If I were forced to give a single word answer to the questions, I would say it is "mind". Most living beings have brains, some have very rudimentary languages, some basic emotions... The closest rivals to humans are chimps and dolphins. They do pretty okay by their standards, but compared to humans, the difference between minds is huge. It is like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari.
The fact that the mind is the most important thing for humans has not escaped the human intellect. The history of human progress is that of the freedom of mind.
For the millennia that people have occupied this planet, the struggle has been to free the body first. Mind cannot survive without the body. And making the fragile human body last against the elements was not easy.
The human societies did what poor men with no savings and low income does. They used the precious mind power to survive. And some of them saved the power, starving themselves, and invested it. Some of these investments paid off, some simply died out. But one by one the groups that survived had more excess mind power floating around, and more learning as the generations went by. They say that making the first million is the most difficult one. The first major breakthroughs were difficult, and it took thousands of years to reach the agricultural society stage that really gave a big stability, like fertile soile for the available mind power to blossom.
The recent BCs and early ADs humans transformed themselves from exerters of physical powers to controllers of physical power. The first obvious choice to replace human muscle power were animals. As the time went by the power needs of humans increased, and they started garnering the power from water, air, steam, coal, oil. They started machines that did the mindless, non-creative actions nobody really wanted to do. By the end of the 20th century, humans are essentially not doing any physical labor. This does not mean there aren't people who do hard labor. What it means is human being are using 99% of the energy needed sources other than human muscle.
What happened to the muscle power in the last three centuries, is now happening to the brain power. There have always been boring, tedius jobs that were essentially mindless. Writing things down, copying, adding numbers, multiplying, keeping accounts... This is what a lot "learned" men did a century ago. Now these lower level tasks are done by computers. There is more and more mind power liberated to do creative work.
There will come one day when humans will "work" only when they want to. And the work will involve doing something constructive, something beutiful, something that gives pleasure. There will be more time to connect with other people, and the humans will. The barriers that separate people will start to vanish - cultural biases, racial hatred, will diminish as people become more educated and start valuing individuall lives lot more than countries and religions. Most will live past 100 years, and live healthier, richer lives. Most will get a decent education, get a chance to explore the world around them, and contribute to the knowledge.
This is what all the progress is for. And we are on track to achieve it in not so distant future.
I am a human being, and proud of my race.
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