On the failure to understand the urgency of "what is it to be human?"

COVID-19 is forcing us to shelter-in-place, and remain physically isolated from the rest of humanity.  This awful house-arrest is also compelling us to figure out--for ourselves--what truly matters in the lives that we lead.

I have always wanted everybody to understand what it means to be human.  I have blogged in plenty about that.  But, such an atrocious lesson is not what I want.  As a teacher, I have never attempted, nor would I ever attempt, teaching through punishment.  Coronavirus is diabolical.

But, it is what it is.  I hope we will make the best of the dark stage in which we are unwilling actors.

The following is a slightly edited post from this very date--April 14th--seven years ago.  Yes, in 2013.
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Last night, I got to watch Prometheus.  The movie is about the question that has dogged us forever: how did we humans get here?

It is by no means a simple question, and the answer(s) we accept then correspondingly influence even the most mundane aspects our lives.  For instance, pork is avoided by Jews and Muslims because of the narrative that is given as the answer to how we got here also tells them to void pork.  The Crusades were fought as a response to the clash of two narratives.  Even the atrocious caste system in India was/is be justified with yet another answer to the question of how we humans got here.

The rapid developments in our scientific understanding and technological capabilities might even make us look like gods to people who lived during the times when those old religious narratives were drafted.  The old movie cliche of a Westerner flicking a lighter and creating fire that impressed the cannibals who were preparing to cook him alive can now be replaced with any of us walking around with a smartphone that can do wonders that are beyond the wildest imaginations of the generations that preceded us.

The tremendous advancements in technology prompts us to further banish to the dark background any systematic inquiry into what it means to be human.  Formal schooling in the humanities and the social sciences are often considered to be wasteful spending.  In doing so, we don't seem to feel the importance, more than ever, of helping students and the general population inquire into and understand what it means to be human.

As much as religious narratives of how we got here provided people with rules on how to behave towards fellow-humans within the religious tribe and fellow-humans of other tribes, our modern day constructs of what it means to be human will then have its implications for our collective public policy responses.

Here in the US, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, spending on wars, education, illegal immigrants, ... all could potentially be viewed differently depending on how we define what it means to be human.  When we routinely rain bombs from drones and kill children and yet pay no attention to it, that action is itself a statement of how some humans are more important than other humans.  When we think it is important to prevent abortions but not important to provide support for children growing up in disadvantaged contexts, those public policies reveal a different interpretation of what it means to be human.  It is the same case with practically every single public policy.

I was not keen on my undergraduate studies in electrical engineering, and did not care about pursuing that field as a career, because it didn't directly address the question of what it meant to be human and, therefore, how to respond to the human condition.  On top of that, science and technology has contributed--in a big way--to dehumanize humans.

I have always wondered whether the scientists and technologists who work on developing yet another fancy way to kill people, for instance, ever ask themselves whether they are doing good for humanity.  Perhaps they are no different from the lobbyist Nick Naylor in Thank you for smoking.  The libertarian in me does not want to tell others what they can or cannot do, yes.  But, the humanist in me wonders whether all the people, especially the educated ones, whose work generates nothing but harm for fellow-humans, ever clearly articulated for themselves answers to how we got here and what it means to be human.  

Like most atheists, I, too, find the question of how we got here and what it means to be human not only highly fascinating but also extremely challenging.  More so when I don't need any reminders on how mortal I am.  As Susan Jacoby says:

We have our time on this earth, we have to use it in the best possible way, because it is limited.

Within that limited time, wouldn't it be worth it to educate ourselves so that we can think about what it means to be human?