Book 1. Excerpt A.

I dropped by the library on my way home from work and picked up four Douglas Coupland books. First of the four to conquer: "Life After God"

Excerpt A:
"And this in turn made me think about humans. To be specific, I wondered about what it is that makes us humans, well...human? What is human behavior? For example, we know what dog behavior is: dogs do doggy things- they chase sticks, they sniff bums and they stick their heads out of moving car windows. And we know what cat behavior is: cats chase mice, they rub up against your shin when they're hungry and they have trouble deciding whether or not they want to exit a door or stay inside when you go to let them out. So what exactly is it that humans do that is specifically human?

I looked at it a different way. I thought: here it is, as a species we've built satellites and cablevision and Ford Mustangs but what if, say, it was dogs and not people who had invented these things. How would dogs express their essential dogginess with inventions? Would they build space stations shaped like big bones that orbited the earth? Would they make movies of the moon and sit in drive-ins howling at the show?

Or what if it was cats and not humans who invented technology- would cats build scratching-post skyscrapers covered entirely with shag carpeting? Would they have TV shows starring rubber squeak toys?

But it wasn't other animals who invented machines, it was humans. So what is it about our essential humanity that we are expressing with our inventions? What is it that makes us us?

I thought of how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no other animal equivalent were smoking, body-building, and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are."