The Definition of Humanity

‘‘I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.” Pearl S. Buck

‘‘I just can’t believe the way people are. What is it with humanity? What kind of a world do we live in?” George from the TV sitcom, Seinfield

The Scorpions’ song ‘‘Humanity” curses humanity as an insane, purposeless, and fruitless ‘‘drop in the rain”; ATB’s song on humanity expresses it as kindness, care, and love, desiring to be ‘‘wrapped in your humanity.” Well, every philosopher has tried to define humanity but can humanity be defined? It would be just like defining nature which is so diverse both philosophically and literally that every definition would be lacking something.

What is Humanity?

After all, anything that can be called human is something derived from fish, from a lion, from a dog, from a sheep, from ‘touch me not’ flower, from stars, from water, from giraffe, from dinosaurs, from cotton balls and many more.

You may consider me a little mad as to what I am speaking, but there is a rationale hidden.

After all, fishes are known for enhancing glial matter or providing the brains. A lion is a symbol of bravery, dogs are more loyal than humans in certain cases, a sheep denotes feeble, weak yet pure being, not even the newly-wed blushes more than ‘ touch me not’ plant, no one can wear others emotions or colours of life or mingle with others like water. Nor anyone’s neck is taller than a giraffe so that they can see over things, seldom are people as lighthearted or ethereal as cotton balls. With every hue of our emotions, feelings, and existence resembling some elements of nature, human beings are the most natural of all the entities in nature.

Human intergroup relationships are more of a modified, adapted, and developed form of animal inter-group relationship. The kind of ethnic and religious conflicts seen in our society at various times is a testimony to the fact. Be it any human attribute, some occurrence, entity in nature matches it exactly. If phenotypic and genotypic evolution theories are to be believed and the match of humans with various natural elements are to be believed, then human beings originated from a race that existed even before dinosaurs when the earth was just formed, perished in the middle but the remnant again proliferated. Well, this is just a hypothesis but a quite logical one. The most diverse forms of nature are carried in human beings, or better say we carry the seeds of the entire nature within us. Strange but true, right?

Are love, sacrifice and some others the differentiating factor of humans?

Do comment on what you think about the things that are truly different for us to be called human?