A few centuries ago, people believed that the Earth was flat and that moving in any direction for a certain period would eventually result in people or travellers falling off of a certain point. But this myth, much like the plethora of myths that have circulated the scientific domain, was debunked. 

Similary, when John Locke, the famous Scottish Philosopher, gave his famous theory of ‘ Tabular Rasa’ also known as a human being entering the world with a “ clean slate”, it was later researched upon through the lens of domains such as psychology, biology and neuroscience and the concept of neural pathways in neural circuitry was established which helps a human being in reacting to his environment and orient his or behaviour. The laws of gravity which directed that a human, irrespective of its location, when dropped off from a certain altitude is bound to hit the ground and similarly how the red blood cells carry oxygenated blood in all the parts of the body in all the human beings, irrespective of which part of the world they hail from.

The discoveries in science have led to an “ attempt” to equalize all human beings. But despite these physiological similarities, all learnings concerning man, ranging from humanities to social sciences, from psychology to linguistics to philosophy to economics and sociology, seem to offer a different picture and despite our differences in these domains, can we combine the natural and social sciences and call something as a common human culture?

For instance, a baby growing up anywhere across the world, acquires any language that is spoken in its immediate environment effortlessly with limited exposure and without any formal training of reading and writing and yet when that child grows up from a baby to a toddler to a teenager, over the world it is recommended by educational bodies and the United Nations that the child must acquire education in his or her mother tongue. Despite the same acquisition process of language in all human beings as babies, the process of formal education differs. What could be the reason? Is it because when disconnected from one's mother tongue, when educating the child, the child’s cognitive or intellectual abilities come to a halt when discerning scientific phenomena, as he or she is unable to dissect the layers that he or she might have otherwise in his or her mother tongue? But the facilitation of thinking in a particular culture also varies, and one might find it difficult to grasp how it could be reflected or compared as a common culture when compared to other divisions. For instance when we talk about the use of language, certain urban societies utilize their tongues for various technological and industrial purposes to forward the growth of capitalism, finance, economy and technology to make their lives easier whereas certain tribal kinships use their tongues to establish strong familial and social equations such as language use in rituals, playing games among friends or peers, hunting or wedding ceremonies and even the members present within those tribes find it difficult to comprehend as to what their peers are saying during the execution of these rituals.

Similarly, when we discuss the process of economic production, the majority of the nations have opted for a capitalist mode of production believing that it is the ultimate form of freedom and that every individual gets his or her due based on his or her skills and output and that they don’t owe their money to some other institution or body such an NGO as one might observe this phenomena in socialist or communist economies where for the benefit of the entire community and individual might have to sacrifice his or her well being. For some people, capitalism detaches a human being from his soul on a philosophical level by making an individual’s ambitions endless without being rooted or grounded and corporates controlling people’s minds and souls without any leeway for creative and expression for which an individual is primarily born and giving an individual advice on what to do in life and thus dulling an individual’s mind and soul with manipulation when this system is analyzed alongside communism, they both appear to be two sides of the same coin. A sense of entertainment is also present among certain tribal groups, as their primary purpose is to hunt for food and play games rather than engage in an economic mode of production.

An aspect of humanity, witnessed across all human societies, is the prevalence and nature of crime. Various scientific attempts have been made to understand the nature of this phenomena ranging from psychology, which aimed at describing an individual’s motive and behaviour based on his or her past background to neuroscience, which aimed at giving an attempt to unravel the neural circuitry in brain as well as brain injuries, tumors and mental to understand what prompts an individual to incite crime to sociology, to understand how society operates, reacts and treats the community when a crime has occurred. Several attempts have been made to establish what could be classified as legal and illegal, but situations differ from nation to nation. Some argue it’s the dynamics between the person in power and the alteration and transmission of knowledge on what is crime and how it impacts an individual in their daily, common, day-to-day life. For example, speaking loudly to someone in the UAE could land an individual in jail, whereas in democratic nations, this is an important sign of freedom of expression to challenge the authority. In some nations, public execution is a way of correcting a society, whereas in others, it is a sign of immoral and illegal activity that could disrupt the society. An argument could be made that human beings, irrespective of the law and order or power, would do what they have been pre-determined or pre-programmed to do before they come on the planet, and that authority just curbs what their true nature is.

.    .    .