The Loci of Humanity: Removable?

While discussing aliens in class last Thursday, I found it interesting how several of us, consciously or not, argued for a direct correlation between humane/inhumane actions, humanity and being human. The point was made, several times during the course of our discussion about the Martians, that our actions are capable of removing humankind's humanity.

Frankly, I'm not sure if I can agree with this sentiment. While there are certainly attributes which make us human — such as our biology, the psychology of our minds, and culture — the idea that our actions can somehow remove or rob us of that which makes us human is an idea that I am extremely skeptical of.

Such a notion implies that certain innate characteristics, those characteristics which essentially make us human, are not fixed. It was fascinating how, in our discussion, several of us used examples of madness as being points in which humanity had lost itself. The implication that follows — that those who act inhumanely, as if they are mad — is interesting in that the assertion which follows is that humanity is erratic.

I do not disagree that humanity can be erratic, but I would not go so far as to translate the erratic actions of a few actors into a universal law in regards to the nature of humanity. For if our actions, or the actions of others, are capable of being judged inhumane, and we are thus capable of robbing or being robbed of our humanity, then there is truly nothing which may guard the sacrosanctness of humanity. Moreover, if that which makes us human can be removed or taken from us, then within such a possibility is a terrible guillotine: the possibility of societies — judges, juries, and executioners — removing those who they feel are inhumane. The question of humane/inhumane actions, humanity, and being human then becomes much more dangerous in that it becomes a very pragmatic question of who appoints the judges, juries, and executioners.

Inhumane. The very term itself is a misnomer in that it suggests that one is incapable of being human while being cruel or incapable of feeling compassion. Actions are cruel, and if we ascribe actions to the identity of a human being, then we may see them as being inhumane. That is not to say that actions which are cruel should go unpunished, but that we should not fall to the argument that humanity may ever be lost or possible of removal. One needs only look at the greatest mass-murderers of the 20th century to understand why the idea that sanity, righteousness, and being orderly are characteristics of humanity. Such a definition, that humankind is sane, just, and orderly, ignores the potential for humankind to present the opposite of those characteristics — insanity, cruelty, and chaotic — in itself. And humankind can be insane, cruel, and chaotic. Those attributes, however, do not rob or remove humankind of that which makes it essentially what it is. Such a rhetoric, a rhetoric of inhumanity, of subhuman-ness, is a rhetoric that has carried us through not one, but two world wars. Do we need another before we come to the realization that humanity, that which makes us human, is fixed, irremovable, and thus something of which we cannot be robbed? There is no sub-humanity, no inhumane, only our coming acceptance that humanity that includes the opposite of every good and bad characteristic that we, the members of the human race, posit through our actions. In War of the Worlds, this is no more clear than in a conversation between the curate and the narrator:

"Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over. I was walking through the raods to clear my brain for the afternoon, and then—fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work—what are these Martians?"

"What are we?" I answered, clearing my throat.