I will not argue with you over these beliefs, though we can discuss them. Just like I can discuss your beliefs. We can point out where our beliefs are contradictory, or where they don't match (what we take to be) empirical reality, but if you wish to believe in a human "essence", that is your belief. For me it is equivalent to believing in the soul and that is about all that I can say.
But you don't at all deal with the basic issues.
Primatologists and anthropologists agree that different chimpanzee and bonobo troops and groups, exhibit aspects of "C". When confronting "C" in human beings we will define "C" as "culture." Thus different troops of chimpanzees make different tools. Some makes tools in one fashion, others make tools in another fashion. Some chimpanzees in one troop "fish" for termites in one particular way with a tool shaped in a particular fashion, and chimpanzees in another troop do it in another way with a different kind of tool. Primatologists who observe these chimpanzees also observe mothers teaching their offspring how to make the tools and how to use the tools. They have observed this tool making and use and mothers teaching their offspring from generation to generation.
When human beings exhibit this behavior we call it culture. But you want to call it one thing when you observe the behavior in non-humans but another thing when you observe it in humans. If you want to do this for reasons of semantics or beliefs, that is fine. I am not making a semantic argument. I am simply pointing out that the distinction between humans as a species and our closest cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees, is not as large as you think it is. But more importantly there is no clear divide between modern homo sapiens and our ancestor species.
Now the term "culture" and the term "politics" are not scientific terms, no matter how hard we try to make them so. There was a famous article written in 1952 by Kroeber and Kluckholmm which identified 162 different definitions of culture proposed by anthropologists and social scientists.
I am not proposing a new definition of culture when I say that our closest cousins among present species exhibit culture. I am only taking a realistic attitude toward the evidence. We would call ways of making tools that differ from hunter-gatherer group to hunter-gatherer group two different "tool-cultures". Thus when we meet the phenomena of tool-making in a variety of troops of chimpanzees and we also see that it is a "learned" phenomena and that the process of "learning", "making", and "using" is both similar and different from troop to troop, primatologists are warranted in calling this phenomena "cultural."
I am not sure if you know about this phenomena. But if you do then, for reasons of your belief system you choose to exclude non-homo sapien primates from "culture". So be it. Call it something else. It is still the same phenomena.
Finally I simply want to repeat the questions you didn't answer from my last post:
> No, they [chimpanzees, bonobos] don't shape their environment, because
> they don't create a mental
> picture of how they want to change it before they do.
JM: [ ...] And how do you know that chimpanzees don't create a 'mental picture' of how they want to change their environment before they do it? We know that chimpanzees have mirror neurons, because mirror neurons were first discovered in non-human primates (a macaque monkey, actually, but later chimpanzees.) This is evidence of forming 'mental pictures', though we really don't know what mental pictures actually are, in any complete sense.
[And here let me emphasize the question: The scientific evidence points to similar or the same mental processes taking place in both humans and chimpanzees. What amount of evidence would you need for you to be convinced that humans and chimpanzees both "reason"? Or, that our human mind/brains are very similar to our closest living cousin species? Is there any evidence at all that will convince you? If not then I think I am warranted in calling your position a matter of faith or dogma or belief. ]
So when a chimpanzee sharpens a stick to use as a tool, and that tool is used to kill food or fish for termites, they are not forming mental pictures of what they want to do? How do you know this?
Why is my assumption wrong that when chimpanzees perform actions very similar to humans they are also exhibiting behavior that is similar to humans? Why is the assumption wrong that our mental processes are similar if not the same? Why is the evidence wrong that shows our brains display similar processes?