Smoke Signals

By Levi Underwood and Jacob Stone

This week, 50 ECHS students and faculty members were asked, “In one word, what does it mean to be human?” This yielded many very thoughtful responses, and has gotten the staff at Smoke Signals thinking as well. Pictured below is a word-cloud of the data collected from the survey, and then an opinion giving our own perspective on what it means to be human.

Humanity is a strange concept. At face value, it appears quite rudimentary; we are humans, we possess humanity. However, under closer examination, problems begin to arise that call this notion of humanity into question. What exactly is it that makes humans different from other animals? Are humans special at all? What exactly does it mean to be “human?”

Fifty people here at East Coweta High were asked to solve this mystery, and to do it in just one word. Fifty humans boiled their definitions of what made them who they are, indeed what they are, into a single idea. In doing so, a dataset was presented which perfectly captures the spirit of what humanity truly is. 

The most prevalent word given as an answer in the survey, with several close followers, was “love.” The runners-up included words like “alive,” “emotion,” “compassionate,” and “adventure.” Most of the answers reflected positive qualities like these, and even those that didn’t touched on the more basic concepts which unite all of them: abstraction and subjectivity.

Humanity is, most basically, that which relates to or defines the feeling or state of being a human. This is to say that in order to define humanity, one must determine what universally marks the human experience.

What, then, can be said with most certainty to set humans apart from all else in the known universe? Is it consciousness? If so, what exactly does this mean? The soul, perhaps? What does this entail, then and can people truly be proven to possess such an organ? 

The best answer to this inquiry lies in humans’ unique ability to form subjective ideas and abstractions in their minds, but at the same time be able to share these ideas with others. “Love,” that most popular answer, is an experience that is, to many, wholly beyond reason, yet it is incredibly compelling and fulfills and the lives of countless people. All the while, this idea, “love,” is amorphous, difficult in itself to pin down. It is subjective. It means something different to each person, but all people unite in the significance of it.

The thing that makes us human is our, as two respondents said, “connection” to one another. We, unlike any other beings that we know of, are aware of both ourselves and others. We form complex communities, exchanging ideas and traditions in a way wholly unique to ourselves. What it means to be human is many different things. It cannot be successfully and fully defined like anything else. That is its definition.