What does it mean to be human?
But who’s asking? Surely, I myself.
Ain’t I a human? Or forget me, any person who could ask the question would be a human. So this is an absurd situation where the subject doesn’t know what it means to be? Not exactly. Vagueness of the question comes up because of multiple meanings that may be implied to the word “human”. Understanding that, I strive to find an answer that contains all possible interpretations and connotations. Like physicists are searching for The Theory Of Everything, or like philosophers are trying to answer the question “What is reality?”, I am looking for a set, which determines the term “human”. Some kind of a variable, which combines human as a mammal as well as a decent member of society. For me it’s preferable to find an objective answer. One that will always be true, regardless of any outside observer.
One may choose to play with verbal, to use ambiguous words and metaphors to please a soul with beauty. “It means falling to a pit full of unexpected curves and twists, and you never know when you’ll reach the bottom”, or “To be human means to drink from the well of the life, and since that being said you gotta dig to be alive” – a poet would say. But does it help to resolve a question, to find the truth? Hardly.
René Descartes, a French philosopher and scientist of the 16th century, said: «Defining the exact meanings of words will purge humanity from half of all misconceptions». This sends us centuries back to Aristotle, a philosopher from Ancient Greece, who described the Law of identity, which states that each thing is identical with itself: «<...> to have not only a single meaning is to have no meaning; if words have no meanings, then we lose any possibility to reason with each other, in fact – with oneself; it’s impossible to think if there’s no only one determination». Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German mathematician, logician, historian and philosopher developed this into the idea of Lingua Generalis, a language where all the words would be defined strictly and univocally, like terms. Leibniz said: «<...> in this case, for fellow philosophers there’s no need to dispute just like there’s no need to dispute for mathematicians. To resolve a contradiction it’ll be enough simply to calculate it out».
Sounds good, but, unfortunately, doesn’t work. The languages that we speak had developed in such ways that we have to deal with the ambiguities. Not to mention the human temper – some people just love to play with words.
Let’s get back. Definitely, the key to the answer lies in here: who could ask a question would be a human. It’s like I’m trying to describe a coordinate field where I’m going to play around. Determining the concepts. So a person asking the question would be a human. Would it be not just that particular, but any question – still applies. Ergo, a human equals one who can state questions. It’s provided by ability to think, to suppose and to reflect. Furthermore, all that makes us conscious, self-aware.
Owing to self-awareness any human is able to look at oneself. Moreover, he is able to imagine how other people see him – however, he may not know. And that is critical point, because at that point a man might evaluate self. Or others. On the basis of evaluation a man might decide what’s good and what’s bad.
Morality. The thing we have within only our power. The concept of good and bad may vary widely, it may be dissonant and contradictory depending on sex, age or cultural code, but the main thing is the principle itself. Law, religion, nations, even money – all of these are man-made construct. We may neglect any of those, with varying degrees of success. But morality is something of our nature, something we can’t abandon. We want to know what’s good and what’s bad, we’re trying to figure it out, and that urge is natural. It grows out of ourselves.
It’s universal.
Very important to notice: it’s not about what categories one may assume good or bad, it’s about always keeping the very principle in mind, living with that, applying it through whole life, being ruled by it. For example, the oldest code of law known – The Code of Hammurabi – grant a fine for a murder. That would seem bloody unjust nowadays, isn’t it? Nevertheless, any law is built on morality. We determine what’s good and – more commonly – bad on level of state, city, land or any community. That case being, we pursue justice. And that is brought by inner force we have – a strive to morality. Whole civilizations are built on that.
In the very beginning of the Old Testament, the book of Genesis tells the story of the fall of man. In that piece, first humans ever to be – they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s how the history of human and humanity starts, according to the Bible. So the first people ate, although it was forbidden, in order to become like God; so they could tell what’s good and what’s bad. After that they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. And that might be a symbolic interpretation for inventions of civilization and culture.
Regarding the law – the Bible doesn’t stand aside here. It has the commandmend for all the humankind to establish courts of justice. Along with commandmends not to kill, not to steal, etc. Those look like some good instructions indeed. That means the authors of the Bible initially had to have a moral code to write that down the book. That applies to the Bible as well as to modern laws, as mentioned previously.
There’s another question: is morality inborn or is it taught by society? Since moral standards may vary from community to community dramatically, it seems that society does play significant role.
Let’s take a closer look at children. Are they moral? Can they tell what’s good and what’s bad? At first glance it seems like no. But could they tell what a power plant or a galaxy is? Still, children tend to be moral from the very beginning of their lives.
As far as we believe, all people are moral. Even so, morality vary from culture to culture, from person to person. And that, of course, may become a source of conflicts.
The more people who try to collaborate together – the more difficult it gets to bring order. Hence, the humanity seeks to create a kind of superstructure, based on morality but something above that, higher and more comprehensive. It could be religion, laws, rights.
Human rights. A man-made concept, designed to help people to collaborate at the most global, international level. Human rights go along with democracy and liberalism pretty well. The highest point in the concept’s development – Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Declaration is translated into more than 500 languages. Some countries adopted it and use it as a common law. On the other hand, some countries never adopted it or they recognized it partially – those are Islamic countries, mainly. Muslims tried to combine the idea of human rights with religious Sharia law and that resulted in the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is advisory - no ways are described to enforce its articles. Even be there a way, yet it would interfere with local, national laws, authorities and enforcement. Similar case with the United Nations; this organization has no rights to get involved or intervene in domestic policy of sovereign states.
A question follows: taking into account the situation in North Korea, namely: forcible seizure of power, military socialistic regime, cult of personality, political persecution, artificial starvation, threats to the global community with atomic weapons – does this global community have a right to intervene? Some say yes: it will make the world a safer place, as humans we can’t stay aside from our fellow human brothers – they suffer there, we could help them. Others believe we should not get involved: it may turn into historical and political precedent, we may not know how the rescued will look at that afterwards, and generally this might create dangerous situation taking into account atomic weapons.
This brings us to another important topic. Free will. Another entirely human characteristic. When it would seem that it’s up to us what to choose; we can make a free choice at any given time, independently of circumstances. Still, our decisions depend on plenty of factors. In the situations where you have seconds to decide whether you are going to do the right thing or do you do something otherwise, your choice depends on many variables, like your well-being or child education what you ate during breakfast and ending with ancient culture of your ancestors. All this has the impact on our behavior. Most of the factors are subconscious, we don’t even suspect them; in this case the question inevitably arises: does the free will really exists?
Nowadays we tend to explain things from the perspective of biology and psychology, where some four hundred years ago we would have a harsh moral judgements about it.
Nonetheless, now we are more advanced, we better know how things work, and we say ‘this is biology’. It becomes obvious and primary that we are biological organisms. This notion of free will seems to be a myth. However, it might be really challenging to build a society which runs humanely around the notion that we are merely biological organisms.
In conclusion I’d like to remind that our world is quite versatile. There are many approaches to every issue and every matter. We all differ, still we a lot in common. Each person creates his own worldview, which consists out of his own points of view, values, morals and, particularly, meanings.