Being Human

What these essays are about

These short essays discuss core human emotions, desires, and behaviours. They are about what it is to be a human being.

Many cultures but we share a common nature

Plans for the Future

My intent is to increase the scope of the essays. For a given topic— loneliness or being broken-hearted, say — they will:

• Describe how technology has affected the situation.
• Predict the effect of technology over the next 25 years.

The focus will be especially on recent technology, although more broadly we will consider technological change since the invention of agriculture some 10,000 years ago.

Like these posts, the future essays will be written for the general public. They will however be longer and be more rigorously thought through. They will draw upon and cite third party research.

Seeking Reader Comments

The current essays are informal observations. They need the refinement that is born of comment and critique.

Readers are therefore invited to post constructive responses. I particularly welcome concise observations about:

• Assertions that are incorrect or need polishing.
• Material points that have been overlooked.
• Relevant anthropological, sociological, or scientific studies.
• How technology caused change, and changes we can expect in the future due to technology.

I’m especially interested in building links with anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists.

Illustrative Topics

Friendship & Love:

• Close Friendship. The nature and purpose of close friends as opposed to ordinary friends; why it makes sense to be clear about whether a given friend is one or the other.
• Finding Love-Mates. Dating is changing. Meeting on-line is now mainstream, although the technology is at the early stages of its effectiveness.
• Marriage. Human beings have devised many ways of rearing children, the modern notion of monogamous marriage being one with which we are familiar. How is marriage changing?
• Breaking Up. The virtual world makes it harder to disappear from the lives of our ex’s, should we wish to do so. How has our experience changed when we, ahem, withdraw from a sexual relationship?
• Been Dumped? How to Fix a Broken Heart. When jilted, what’s the best way to get over it?

Everyday Hardship:

• Everyday Stress. Many people in rich countries have a pervasive feeling of stress. Often this is due to financial insecurity. Although a commonplace to us, this sort of stress is not normal for human beings, and it makes life much less pleasant than it should be.
• Constant Toil. Most people work hard for 30 to 70 hours each week. Constant toil is an innovation of the last 10,000 years that we’re not designed for. What causes us to work so hard?
• Loneliness. A Terrible, Growing Cruelty. We lead lives that are ever more solitary.

Religion:

• Religious Belief. It is natural for humans to hold religious beliefs, and they provide both advantages and disadvantages. Groups that have them are better able to compete, and until recently groups that do not have them were very rare. What are atheists doing to make up for the lost advantages?
• Martyrdom. We used to admire self-sacrifice in the cause of religion. Now we are likely to condemn martyrs as dangerous and delusional.

Death:

• Being Remembered. Most of us want to be remembered after we’re gone. Technology now lets us leave ever-richer records of our lives. What electronica should we pass on, and what should we destroy?
• Funerals. Funerals are changing. The religious components are shrinking, and the ceremonies are becoming more personal.

Inconsistency & Non Sequiturs:

• Human beings can countenance inconsistency. For example, when someone wants to give up their train seat to a frail old lady, and also wants to keep the seat because it’s comfortable and they are tired. From the non sequitur standpoint I therefore occasionally write about matters largely irrelevant to human nature, such as Dump Most Mathematics Teaching. Teach What is Useful.

Other:

• What are the Best Things About Modern Life? What is it about modern life that makes it so wonderful? Or, more specifically, what would a hunter-gatherer, if somehow informed about modern life, pick as the greatest achievements since agriculture was invented around 10,000 years ago?
• You Are Dangerous. And Genocidal. We like to think of human beings as decent people, with genocidal killers such as the Nazis as abnormal. This is wrong. Most of us are capable of massacring others.
• Being Suspicious of Others. Until recently along the path of human evolution, it’s been wise to be suspicious of others, and to be predisposed to kill them. Nowadays, we are far kinder to strangers. Indeed, our tendency to suspicion may be the end of homo sapiens through the deployment of weapons of mass destruction.
• Racism. What’s the future of racism, given that it’s ever harder to maintain about fictional differences between us?
• The Sense of Self-Importance. Aside from when we are very young, we need to feel we are contributing to the lives of those around us. Conversely, life is harder for people that do not feel useful. For example, the elderly can become indifferent to whether they live or die, and people living on trust funds can have an uneasy feeling of detachment.
• Feeding Egos. The advantages and disadvantages of “having an ego”; how cultures vary with respect to egos.

With Thanks To …

• My friend Linda Stevenson. I originally anticipated thoroughly researched essays that incorporate the impact of past and future technology. Due to the press of other obligations, the project kept being deferred. Linda suggested I commence with the current, reduced scope, and this made it practical to proceed.
• My friend Ralph Ehlers. Ralph gave very helpful advice and encouragement during prototyping, especially with respect to platform selection.