Just Human Things

Tired of those who assign the most inane things as the "core" of humanity. Sex and compassion and intimacy are the main offenders, but the needlessly edgy might also cite greed and pettiness as the most innately human virtues.

A lot of other animals have sex and feel lust. Humans are not unique in that regard. Hell, there are other animals that practice sexual monogamy, even having one mating partner for life. Any social species will have some form of compassion, a drive to help their community or favor it over others (tribalism). Animals with advanced enough forms of communications and social relations will invent a way to deceive. There are pets known to overeat to the point of throwing up, mimicking human greed that drives people to hurt others and themselves for the sake of having more.

Those vices, virtues, and feelings aren't unique to humanity.

And yet still there are little quirks that seemed to have been with us as far as we know.

• Creating, telling, and being engaged with stories. Everything from gossip, to fiction, to mythology, to even outright lies.
• The desire to 'leave a mark' or a legacy and be remembered. The desire to affect our own community and those beyond it.
• The desire to remember and commemorate those that have come before. The root of both history and traditionalism.
• Art, aesthetics, decoration. The drive to create or alter an external object for expression or for sensory pleasure.
• Pattern-seeking, even in abstracts.
• The search for higher meaning, for a grand story or arc that the individual contribute to and be a part of.
• Morality, ethics, religion, and spirituality.
• Attraction to the dangerous and the forbidden. Morbid curiosity.