Is that the only thing that separates us, the mind ?
Yes, the most significant difference between us and other life-forms is our mind. In reflecting on and reacting to contact with sense data, it generates language as a means of avoiding the painful bits, and maximising the pleasurable bits. We have overcome the dumb and passive suffering that we see in animals, and incidentally created a lot of extra problems in terms of more keenly remembered and anticipated suffering.
The difference between the minds of man and all other beasts is, as Hume so aptly put it, "Beasts abstract not."
Because of this inablility, naturalist Loren Eiseley said beasts live in an "eternal present."
Ayn Rand called it "range-of-the-moment consciousness."
No. We use the past to plan in present for the future. Man is the only creature that has a fine measurement of time. (we have hours, minutes, seconds)
We are all complex iterations.
There is nothing new under the sun.
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