tales of Suchita

What makes us human? Is it memory? Is it that we have bigger guns? Is it our brain? Maybe it is the fact that we have technology. I have noticed how most of these questions are posed and answered by the SciFi genre. 

In Dawn by Octavia E. Butler, she wrote humans have a need for hierarchy and it is this need that leads to most of our violent tendencies. In Humans, a series on humans and synthetic life forms, a life form poses a remarkable conundrum – why do humans treat us (synthetic life forms) so badly? They do not do this to their gadgets (phones, tablets, computers), then why us? Is it because we look like them? 

Dawn has aliens and Humans has synthetic life forms. Both of them have something that threatens the humans’ position at the top of the food chain. But another show, The 100, has only humans and yet every time they try and work together, some form of violence always breaks out. I mean even though the nuclear plants are melting and viable places where humans can ride out the wave are dwindling, the violence does not cease.

I’m talking fiction right now but open any news channel, and at least 3 articles out of 5 will be talking about some form of violence that we have inflicted on another person(s). 

Then you have a book like Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and the movie Arrival and suddenly, the question – what makes us human – may have a less violent answer: language. How we communicate and how we use language or art or even math for that matter to reach outside ourselves and meet someone halfway. 

But it is also interesting that in both these pieces of content, there is only one person who is involved in trying to communicate. So this person has the time and space to figure out the right language.

What makes us want to immediately resort to fisticuffs instead of using our higher intelligence, our language to communicate? Why is it harder to use words and easier to use violence?

Maybe it is because for centuries, our world has run on the prototype of a heterosexual man and maybe in the beginning that definition was wider but the closer you come to 2022, that definition has only narrowed in its scope. Narrowed so much that it has us all by the neck, its teeth sunk into our jugular where letting go would leave us to bleed out and die a rather messy death.

Speaking of death reminds me of another book Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi. It’s a book on racism and the violence/prejudice that Black people face. It akins society to a diseased body and even flirts with the idea that perhaps the only way to handle such systemic violence is to destroy the world and rebuild. Much like you would amputate a limb to preserve the body.

I wonder whose prototype they would use when they make this new world? Perhaps we’ll colour it orange this time, instead of white and think: hey this looks okay. Who cares if it’s built on the ashes and bones of others. At least it’s a different colour.

I wonder if the rainbows and the unicorns and all the “sugar, spice and everything nice” will get a chance. Maybe that’s what “the man” is worried about. Colours as opposed to one colour. Languages as opposed to just one “superior” language.

Working together…hmmm…that right there may be the crux of the problem: we secretly hate each other and have the impulse control of a five year old. Maybe that is what makes us human.

---

Connecting this post to #BlogchatterA2Z. To read other posts, check Theme Reveal 2022: Without Prearrangement.

---

PS: If you like how I write and would like to read more, I have 2 ebooks on Kindle – both free if you’re on Kindle Unlimited. You can read more about the ebooks here.

---

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash