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If you are a human, then congratulations! You are the most complex being in the universe that
we know about. You have thoughts and feelings, and can represent them with speech and writing.
You have a mind that can experience and decode the world around you,
and transform your inner thoughts into actual changes in the outside universe.
You can form complicated social networks and relationships with the other humans around you,
and work together seamlessly within a shared society. However, perhaps the most remarkable
thing about humans is that despite the aeons of cosmic evolution that allowed life to form,
and the biological evolution that resulted in the most complex beings the universe has ever created,
is just how different we all are from one another! That is, until we merge into the nightmare
homogenous flesh creature that we are destined to become in our near evolutionary future.
People have different faces, bodies, and personalities.
People have different interests, cultures, and languages.
Even with the aspects of ourselves that are not so all-encompassing, we all have those little
quirks and eccentricities which are ours, and that separate us from the rest of the species.
No doubt there are communities that are united through their shared interests (I mean, furries
are a thing), but each member of a community is still an individual with their own identity.
However, the differences we have looked at so far only take into account the differences between
humans that are separated across space; those that occur across the countries and continents in our
own time. However, the differences become much greater if we expand our search to include humans
that are separated across time as well. Now we can include the humans that existed millennia ago,
with all their different cultures, theologies, and philosophies. We can imagine their daydreams about
how the universe worked, far far different from ours, and perhaps even their ways of communication
that have been totally lost to the sands of time. But this raises a question. If we took two humans
from random moments in space and time, each of them would be radically different from the other.
Nonetheless, we would have no difficulty in recognizing both of them as human. Despite the
massive differences between them, we would have no problem in seeing them as the same kind of thing
as us. This means that all of us must have some idea, no matter how obscure or ill-defined,
about what exactly makes a human a human. However, this definition is a difficult one to find,
due to the fact that what counts as a human has a tendency to change drastically over time.
If we reach back into the past, we would find that many ancient civilizations thought of their
enemies as subhuman barbarians. This sentiment has continued in more recent history, where certain
isolated populations were thought to be primitive, and not of the same status as civilized nations.
If we look ahead into the future, we could even speculate about a transhuman society,
where technological advancements meant that what we are now would not classify as human anymore.
Perhaps we would be so inferior to them that it would be impossible to communicate.
There is a certain point, then, where our differences become too extreme
and there is a fracture in our definition. But if we want to define what a human
essentially is, we need a definition that can survive these tectonic cultural shifts.
Perhaps we can find this human-ness in our genetics. Of all the 3 billion base pairs
that constitute our genes, only a fraction of them are responsible for all those differences
we discussed earlier, and so we are about 99.9% identical with all other humans. Even between
the most distant and isolated populations, we are still far more alike than we are different.
Our genetic information, at least on modern scientific classifications, is what enables us
to count as the same species, and so this could be what defines us once and for all as human.
However, this definition starts to look a little shaky when we consider that we are
also genetically related to all other organisms on the planet as well. Thanks to evolution, all life
on Earth is derived from a single common ancestor, and so our genetic information is not something we
can use to demarcate a sharp line between us and the rest of the animals. Characteristics
that exist universally across humans often exist in other species as well, and this is a product
of the fact that we have shared genes, and a shared evolutionary history. Most other animals
have a mind and can think, just like humans. Some animals use tools, just like humans. A few animals
can even communicate with each other with sounds and gestures, just like humans. There seems very
little in the way of characteristics that humans have and that no other animal on the planet does.
Alright, but what about our bodies? Even though our individual bodies are
different from one another, and we share some similarities with our ape cousins, it can still
be said that we all share the same basic human template. However, this will not work either,
when we consider that most of what we think of as our bodies are not made from human cells at all.
Although the estimates have varied widely over time, the current estimate for the number of
human cells we have is actually less than the number of bacterial cells that exist inside us,
with a ratio around 1:1.3. That means that a human body is actually less than half
human. Of course, our biomass is vastly more human than bacterial,
but can we really use the mass of our biological flesh as the definition for a human?
With our genetics and our cells ruled out, perhaps the best chance we have to define a human
as a distinct thing from all other animals is our natural history as a species. We are members of
the species Homo sapiens, and we have evolved to the point where we cannot reproduce with any other
animals. Our natural history separates us out as human; our own species. However, this is a little
shaky as well. From the perspective of evolution, there is no one moment where a species can be said
to come into existence or die out. There was no Adam and Eve to give birth to the first humans.
Rather, something that was a little humanish gave birth to something a little more humanish,
and this occurred for millions of years until we find ourselves at the present moment. Evolution
knows no boundaries between species. Over a long enough timescale, the lines which seem obvious
to us between different species are blurred, a continual flux without clear dividing lines.
This has been something well known and practised in Alabama, but it turns out that we are all the
same. So neither our genetics, nor our bodies, nor our natural history can define a human.
It is becoming more obvious that the kind of definition we are after for a human
will be difficult or even impossible to find. All the definitions we could offer, whether
scientific or religious or historical, will miss out on some aspect of what makes something human,
so it seems that there is no single definition that includes all humans and only humans. Answers
such as this, where we realize there is no foundation upon which to build our identity,
often fill us with dread. But perhaps this anxiety can be its own foundation upon which to build.
All the definitions we could offer are all well and good, but each of them will still
lack the significance that comes with defining a thing as human. Defining a human is not the same
as defining a word or a scientific phenomenon, because to call a thing human is to imbue it with
meaning. Defining a human is not to describe what a human is, but rather to prescribe what a human
should be, what we ought to be. The purpose of the definition is to hold the mirror to ourselves,
and to show us the work that needs to be done to realize what we are.
In looking for a human nature, we have forgotten that it is our nature to have no nature.
We are beings who define their nature by existing. To look for an actual definition is to restrict
the constellations of things that are possible for us to achieve. Things are human because we
do them. We are the storytellers, the art-makers, the knowledge-seekers, the question-askers,
the risk-takers. We are the tool-users, the terraformers, the fire-makers, the Earth-shakers,
the universe-explorers. We are the ones who gaze at the stars and wonder what we are. We are the
ones who exploit the natural world for our own ends. We are the ones who send metal machines
into space to investigate other worlds. We are the ones who start wars with foreign nations
and hold the fate of the world at the push of a button. We are the creators and the destroyers.
Each of us has different definitions of what it means to be human, and that
is alright. In choosing a definition, we tell ourselves a particular story,
and this makes human nature a kind of myth. No one definition can capture what it means to be human
because there is no one thing a human fundamentally is. In taking our nature as a myth,
we become miniature universes unto ourselves, and allow space for all the different things
a human can be. Every story we tell ourselves is its own world, with its own existence.
The mysterious essence we were searching for that unites us through our differences
thus turns out to be the differences themselves. It is because we are all
so different that we can call ourselves human. And that’s a pretty wonderful thing.
Thank you very much for watching, peace and love, and I’ll see you in the next video.