Roots: The Edge of Humanity

I don’t know what it means to be ‘human’. Humanism, and theories like humanistic psychology have their assumptions and a part of these exalt what it is that is typically human(e). But that begs the very question; what is it to be human and what is humanity?

It’s easy to be either overly cynical or optimistic about humanity, we are after all in danger of perpetuating our own extinction event on this planet. Yet we are also responsible for the development of societies and cultures unseen anywhere else we know about. There are many of us concerned to preserve humanity and its future. But what is it that is being preserved?

Of course, like all words, and especially descriptive terms with value laden connotations like ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ the assumptions are in the meaning. So, like all people using words like ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ I’ve got my own idea about what the words ought to mean, or at least how they ought to be understood. For me, when we’re not using the word ‘human’ in a derogatory sense it is our unique capacity for two things that compels me towards my own humanity. Those things are empathy and creativity.

I know that altruism is seen in other species, but I don’t mean altruism in quite the same way that behaviourists and scientists mean. I mean the capacity to identify and share a world with someone despite seeming disadvantages that can result from sharing a world. By creativity I mean more than sketching, I mean the ability to have a unique vision of the world, our place in it and to be able to express that vision in such a way that it can be shared by others. Ironically there are two striking examples of these things, neither of which were human in origin.

7000 years ago a group of hominids called the Cro-Magnons lived in Europe. They had fertility rituals, buried the dead and were responsible for the most significant cave art in Europe. Their form of art survived as it was for centuries, much longer than any one movement of art in our time.

If you visit their caves in Europe you would see that the art isn’t near the entrance to the caves, it is protected deep in the caverns; it is as if by its significance to them it was kept safe from the world. In a world protected from the uncertainties of the world outside; much the same as the inner sanctuaries of the Cathedrals we visit today.

Their decoration adorned rooms that were protected and it would be evident, looking at their work that it was the work of minds capable of a view of the world in which they lived and fought to survive. And what is so compelling about the work, for those of us who see our own society as sophisticated and progresive, is that the compulsion to express, depict and render the world that lay outside the caves immediatly before them must have been as much of a necessity as our need is to find some mode by which to express and actualise ourselves.

The work on the walls of those caves was an expression of an existence and a connection to nature. As such it is as candid as it is profound for us to think about.

What is more interesting about the Cro-Magnon was they also sculpted and buried their dead. These are the ceremonies of a species who are self aware. For the remembrance of the dead, the and ritual toward afterlife carry a unique significance; that is our own concern for our own afterlife as well as the memory of those who have departed. However, what is more remarkable is that the Cro-Magnon carried out these ceremonies amidst an existence far harsher than our own and most likely with a greater occurrence of death than we on the whole are used to in the western world.

Creatures who are aware of themselves are also it would seem aware they are mortal, and at the risk of a truism; with mortality comes death. For creatures with such an awareness the finite duration of individual life becomes an ever present characterization of the every day.

Mortality matters and the meaning that life has while it flickers through our breath has a significance that we are still at odds with to this day. One need only consider the Myth of Sisyphus and the the multiplicity of roles it has played in our own culture to see that fact.

It is true, their lives were shorter than ours; it is only in a developed society that the older generations can be supported. But then doesn’t that just add weight to the sympathy we can muster for the Cro-Magnon, for despite the prevalence of death that we assume they were accustomed to, they still had enough reverence for life to respect and preserve their dead through burial.

For me it is in the example of the Cro-Magnon that I am reminded of something else; death is final and we bury our dead to remember them in the same way the early Cro-Magnon did. With them we share a vital appreciation of life and a fundamental fear of what happens to us when that life is lost.

For Daniel Dennett there is another point too. Death has a massive psychological impact on us. When anyone of us dies the whole frame within which we live has to shift. No longer can we think “oh, so and so would like that”, because the ’so-and-so’ is no longer there to appreciate the thought that we would like to share with them. When others die it is true that our world changes and through the ritual of burial we are at least brought one step closer to the unhappy shift that we must make in order to think about the world as it is now that they are gone.

Before the Cro-Magnon there were many variations of hominid. One story strikes me when I think our genetic ancestry. It comes from a species called australopithecus afarensis. When the species was discovered in Africa two sets of footprints were found, dated to the time that the species existed. The footprints are clearly of a man and a women walking, if not holding hands, then very close to each other.

There is an obvious poignancy to the story; these were the footprints of two people maybe very much in love, maybe just walking through the desert together, now very much extinct. What is left of them, of any idea that we can have of their identities are just footprints fossilized in the desert. beyond the species, the closest specimen of their individuality are these marks in the sand.

In a strange and ironic way it is these footprints that demonstrate the finite and momentary lapse of time that we have, just as the artwork in the caves some 7000 years old does as well. For what remains is not a eulogy or column in the back of a newspaper, nor the faint memory of someone who knew any one of these people. What is left are physical marks on caves and some shapes etched in the desert and these are not just the marks of humanity, they are the marks of the passing of time, not just for these species now extinct, they are the marks of our eventual passing as well.

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