What Is A Human Being?

Humans have a primal need to belong to particular groups. For the vast majority of people, that is the basis not just of their identity, but their humanness. However, identification with nations, religions or ethnic groups is now a dead end, and the source of increasing division and conflict.

To declare, as leading lights (actually darks) in America and elsewhere are declaring that being a member of a particular society or nation is the only way of being human is not only false on the face of it; it contributes to the conflict and darkness destroying people and suffocating the human spirit.

The idea of “my country” being primary is anathema to the human being. Though the vast majority of humans have identified with particular groups for thousands of years, a small minority of human beings has always emotionally realized that they are part of humanity as whole.

The nationalism that is currently sweeping over the world whether under the guise of patriotism or the gall of fascism is just the modern version of tribalism. To put “my country” first means one is contributing to the division, fragmentation and destruction of humanity.

But even progressives think in same old shallow terms of identification, though they dress it up as “social networks,” and promote the fantasy of “building a deliberative, participatory democracy to resolve issues that can be fixed at the local level,” while “national and global actions are brokered by governments.”

Given the fact below surface differences all people have become members of an interconnected and utterly disordered global society, why are even leading “thought leaders” thinking so small?

Like the essential difference between humans and human beings, there is a great difference between a global society, which we have, and a global civilization, which seems further away than ever.

An inward deadness overtook America three decades ago, and it has spread to Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Avoidance of it is impossible, and clinging to identification and localism only spreads the virus.

Below the eroding differences of nation, culture and history, the collective consciousness man is operating through autocrats and plutocrats. It’s this dead consciousness that is deliberately flattening the world and producing less and less diversity and life.

How do we as human beings respond and remain whole even if nothing can be done at this time?

Clearly not by reverting to religions. Organized religion has lost its grip on people’s minds and hearts. And of course it’s utterly futile to try to desperately reinstate an imagined time of unity and greatness as a nation, though in America the two toxic streams have merged into one raging river.

Most people subconsciously adapt to the pervasive lifelessness, and try to cling the old meanings and structures even though they don’t believe in them anymore. The old human is dead, but the new human being has yet to emerge.

A human being is religious, without identifying with any religion. Not belonging to any religious group, or believing in a separate “Creator,” does not make one an atheist, except in the literal sense – not a theist.

Besides, believers and atheists are just two sides of the same coin, since belief systems are made by thought, not handed down by God, and atheists do not believe in any higher power beyond the mind of man.

For a human being to be aware of immanent intelligence within nature and the universe, thought has to surrender its control and beliefs, and allow the mind to be attentive and completely quiet. That’s become a requirement for inward survival and spiritual growth, whatever one’s background and culture.

All problems are internal problems now—internal not to infernal nations with their separate identities, but to every individual, and to humankind as a whole.

Ending the primitive need to identify and belong to particular groups requires a psychological revolution, which is occurring in a minority of individuals, but has to ignite in the whole of human consciousness if we are to survive and thrive as a species.

Even though it appears our age is too far gone, it matters in itself, and for the future of humanity that we grow in insight and understanding as human beings.

Martin LeFevre

lefevremartin77@gmail

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