What is “being Human”?!
Question from the Internet:
“WHAT IS HUMANITY? It will be obvious that being human is the business of humanity. Where did humanity (mankind?) originate, and for what purpose?”
Yes, this is a very important question without which all other questions remain unanswered.
We can look at this from multiple angles, but the best to look at it is from the viewpoint of Nature’s evolution.
From Nature’s point of view, humanity is a species among many with a special role in evolution.
For that special role, we would need to understand what differentiates humanity from other animals, especially from other developed primates like chimpanzees, orangutans for example, since we all originate from the same root wit those other primates, from the same natural environment, but while those other primates basically remained unchanged, living in the same environment, the human species went through an incredible development, probing galaxies and questioning the purpose of life.
At the same time only human beings actively, consciously destroy the very environment that gives them life and gain pleasure from exploiting, torturing their fellow humans without any actual, natural reasons to act that way.
Animals also fight within themselves, kill each other but they always have an instinctive, natural reason for maintaining hierarchy, to perfect the propagation of the species, to preserve their territory.
Humans on the other hand kill, destroy, torture others — and the rest of Nature — for fun, while actively breaking destroying the balance, survival of their natural habitat which endangers their own life.
The only difference between us and other primates is the insatiable, irrepressible, self-serving, self-justifying, and exploitative ego that drives us towards wanting more, drives us towards succeeding, surviving at the expense of everything and everybody outside of ourselves regardless of the consequences.
Following our ego blindly — as we have been doing through history — we are like helpless addicts that consume everything until they self-destruct.
Why would Nature’s evolution create such an incompatible, destructive species that does not fit into its finely balanced, integral system?
This is necessary for humanity to reach its unique, unparalleled evolutionary role — to become Nature’s only conscious, insider observer, partner. This would not be possible without a special duality — on one hand being outsiders in Nature’s system, opposite to Nature’s integrality, homeostasis, while, on the other hand achieving a conscious, proactive integration into Nature against the original opposition.
For this, we also received from Nature’s evolution a unique human intellect, capable of critical self-assessment, capable of asking questions about the meaning, the purpose of life, that is capable of initiating a unique self-change, self-upgrade.
This conscious self-upgrade, becoming similar to, integrated into Nature by our own efforts against and above our own nature makes us truly Human — similar to Nature against our instincts and by that acquiring that unique insider but independent observer, partner status in Nature.