Stephen R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says, “Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. Within the freedom to chose are the endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to self-awareness, we have imagination…conscience…[and] independent will…Even the most intelligent animals have none of these endowments. To use a computer metaphor, they are programmed by instinct and/or training. They can be trained to be responsible, but they can’t take responsibility for that training; in other words, they can’t direct it. They can’t change the programming. They are not even aware of it” (77-78). And it is this last thought, that animals are not aware of their training or conditioning or even conditions that place them in an intellectual space below humans. But what if a human is unaware, because of a lack of education or experience or some other reason, of their own training, conditioning, or condition? What then places them on an higher intellectual plane than animals?
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:29:25 +0000
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