What does it mean to be human?

Some thoughts from Professor Julia Steinberger
https://profjuliasteinberger.wordpress.com/

What does it even mean to be human if humans willingly inflict so much suffering on others, while others cheer on? What is the actual point?

But you see, there is a point to life.

Humans, above all else, like to care for others, and be cared for.

That’s it. That’s all.

There is no feeling like the one when people eat the healthy food you cooked. It means you won at life, basically.

Or when your friends and family are fast asleep in a comfortable space you helped make for them.

Or just spending time, doing jobs & errands, together.

Or laughing and being stupid & dorky together. Or telling stories. Or doing work that you hope will help others. Or thanking them for doing work that is helping you.

One of my favorite memories of my father is him thanking 2 guys who were repairing a bike bridge he rode over.

“Messieurs, merci pour le travail!” with his huge smile.

And we love to care for our environment. To have nice, beautiful, comfortable places to live in. To decorate, with cloths and paintings and plants. To garden. To care for plants and animals and ecosystems …

This is who we are, this is what our life is, at its best. Most worthy.

It’s not about achievement, or fame, or riches, or ‘making one’s mark’ or any of that nonsense I thought when reading history. Or that the billionaire techbros in Silicon Valley think it’s about.

But this basic worthiness of life is being robbed, so violently, from so many people.

Seeing children suffer, and not being able to help. Knowing peole are in danger, under rubble, not being able to help.

This cruelty is so extreme. It goes to the very core of what it means to be human. When commentators or media gloss over this suffering, as though it is natural or deserved or just an inconvenient hiccup on the way to geopolitical points, they hurt our core humanity.

When our politicians refuse to hear our urgent cries to prevent more suffering and death, they are creating such desperation. It is not a little disagreement. It goes to heart of being human. It hurts us to our core.

So this is who we are. The vast majority are people who want to help each other care for each other. People who want others to live their days with their families and friends and neighbours, just being ordinary. Looking after children. Caring for our elders.

This is who we want to be. There is no higher calling than this.

And what would we say of the others, the killers, the harmers, the destroyers? Are they not human too? And the answer is that of course they are: humans who have been taught not to see us, or others, as human.

The way to break our big family is to cut it up, cast out the unwanted. Create stories about the unwanted being evil, destructive. It says something about humans that the only way to get us to be really cruel to each other is if we are led to believe others are evil first.

And once we act destructively towards others, we become so invested in that justification, no matter how false, because it would destroy us to face how wrong we were. That we hurt without good cause.

But we are all human.

So no one gets to be proud. We all carry in us the potential to be monsters to each other.

And that means our burden, our destiny, if we are to have a single second of joy and peace with our close ones, is to watch out for that monstrosity, in us and others, and combat it our whole lives, with everything we have.

That’s the only meaning there is.

Enjoy your everyday moments of closeness and care and work and laughter and curiosity and just being around each other. But also realise that but for the grace of god, you could be bringing destruction and pain to other creatures. Fighting that is also the core of humanity.

End/