Being Human

P.Madhu
Many fundamental questions have no comprehensive answers.
What is it to be human is one such question. At the outset, it is
about being human. Obviously, being is a verb, hence, being
points us towards the activity of being. Being human then should
mean the activity makes one human. The question is not about
one human being human, but being human as humanity. It is
about the collective existence of being human. Interestingly,
being human cannot be reduced to any entity possessing its
instrument, the human body. Human exists prior to existence of
any of its body instruments. Human body is not human as much
as an antenna is not a television. Like a television set is capable of
receiving and transmitting signals the body instrument of humans
receives, interprets and transmits human signals.
Being human is more than being a human biological entity.
Human biology is necessary but not sufficient condition of being
human. Being human is about the potentiality and fulfilment of
being human, which is always achieved partially. It is not
historical repertoire accumulated over a period and habituated
into being human, though many leading thinkers tended to present
humans so. Historical repertoire of being human exposes only
historical performance of being human. That is merely a small
fraction of being human conditioned by the situations of its

expression. Situations constrain and enable being human.

Nevertheless, being human is not merely surviving in a situation.
Humans are not what their genetics makes them to be. Humans do
a lot that cant be predicted by their genetics. Genetics facilitate
being human, they do not comprehensively explain or predict
being human. Humans have cultural codes in addition to genetics
conditioning them, though neither play a deterministic role. The
culture codes, unlike the genetic codes are trans-individual. They
are plural, multiple, synchronistically drawn from many layers of
symbolic configurations.
Human being, as far as we know, is unique among other
biological beings though they share their ancestry with them.
Humans are unique by their extraordinary forms symbolic
cognitions. We live in our shared symbolic constructs. Being here
as humans means being embedded in our symbolic production.
The potential for this being human conditioned its embryo to be
uniquely human. Something that later we identify as human that
is beyond the instrument and its genetics that makes humans to
have their body instrument. Interestingly, a human programme
writes its code unto human body. It pre-exists the body that is
later born as human. It authors its codes. It makes it to be more
than its codes. The programming of human is not post-human, it
is not a posterior to its acquiring brain and other body parts, it is
not a posterior to the social situation, it is human before the
conditions it acquires gradually.
Being human cannot be reduced to materials with which they are
made or the materials they produce or the symbolic logics of
capital or economy alone. Being human is beyond being homo-

economicus. They are more than what they reason out, though
they are often caught into their reasons or beliefs.
Human is not merely a species different from others, its is what
made that species to be what it is. Human that is in the offing was
being achieved partly in making of the species. Human is beyond
the species. It is the potential that made the species with infinite
openings to become further human. Probably, human is human
aspect of the cosmic field itself. It could be something that is not
limited to its earthly bindings. The strings and fields made it to
ebb and happen could be cosmic. Human species interest in
cosmos and stellar galaxies are more than utilitarian, though many
historians tend to mistake humans from modern materialistic
frame of utility and exploitation.
I think, human is the field that made humans possible. Our being
human is discovering from our situation and learning to be
human. We are human to the extent we respond to the field of
human and to the extent, we discover the human through our
existence. Human is not totally individualist as some political
theorists or philosophers presupposed. The human aspect has
individual manifestation. It is individualist manifestation of
human as the node of response within their networked existence.
Our being human as the response from our node of existence that
happens
through
sychronistically
drawing
resources,
teleologically navigating into future, generating a large diversity
of images, ability to inhibit impulses, differing gratifications and
reining our emotions. Our being human is to the extent we make
the human possible.