It’s natural for women to serve the needs of men, who are naturally stronger, wiser, and generally superior. It’s natural for one group of people to serve others, in subservient roles. As a corollary, it’s natural for another group to be served. It’s natural for Western Europeans to colonize the Americas, Africa, and parts of…

One of the most interesting qualities we humans share is that of metacognition—the ability to think about thinking, analyze our thoughts, and make decisions based on what we learn through exploring our inner processes.  Interestingly, we may not be alone in our ability to “metacognate,” though the level at which we do so may be…

According to Scientific American, ” From an evolutionary gene’s-eye perspective, the genes are immortal, and our role, the meaning of life, is to perpetuate the genes.” In fact, the definition of life itself includes reproduction.  According to the Georgia Institute of Technology, “A key part of any definition of life is that living organisms reproduce.” Every…

In preparing to write this post, I realized that the question “what do all humans share that animals do not?” is more complex than it appears on the surface.  The most obvious answer—we all have two eyes, two legs, and a thinking brain—is, of course, inaccurate. Plenty of us are born without one or more…

Most animals have a particular and limited set of behaviors that are fairly easy to identify and codify. If we see a cat attacking a mouse, we know the behavior is normal for cats—whether or not we condone it. But is there really a set of “normal” behaviors for human beings? We know that many…

I recently finished reading one of H.G. Wells’ great (though extraordinarily flawed) novels about the human condition — “When the Sleeper Wakes,” published in 1899. Like many novels of its type, it describes a future civilization in which a caste system has been taken to its utmost extreme. In the highest levels, nearest the sky,…

Gender is, in essence, the expression of one’s sex through specific behaviors. We can point to a plethora of gender-specific behaviors in modern American life—in areas ranging from child rearing to fashion choices to career choices to recreational preferences. In fact, despite much greater tolerance for cross-gender choices, we Americans are still pretty definite about…

I’m excited to be the first guest blogger for the Human Nature Forum, and thrilled to have the opportunity to explore some of the topics that have intrigued me for decades. My background is eclectic, but I have always focused on the exploration of the human experience from the philosophical perspective. In school, I completed…

Check back for Lisa Jo Rudy’s first post beginning in July!