this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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There’s nothing that I think should mean any species capable of experiencing shouldn’t also experience their self within the scope of their awareness. However, I think mankind is a logical kind of animal. Applying logic to the phenomenon of self awareness, e.g., asking about one’s character and goals, is likely unique to humans in my view.
Speaking of applying logic, that's what we typically do through science studies, which consistently show that other animals experience emotion and self-awareness to far higher degrees than previously understood.
I agree that modern man likely has the most articulated language that's ever existed on earth, which is a big part of that. But would hunter-gatherers have asked themselves about their 'character and goals' as part of their regular life? I don't know that such would be the case especially more than other humans or apes did or do. That said, keeping a nomadic, tool-using tribe going arguably would have required more of that than at any other level of organisation.
Which again suggests to me that a big part of that impetus comes from the level of civilisation I described. I think that's really what you're thinking of. Which hardly correlates to our genes at all.