What Does it Mean to be Human?

Interstate 15

Blurring, brilliant, alluring red
lights streaking lipstick through the soot
black night with halogen dreams and rouge
screams parting misty gray curtains,
fading into fast lanes, moments of clarity:
exposing truth until the dream takes over again;
the trance, reactionary and separated from reality
by mental astigmatism.


I have always been interested in how the capacity for thought distinguishes humans from animals, and how humans can regress into primal mindsets when presented with certain situations. The "fight or flight" mechanism is a good example of this. Reasoning is shut down to a large degree and the urge to GTFO or to bear ones fisticuffs turns on, adrenaline gives one a sense of urgency like no other. Emotion and instinct take over and we become more like trapped mice than humans.

I also find it interesting who we find "inhuman;" Drug lords killing anyone who gets in their way, hit men, rapists etc. we find these people inhuman because they act inhumane, and therefore do not have the right to live free. When one loses the ability to empathize or even sympathize they become inhuman. Yet there are many genetic disorders that include an inability to sympathize or grasp the idea of emotion. Autism is one of these "disorders." People with autism often are extremely intelligent but they lack empathy for those around them. In this respect they are more like logic machines than humans.

In other words our idea of "humanity" is both distinctively rational and emotional, when one lacks either of these attributes it allows them to do the inhuman, the inhumane.

However I am most interested in how our idea of humanity comes into perspective when one is in mentally compromising situations. When one is drunk they become more irrational, when one is exhausted they are unable to emotionally connect, when one watches someone die for the first time, they lose the ability to reason and emotion takes over. Are we less human in these situations? do we become animals or computers?

Or is there really no such thing as "inhuman." It reminds me of "I <3 Huckabees:" at one point one of the characters wonders aloud, "How am I not myself?" How can a being with human DNA be inhuman? Have all these exceptions to the idea of the "humanity" become the rule? The ideal of "humanity" being noble and empathizing and rational just is not the reality. Each of us displays differing displays of intellect and emotion based on variables as fundamental as DNA and as fickle as what we ate for lunch. The truth is we are all humanity, we cannot distance ourselves from the exceptions by saying they are inhuman, they are just as human as we are, just different, and in some cases, destructive.

This allows us to implement the same set of laws to all, we are all human and can be held to the same standard, no matter how demented they are they cannot plead that they are "inhuman" and cannot be held to the same standard, regardless of culture (thought they might plead insanity, which is as close to being "inhuman" as you can get).