17.04.2020
This business of being human, in all our glory and frailty, is under the microscope as we collectively endure isolation and exile from the life we knew for sure. We have had to switch from relentless human doing into the less familiar human being, without our regular raft of distraction from its innate discomfort.
It makes us wonder what our lives are built on, actually. It has drawn overdue focus on the value of feminine currency that is both the sinew and architecture that always held this belching ship of fools together. The time for exploiting and undervaluing its power and purpose is finally passing. Our caring professions are the new front lines in this viral theatre of war. Teachers and nurses and check out chicks and mamas. Our most visionary empathic leaders are women. Perhaps now we can finally move from #metoo to #noshit and have the equal place of women well regarded and universally accepted.
We see now too that it isn't the fat cats who make this modern world spin. It is minimum wage workers who turn all the vital cogs in the capitalist machine. It fails without them. Their vast numbers are routinely enslaved and degraded, derided and grossly disrespected. Most continue to work through lockdown and shutdown because they have to, risking themselves so that the privileged don't have to. They are our precious economy's safety net and thus deserve the same security to not fall through its vast gaps.
When Robert Burns lamented man's inhumanity to man, his countless thousands already lost, it was our humanity he was endeavouring to tease out. From the Latin word for kindness, humanity is in fact predicated on our capacity for compassion. We are creatures of community, salving our individual vulnerability through connection and care for our fellow humans.
When famed anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked what she considered the first demonstrable advance in human civilisation, she replied that it was a mended femur. It showed that another human had used their vital force to tend and preserve another's. Helping someone else through difficulty is not just a marker of evolution, it is too earliest evidence of our humanity.
Such true humanity is not conditional. It isn't remotely a function of the awful lines drawn between colour or creed or sex. It says please and thank you. It asks gently and allows for experience beyond its own. It listens. It feels deeply. It comes from heart not head, engendering empathy and understanding. It is our humanity that places us all in this together.
When was the last time you checked the box that confirms your humanity? X marks the spot.
Butterfly pic uncredited via Pinterest
Words and humanity pic c. Kerrie Basha 2020
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