The Human Condition

Words of Maya Anjelou

If I think of my life as a class, and what I've really learned, I've learned a few things. First, I'm aware I'm a child of God. It's such an amazing understanding, to think that the 'It' which made fleas and mountains and rivers and stars, made me. What I pray for is humility; to know that there is something greater than I. And that I have to know that the brute, the bigot, and the batterer are children of God — whether they know it or not — and I'm supposed to treat them accordingly... It's hard and I blow it all the time!

I would like everybody to think of a statement by Terrence, the statement is: "I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me". If you can internalize at least a portion of that, you will never be able to say of a criminal act "Oh, I couldn't do that". No matter how heinous a crime, if a human being did it, we have to say, "I have all the components that are in her or in him. I intend to use my energies constructively as opposed to destructively".

If you can do that about the negative, just think what you can do about the positive! If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody, if a human being dares to be Martin King or Mahatma Ghandi or Mother Teresa or Malcolm X... if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born, it means so can you! And so you can try to stretch, stretch, stretch yourself, so you can internalize:

I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me. That’s one thing I’m learning.

homo sum

homo faber

• Humankind as artifex. The semantics of 'faber' are related to those of fab- in fabrication. Humankind as maker of tools, as creator of things, as a being that 'does'. When you direct yourself in creative fashion, when your conduct is generative and leads to synthesis.

homo ludens

• Humankind as playful being. When you are playful, your intentions are always good. You may be pretending to be angry, or playfully combative, but it's all in good fun.

homo religiosus

• Human kind as a being that congregates. From Latin religare ("bind"). Humankind as something that comes together.

homo symbolicum

• Animal symbolicum ("symbol-making" or "symbolizing animal") is a definition for humans proposed by the German neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer. The tradition since Aristotle has defined a human being as animal rationale (a rational animal). However, Cassirer claimed that man's outstanding characteristic is not in his metaphysical or physical nature, but rather in his work. Humanity cannot be known directly, but has to be known through the analysis of the symbolic universe that man has created historically. Thus man should be defined as animal symbolicum (a symbol-making or symbolizing animal). On this basis, Cassirer sought to understand human nature by exploring symbolic forms in all aspects of a human being's experience. — Wikipedia (Feb 2022)