ABSTRACT
Human phylogenetic evolution occupies the last two million years of life on Earth. The biological processes that differentiated humans as a species, providing them with a large brain and the ability to generate culture, have been studied by various scientific disciplines. The brain is our link to the external world. It configures the sensory, perceptual, and learning processes in ways common to all individuals, although also unique to each person. This cognitive variability is established through socialization and enculturation from childhood. But individuals are also subject to the social transmission of concepts without objective empirical referents, such as aesthetic, political, and religious ideas, which depend on subjective interpretation and are divergent. Humans are extremely dependent on learning and our attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes. The difficulty of referring many of our ideas to objective referents demonstrates the relativity of human thinking. The different interpretations of the world led to various confrontations and persecutions in history, some of them very cruel and bloody. This chapter is a call in favor of a more tolerant, respectful, and peaceful coexistence that fosters a world less violent and more respectful of the diversity of thought.
