What Does It Mean to Be Human? | Season One Bonus Episode

0:05 Welcome to the WODcast. For the first season, Sarah Ogervie, who is a professor of language and lexicography, has given us a word. And we are now going to ask all of our season one guests to define that word. And the word of season one is human. Wonderful, isn't it? Human. Beautiful. Wow, what a fundamental word for all of us.

0:38 What does it mean to be human? Well, I suppose the obvious is a living, moving, sentient being who... I was going to say he's not an animal, but of course they are animals. A human is someone who have sympathy, who care about others as much as they care about themselves, who carry the values of being equal, being...

1:12 Similar but different at the same time. I mean, for me, it's the highest level of describing anyone. Like, you know, if you want to call someone like they are human, that's for me like the highest level of goodness in people's like souls and life. Isn't it interesting that when you put an E after human, you suddenly have the word humane, which means merciful, thoughtful, caring, all kinds of good things.

1:44 And you say, I appeal to your basic humanity, which doesn't mean your state of being human. It means your humaneness, doesn't it probably? Because if you appeal to someone's humanity, what are you appealing to? the way they treat animals and the way we, you know, farm them, the abuse, the torture, the misery, the injustice, the horror that we inflict upon ourselves and the environment into which we were born, the way we pray upon the weak, the greed, the disregard for things, the...

2:22 Is that what we mean, I appeal to your humanity? No, we appeal to some idea of being human that we hope for. I guess there are words that I would immediately associate that word with. And love would come to my mind. Empathy would come to my mind. But also connectivity. Just remembering that we are all part of the same circle of life.

2:53 We're not above it. We're not outside of it. No one is small. No one is inferior. No one is superior. Okay, you know in a dictionary where I have multiple definitions, one, two. One, a mammal existing at the top of the existing ecosystem on the planet Earth. Two, to think, feel, be, and exist. Two. I think being human, truly human, something that we touched on earlier is being a slave to your senses and not being afraid to go through the tirade of them.

3:42 Happiness is instant and it can't be maintained forever. And it's just exactly the same as on the other side of the coin of sadness. That must be something that we need to learn to sit in and not always search for advice to exit. So I think being human is being able to dance between all those feelings and accept them and being able to be at the mercy of them and not search for... and then not be so frantic about it, sitting in those things and trying to understand them And then once you do understand them, you just realise that's a part of being human.

4:31 I am struck recently about this notion that we are not more, as humans, we're not more important than any other part of creation. But to say we're all kind of the same is to flatten something out that I think is really important and is a mistake. Just like you might say there are many cells in the body, but like...

5:02 neurons brain cells have more complexity and they do have a specific function but they're not more important than we can't live without the other ones either so humans place is like that i think in the in the scheme of creation and that's reflected in a in the biblical understanding that we are the stewards of of this creation and And actually we are part of a very delicate ecosystem.

5:34 So when we destroy each other in the name of an ideology, that religion or this religion, we're also destroying nature and everything that we're connected with. The word human for me personally immediately brings to mind three levels of connections. One, human to human, beyond borders, beyond boxes. I find the renewal of those connections very important.

6:05 The second is connecting with nature, with trees and rivers and stones and earth. And so on. And the third is, I don't know really what to call it. I don't have a name for it. Some people call it meditation, but it's the inner one. Voltaire used to call it inner garden. So I'm going to use the same concept.

6:29 So the third level of connectivity is the one we build inside. I think we all have an inner garden that we're responsible for and we need to take good care of it. So the word human is possible only and only if we are aware of all these three levels of awareness and consciousness simultaneously. Human, yes.

6:51 Well, that's what we all should aspire to be. And very few of us achieve. But I have little doubt that psychedelics will make everyone more human. And if you want the textbook on how to do it, it's written by a guy called Aldous Huxley. He's called Island. And it is the roadmap to basically using psychedelics, the moksha medicine, he called it, dance, psychology, exercise, to basically make a more human society.

7:24 Human is not, is almost like so much in our lives is an unrealized state. We haven't yet arrived at it in terms of what we want human to be. We want, when we say, The humanity. You must show some humanity. No human does. We don't yet show it. We haven't yet reached the stage where we are human in a peculiar kind of way.

7:48 Unless we're realistic and say, well, what humanity means is dark. And very, very, I mean, there are glimmers of light, but it's like the odd sapphire in an enormous dung heap. Yes, there's a little bit of light shining there, but most of it is terrible. Well, it's an animal who, in theory, is the most intelligent of all species.

8:10 But there's a lot of evidence to show that it's not that. It's an animal that has developed... sort of motives beyond instinct, I would say. I mean, even the most intelligent animal operates 99% by instinct, I would say. But they can be bright. I mean, dogs recognize different people, but humans have the ability to change views and habits and opinions more than most animals, I think.

8:44 Often for the worse. But that would be my sort of definition of being that, for better or for worse, has a certain amount of free will. So interesting, because when I think about the word human, it's like my heart wants to answer. And yet I'm struggling between the science of the mammal or the man...

9:15 And the being, the relational being that lives on the earth in community, human being. I wonder what the etymology of human is, actually, humanness. Oh, to be human, what it is to be human, to feel emotions, to feel pain, to feel joy, to experience life force in a relational way through language, right?

9:50 And to relate to each other through language is... in community, that would be my answer. Wow. Beautiful. Okay, right. Thank you for allowing us to be on this thoughts journey. Sorry, I had to feel it. Yes, you did. What is this? What is this? Yeah, you burst the definition. Yeah. God, I'd love to know what the bunch of definition is now.

10:28 Bye.