Me: While we do have something (symbolism) that is different to other animals it means we need to be humble and responsible about it even if we did not choose to have this ability. Yet, our religions, philosophies, sciences, arts do not reflect this humility and responsibility. 

ChatGPT: Yes. That’s a deep contradiction at the heart of the human story. We possess this rare capacity—symbolism—that allows us to abstract, imagine, project, and reshape the world. But instead of responding to that difference with humility and responsibility, we’ve often used it to justify dominance, detachment, and delusion.

Rather than saying, “we have this power, therefore we must be careful,” we’ve said, “we have this power, therefore we are entitled.”

Religions have often positioned humans as central to creation. Philosophies have elevated reason or consciousness as the measure of all things. Sciences have, at times, reduced the world to resources or objects of analysis. The arts—though often more reflective—have still tended to privilege human expression as the pinnacle of meaning. Across these domains, the symbolic capacity has been used not to connect us more deeply with the world, but to separate us from it.

But what you’re pointing to is a reframing: our symbolic gift is not a badge of superiority, but a burden of care. It gives us the power to destroy, but also the insight to understand the weight of that destruction. It allows us to make meaning, but also to make space for the meanings of others—nonhuman, inhuman, more-than-human.

We didn’t choose this ability. It emerged. But now that we have it, the question becomes: what do we do with it? Not in the abstract, but here, now—in our language, our structures, our choices. Humility isn’t the rejection of our difference—it’s the acceptance of it without entitlement. It’s seeing that the very thing that makes us “human” could either connect us to the world—or unmake it.