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What is the difference between people and other animals?

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Maybe you thought about intelligence, and yes, it is true that we are more intelligent than animals,

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but there is also a very important difference, because people are free while animals follow their instinct.

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Think about this difference for a moment.

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Animals act from necessity.

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What happens to them is coded in their DNA, in their genes.

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That's what we call instinct, a prefixed behavior that cannot be changed.

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If a lion is very hungry, it will kill because it needs to eat.

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It would be absurd to punish the lion sending it to jail because it killed another animal,

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because the lion is simply following its instinct.

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Acting from necessity, doing what is necessary to do in order to eat.

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But people are different.

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We don't act from necessity.

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We act freely.

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We can decide what to do.

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This intelligence we have can also help us to decide what to do.

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So we have free will, that is, the ability to decide what to do, the capacity to choose our actions.

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This creates an enormous difference between people and animals,

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because we can't be punished and blamed for what we did,

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because we could have chosen to act in a different way.

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Freedom implies responsibility.

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If you're free, you decide what to do, then you're responsible of your choices.

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What does the word responsibility mean?

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The word responsibility comes from respond,

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and this means that we have the necessity of giving an explanation,

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a justification of our choices.

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And it also means that we have to face the consequences of what we did,

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repairing the possible harm that our actions did to other people.

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The fact that people can choose what to do,

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the fact that we're free, creates a lot of problems,

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because freedom can interfere with another people.

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So there are a lot of problems, a lot of conflicts in our social coexistence,

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and they come because we're free agents, because we have freedom.

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That's why we need rules to organize our social coexistence.

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We need norms to determine what is right and what is wrong.

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But there are different types of norms, of rules,

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and it's important that you understand this difference.

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There are, on the one hand, moral rules, and on the other hand, legal rules.

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Moral rules, morality, is made by your conscience.

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Moral rules are the rules that you make by yourself,

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that tell you what you personally think that is right or wrong.

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So these rules are autonomous, they are made by you.

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And if you don't obey them, what happens?

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Nobody is going to punish you, but think about it for a while.

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You want to be an honest person.

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What happens if you tell a lie?

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Nobody punishes you, but you feel bad, you feel regret and remorse,

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because you broke your own moral rules.

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Legal rules are very different.

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Legal rules are not made by you, they are made by the authorities,

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the government, the principal of the school, your teacher, your parents.

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So they are heteronymous, they are not autonomous rules.

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And if you break these rules, you can be punished,

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because the law is for everybody, it is not personal.