CAN A HUMAN HAVE HUMANITY ?

What makes us human ---or can a human have humanity

Luna lies on her bed, eyes half open as she takes her morning snooze and ponders the world.This of course is my interpretation . Luna is my four year old golden retriever. I don't know what or even if she is pondering anything. As I type this her eyes fly open as though she reads my thoughts, she does read my thoughts by the way. Somewhere I had read making an animal use human communication skills was poor writing. Our race or species has no idea what the other is thinking. I don’t believe this. Luna is my fifth golden and I fully believe I have communicated with all of them . Truth be known I still talk to them sometimes and I believe they hear me.

Humanity defined as someone who has the capacity to feel others pain.

I open the newspaper and I see examples of so many that have inflicted pain and suffering and who have to all accounts not thought twice. The question I keep coming back to is how can someone do this to someone else seemingly without any remorse.

Luna looks up at me as if to say poor breeding and greed. These breeders develop all sorts of combinations of dogs just to make more money. As with much inbreeding it often leads to disastrous results with puppies that have all sorts of medical issue. This occurs with adults too, we only have to look back at our own history when leaders have decided who the master race will be thereby giving them grounds to kill others. Humanity, I am finding it hard to find in this World today.

Questioning my own on some days, like when a friend called to announce the death of a very old friend. We discussed the person at some length and although neither one of us had much contact with the person of late we both were vicious in portraying his personality. He was a very unhappy person but he had contributed to society, writing books on political science. He taught his entire life and had access to so many lives he could have influenced but in the end he sat alone and forgotten rotting away in a chair because he basically couldn’t walk due to being so weak. He couldn’t even fix his own food. Where was my humanity that I could be so sarcastic and mean. I couldn't find a nice thing to say about him. There certainly must have been something salveagable of his being. I could say well I’m calling a spade a spade but even that sounds quite rough. The only conclusion I brought to myself was not to speak about him again to another person as it said too much about me .

Oh I can look around and see good deeds being done but looking at the whole picture it doesn’t seem to be enough to make up for the bitterness and the cruel acts being committed around me.

Luna looks at me as if to say ,”oh for pete's sake stop being so rough on yourself. You think I never held a grudge after a dog fight.”

Well that is my interpretation of her look. I guess its all in the interpretation of humanity. Maybe I should feel sorry for the leader of the country who commands the military to kill and burn everything in its way. I suspect he thinks this is right because as a child this is what he was taught, to bully and to fight. Am I to believe he was born this way? Perhaps he was if you adhere to the belief that people are born either kind or unkind. I refuse to believe a baby is that fixed in a personality .

I cannot figure out why we would want to hurt another being. Man’s inhumanity to man as was once written. We cannot stomach someone having more than us and so it comes out in sick

Ways, trying to hurt others.

I look around at the poverty in this country and I wonder , o.k. We can’t all be rich but I do believe we have the right to a decent way of living with enough food, adequate shelter and opportunities to be educated so we can take care of ourselves. No-one really wants a government hand-out. Oh I do digress.

My humanity has become solid, something we can feel and see. Is that what humanity is about and not some lofty ideals about what is right or wrong? If it is about the measurable than it should be easy to solve. Looking at others under a microscope trying to figure out why they are doing what they are doing is a job for a psychiatrist not some judgemental idiot.

So far I’ve spoken of individual humanity but isn’t there also a mass humanity. What happened to people during WWII ? This collective conscience that believed all Jews were bad. How does that even happen? What kind of person has the ability to turn man against man based on his religious beliefs? What convinced people that this race had to be destroyed, not just destroyed but savagely murdered in a gas chamber. If man can do that he is capable of anything in my book. It was no different than the massacre of the Indians in the United States. The only good Indian was a dead Indian went the saying . It becomes a matter of values a matter of them against us. Who came up with this concept ? The religious wars over the centuries, what was their basis? One persons belief over another's, where is the humanity in that?

I struggle with this humanity idea to the point where I want to throw the word right out of the dictionary. There is no humanity. So then maybe that is the answer, we’ve been looking for something that doesn’t exist, There is no humanity in man. Once he has decided something it will always alienate another. If you are so set in you beliefs perhaps it is impossible to be humane you can only be human.

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