What does it mean to be human?
Let me rephrase this question. What is it that separates man from beast? The human is reasonable. He is capable of complex thought and problem solving. He creates religion, language, and science, and attempts to understand the world around him beyond means of the most basic survival. The human is social, communal, capable of considering another's needs above his own. He stands tall on his hind feet, and manipulates the world with his forepaws and his opposable thumbs. He creates things like a God. He considers the future. He seeks fulfillment. He desires. He loves.
Man sees beauty in things around him. Man notices the order of nature. Man knows right from wrong. Man clothes himself to stay warm. Man builds fire to cook his food. Man watches the stars and asks, "What is out there, and what is my role in it?"
Homo sapiens refers to a creature with these capacities, the wise, knowing man. However, as of late, it is used exclusively to describe a certain branch of hairless, tailless primates, while those of us priveliged with such physical amenities as gifted ears, warm fur, and dextrous tails are still felines, canines, ursidae, mustilids, rodents, and primates. We meet every requirement hiterto listed, and yet we are still numbered among the animals.
One might argue that physical properties are as important in determining humanness as these capacities, but consider this. If you leave a primative human in the wild, devoid of all opportunity to develop these capacities, do you still call him a human? Is he still human that acts like an animal, fears like an animal, and reasons like an animal? Surely not.
Man is created in God's image. And yet, God has no physical form. How is the primative man to deem his body the body of God, when among them there are many differences? I would argue that God's image holds no physical form, but instead embodies these capacities which I have mentioned. God is wise. God creates. God loves. We are, in this way, the embodiment of God, and that is what separates man as the chosen species among all animals.
Once, the white primative said, "The black man is not as human as we, for he reasons like an animal and is brutish like a horse." Yet today, we recognize the arbitrary confines of race as just that: aribitrary. I propose that the social confines of breed are as arbitrary as race, that the canine man is as sophisticated as the primative man. That is what we are, different breeds of man. But we are still human, in the same sense that a doberman and a jack russel are both dogs, and both reason like dogs. Physically, they are as different as coffee and cream, yet, they are of the same species. Perhaps I should also note that only members of the same species can breed, and as the years have shown, the bare man and the furred man are capable of begetting a cross-bred child, and this child is capable of begetting his own children, and capable of developing his own human capacities as well as any other human. To refer to him as otherwise is atrocious and abominable.
These facts are irrefutable. Nothing is more certain to me than my own humanity, and my human soul cries out for the right to develop my human capacities to their fullest. The powers that be would deny me these rights, and I have no choice but to resist them and fight to assert my humanness. My goals are reasonable, to allow all human children the right to public education; to allow all human workers the benefit of a decent living wage and decent working conditions; to allow all humans the right to vote; to allow all humans equal protection under the law; to allow all humans the opportunity to lead a middle class life; and above all, to allow all humans to practice their humanity to the fullest.
To all my brothers and sisters, I urge you to be human. You are more than animals. You have purpose. You have knowledge. You have power. Use it.
Matthius Phoenix
March 24, 2005
