Here is my contribution to this month's "Amazing Traveling Fantasy Round Table" on the topic of
I think we Homo
sapiens have been discussing what being human is and means since we
developed abstract language and probably before that. At first, the driving
motivation was undoubtedly how to tell what is us and not-us. This is
certainly a biological imperative at the cellular level; our immune systems
must tackle the question every day, attacking foreign substances like viruses,
bacteria, and allergenic proteins, and it’s also why cancer is so insidious
(cells with the right molecular passwords that nonetheless behave like ravening
barbarians). The same distinctions hold true at the level of the individual,
family/clan, and larger, political units. Whether we’re talking about
communities or nations, “us” = “human” = friendly, safe, cooperative, reliable,
and “them” = “something else” = dangerous, untrustworthy, competitors for
limited resources. In this way, “human” tends to be exclusionary and frictions tend to narrow the scope even further.
