Homo sapiens sapiens vs “Homo sapiens tabellarius”.
Modern humans are classified within the animal kingdom as Homo sapiens sapiens.
Bearing in mind that in Latin (Homo = human) and (sapiens = wise/knowing) cynics may wonder how many of us truly qualify as members of the human race.
Perhaps a better term (albeit marginally) that covers all of us could be Homo sapiens tabellarius (tabellarius = letter carrier or messenger).
There are two main reasons for this:
(1) Like the rest of the living things we are carriers of genetic information (genes) obtained from our ancestors which is to be imparted to our offspring/s.
Whether (as individuals) we succeed or not in this (by design or otherwise) depends on many factors (chance or luck included) which we need not go into.
(2) Through communication (spoken, written, pictorial, etc.) we pass on information
(knowledge, ‘wisdom’) we have gathered by countless means (including legends, myths, education, training, personal experiences, etc.).
Many factors (which we need not go into) determine the extent to which we do this appropriately (wisely: possible sapiens connection)) or otherwise.
Moreover, it would appear that the continued existence (see note below) of the human species (as we know it to-day and irrespective of classification) may well depend (and increasingly so as pollution and climate change really bite in and inter-national/racial/religious conflict/ tension mounts up) on the:
(a) ‘Matter’ (information, knowledge, ‘wisdom’) men will have accumulated that he may choose to communicate (or perhaps in some cases not communicate) and
(b) ‘Manner’ (advertising, bargaining, blackmail, bribery, coercion, indoctrination, and the likes not necessarily excluded) in which this will be done.
[Note: E. Mayr (1995) has estimated that the life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years (Biastronomy News 7, no.3].
As for the genes they will do mostly as they please (within the confines of the modern human species) unless we start engineering them beyond recognition or we modify the environment (theirs and ours) recklessly and drastically.
[Note: Genes hitherto ‘silent/dormant’ can express themselves when the conditions are right for them to do so. Those expressions might not all (if any) be what we (as we are to-day) would/might like!].
