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What does it mean to be Human?

Well, as usual the answer is, it depends.

If you just mean the biological context then that's super easy, you just need the right genetics and boom, you're human. But all that means is that you're a hairless ape that's capable of making up a story and then believing the story that you just made up is true. Is that not the dumbest thing you've ever heard? But we do it constantly, take some tiny piece of possible fact and concoct a huge fairy tale and then believe that our fairy tale is true. It took me 50+ years to notice that I do it, and that everyone else does it. It's an amazing exercise in humility to learn that the person you lie to the most is yourself. You're both a liar and an idiot, just embrace it now, it's absolutely true and it's a big step forward.

If by human you mean something besides “a hairless ape that believes it's own bullshit” then you might, possibly, be on the road to what I consider humanity. Or you could be lost in another fantasy. It depends. 😉 Do you mean something spiritual? You're in fantasy land. Do you mean something superior? You're in fantasy land. In both cases your ego is trying to make you feel special. Tell it that it's full of shit, cause it is. But… if you mean “a hairless ape that knows it's full of shit” then you might be on to something.

Knowing that you're full of shit is an important step towards finding wisdom. It's the emptying of the cup that makes new knowledge possible.

Part of realizing that you're full of shit is realizing that you're not important. You're not important. The things and people you love aren't important. Your gender, race, culture, country, continent, planet, etc (1) are all stories that you invented or adopted from others and none of them are important. The universe does not even know that you exist and it wouldn't care if it did. It's got plenty of other stuff on it's plate and no need to worry about hairless apes falling through space on a speck of sand.

This is scary shit, but the trick is that it doesn't change anything. The things that matter to you still matter to you, but now you can re-evaluate them knowing that they're not cosmically important, they're just important to you. Hopefully, that also brings some humility…FIXME


Footnotes

1) Yes, yes, I can hear your pedantic whining that some of these are actual physical attributes. The important thing is that we make a lot of (bullshit) stories about what those physical attributes mean.