Ah yes, now that is a question; what makes us human and what indeed separates from the wild beasts in the jungle? The New Statesman has taken a breather from its usual preoccupations and has asked itself, its readers and a few well known personalities to consider that very question and congratulations to it for doing so. The front cover caught my attention so, without hesitation I got myself a copy. It turns out it is to be an on-going series, starting with Jonathan Sacks Chief Rabbi and general purveyor of sickly-sweet home spun morality. Well, you have to start somewhere I suppose, and to be fair to the old Sacks, Judaism has been around for a fair old time so I guess he has as much right to go first as anyone.

And what does our Rabbi come up with? You guessed it family, relationships and mothers apple pie. It doesn’t take too much cognitive activity to realise that Sacks is talking a load of old tosh. Families are a mixed blessing. They can, as Sacks points out, provide a good, caring foundation for all the trials and tribulations that are to follow, but they can equally leave you with a bucket load of neuroses and some bad, bad baggage. Alternatively, you can live a reasonable sane existence independent of family and end up with all the usual range of human stuff – good and bad. Of course if we take family concept in its broadest sense, ie a community of friends and associates, then family might be considered fairly integral to the human condition because we do seem to be gregarious animals at heart. But there again, there are plenty of humans who, by choice or circumstance, largely live a life on their own, and these people are still obviously human.

The point to be made here is that family does not define us; it merely defines one of the contours of the Judeo-Christian mythology. As for relationships, the pair of wood pigeons that daily visit my back yard also seems to have a monogamous relationship, as do the pair of swans I regularly see motoring up and down the Thames every day. And although Sacks did not specifically state it, he implied that family and monogamy were synonymous. Not so. Many Muslim families do not practise monogamy and they, all one billion of them, are still very much part of the human family. We are almost certainly not monogamous by instinct but a large number of people try to adhere to it due to religious diktat, cultural habit and a suspicion that the alternative gets quite complicated and messy.

So let’s leave aside families and focus on the other pillar of humanity, which, according to our Chief Rabbi, are relationships. Well, being on a planet with seven billion other citizens, it is pretty difficult to avoid bumping into one or two people along the way. And there is little doubt, as I suggested earlier, we do seem to be social animals. But so are elephants. They stick together as an extended family and seem to mourn if one of their young meets an untimely death. And in the animal kingdom there are many, many other such examples of animals being social animals. So I’m afraid Mr Sacks, this appears to be sloppy thinking on your part. Might I humbly suggest that it is not the relationships that make us human but the consciousness that we bring to those relationships. I accept it can be a fine line that divides animal instinct from human consciousness but it is nevertheless a qualitatively different thing. No animal other than humans, as far as we know, have sent in contributions to the New Statesman. In this regard, we humans are quite unique. No other animals, as far as we can detect, make their own tools and then proceed to build cities and civilisations based on technology. No other animals, it is obvious to say, could have the facilities to create histories, tell stories and write fairytales of which the Old Testament is one of the more ludicrous.

Phil Jones, writing in the introduction to the New Statesman series, makes a lot more sense than our learned rabbi. But aren’t we unique from the animal kingdom in having imagination and consciousness? P25 Of course there is scientific consciousness and what Marx might call, false consciousness but that is another matter. It surely is the ability to reflect upon the world and to mould it according to our conscious imaginations that really defines our humanity.

It’s all rather self-evident when you stop to consider the question, though I’m sure later contributors will have further insights into the matter. I await with baited breath.