What Does It Mean To Be Human

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What Does it Mean to be Human?

Excluding biological definitions, there is something else that makes human besides all being members of the same species. Humans have a seemingly unique ability to be aware of things happening, and to truly understand the world around them. We also know that personhood is more than just a species category because constantly see other people denying other people’s humanity even though we are all members of the same species. This happens on a macro level when governments choose not to acknowledge existence of certain ethnic minorities, and on a micro level when I choose to dehumanize someone by seeing them as less complex than myself. It’s easy for me to understand and believe that I contain knowledge and skill, but instead of understanding that of others, I see them as sick, or poor, or merely “a them.”

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There was a point brought up by one of my resources that said “What makes us people is the ability to share stories across generations” and while I absolutely believe in the power of narrative, there are many people who have disabilities that cannot tell or hear stories, and they are still people. People also associate reading and writing with humanness, but there are many humans who can’t read or write, however they are often they are depreciated. The same goes for many common definitions of being a human that I’ve come across. They exclude the poorest or the sickest, or the most oppressed categories. Wealth, race, class, sex, and many other things factor into how human you get to be, and that can be very dangerous. For many centuries Europeans and white Americans denied the humanity of black people as a justification for slavery. This isn’t even just a problem of history. To be treated as a full human today, you need a human body and spirit, but also an identification card that attests to a particular

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