the Humanity!

Those who adhere to universals – who insist that axiomatic living is ideal – want us to become machines. We would operate to specification, staying within our parameters, never deviating from the algorithm.

But our humanity is found in trying to reconcile the dark and the light, in seeing the good in both. It is not until we experience the pull between all of our facets that we are truly ourselves.

Milton could not have been righter:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan

The proper study of mankind is man.

Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of thought and passion, all confus’d;

Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d:

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Our nature is to exist between extremes. But this is not some cosmic joke, like Milton intimated, but the most essential requirement to our humanity.

Without indecision, we truly would be robots. Whenever someone tries to argue about the uniqueness of sentience to biological happenstance (or to divine lineage), the most-often used recourse is to indicate that replicating human emotions is impossible. However, it’s not hard to imagine a time when we can program a machine to love, or to worry (or, at least, copy said emotions). But it is, by definition, impossible for a machine to doubt. Either the algorithm continues and the next step is clear, or it is done.

The idea of irrationality (that man reasons about the notion of his tendency to ignore reason) has an implicit unsureness. The very fact that self-awareness has this natural inclination toward doubt… well, that is where humanity lies. If not, it’s where the beauty lies.