Belief or Reality: Chicken or Egg?

What is the real difference between animals and humans besides the size of their brains.
Beliefs. Yes. I would say the main difference is what they believe is going on all the time.

It's sort of like animals are sort of more hardwired and humans are more programmable and so beliefs keep us able to cope with all the changes as our beliefs and real life experiences change and evolve over thousands of years. Imagine what it was like before Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity or Hinduism or all the other varieties of more organized religion existed.

I bet if you traveled back in time you might be struck with the fact that people on one level were just the same as now but on another level were completely different in how they approached their lives. And for many who are deeply indoctrinated into their religions going back in time and experiencing the way men and women used to be might cause a psychotic break or episode because many people would unknowingly expect humans to have always been the way they are now. But they weren't in many different ways at least culturally and religiously speaking.

Though religions and farming allowed larger and ever larger groups of people to live together in relative peace with each other, also something very precious and individualistic was lost. Even in my lifetime the main benefit is that less people generally die horrific deaths now that before. (or more correctly said a lower percentage of the entire human race has a really bad death and/or life).

But this is at the expense of the richness and the diversity of conflicting cultures and religions. So now, though we know a lot more about each other, in some ways there is actually more confusion about the whole thing because the differences now are just so blatant that there is no longer any useful way to run away from all the differences in religions and values all over the world.

But which came first, the chicken or the egg or Belief or Reality. I think the best approach is if one considers the possibility that it all came forth at once. I know this likely is not likely possible in actuality but philosophically and psychologically it appears more useful to view it in this way.