gods with "Why."