symbol-using beings

According to theorist and writer Kenneth Burke, humans are "the symbol using, making, and mis-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection." 

Some more (superficial, but exciting) tidbits from Burke... (more here)

The rhetorical function of language as "a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." For Burke, some of the most significant problems in human behavior resulted from instances of symbols using human beings rather than human beings using symbols. Another key concept for Burke is the terministic screen - a set of symbols that becomes a kind of screen or grid of intelligibility through which the world makes sense to us. Language, according to Burke, doesn't simply "reflect" reality; it also helps select reality as well as deflect reality. In his book Language as Symbolic Action (1966), Burke defined humankind as a "symbol using animal" so that our "reality" has actually "been built up for us through nothing but our symbol system". What we call "reality," Burke stated, is actually a "clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present . . . a construct of our symbol systems".

(But then, I sometimes go outside and stick my hands in the cold mud and breastfeed my child and feel otherwise... or at least try to...)