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Human condition
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The human condition encompasses all of the experience of being human. As mortal entities, there are a series of biologically determined events that are common to most human lives, and some that are inevitable for all. The ongoing way in which humans react to or cope with these events is the human condition. However, understanding the precise nature and scope of what is meant by the human condition is itself a philosophical problem.
The term is also used in a metaphysical sense, to describe the joy, terror, humor and other feelings or emotions associated with being and existence.
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Encyclopedia
The human condition encompasses all of the experience of being human. As mortal entities, there are a series of biologically determined events that are common to most human lives, and some that are inevitable for all. The ongoing way in which humans react to or cope with these events is the human condition. However, understanding the precise nature and scope of what is meant by the human condition is itself a philosophical problem.
The term is also used in a metaphysical sense, to describe the joy, terror, humor and other feelings or emotions associated with being and existence. Humans, to an apparently superlative degree amongst all living things, are aware of the passage of time, can remember the past and imagine the future, and are intimately aware of their own mortality. Only human beings are known to ask themselves questions relating to the purpose of life beyond the base need for survival, or the nature of existence beyond that which is empirically apparent: What is the meaning of existence? Why was I born? Why am I here? Where will I go when I die? The human struggle to find answers to these questions — and the very fact that we can conceive them and ask them — is what defines the human condition in this sense of the term.
Although the term itself may have gained popular currency with The Human Condition, a film trilogy directed by Masaki Kobayashi which examined these and related concepts, the quest to understand the human condition dates back to the first attempts by humans to understand themselves and their place in the universe.
Study
The human condition is the subject of such fields of study as philosophy, theology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, demographics, cultural studies and sociobiology. The philosophical school of existentialism deals with the ongoing search for ultimate meaning in the human condition.
In most developed countries, improvements in medicine, education, and public health have brought about quantitative, not necessarily qualitative, marked changes in the human condition over the last few hundred years, with increases in life expectancy and demography (see demographic transition). "Probably" one of the largest changes has been the availability of contraception, which has changed the sexual lives of human beings, especially women (and men), and attitudes toward sexuality. Even then, these changes only alter the details of the human condition. In some of the poorest parts of the world, the human condition has changed little over the centuries.
Paradoxes of The Human Condition
Some feel The Human Condition is defined by the following three paradoxes:
- Our imaginations can take us anywhere dragging our physical bodies along.
- We are capable of the kindest, most noble things, but we are also capable of the most horrible and terrifying things.
- Humans hope for everlasting life, but are always inventing new ways to destroy each other.
Negative usage of the term
This term is sometimes used with a cynical or derogatory air, to imply that the human condition is in general a wretched one or that it cannot be improved. The term is often also used in a cynical way to describe the themes of pieces of art when nothing else is apparent. This can be associated with the ubiquitous phrase "only human," as far as pertains to its implications of inferiority to an unspecified comparative source. This can also be compared to the phrase "mere mortals" in a more declamatory or melodramatic mode of speech. Negative views of the "human condition" also may arise out of cynicism towards human civilization.
Possibilities of change
Certain movements, most prominently transhumanism, aim to radically change the human condition. Some thinkers, like Enrico Fermi and others, deny that human nature has really changed in any fundamentally meaningful way over time and that, despite all of our social and scientific advances, human beings remain essentially unchanged and merely have been transplanted into progressively more complex environments. Transhumanist theorists agree; however, they argue that this is precisely the problem. In transhumanist thought, the human species clearly has come as far as it can usefully go in terms of biological evolution, and if we, as intelligent life forms, intend to keep progressing at what we consider to be a reasonable pace, we must dramatically alter the parameters of life, via emerging technologies. Opponents of transhumanism such as extreme neo-luddites, and moderate bioconservatives assert that human nature, as we currently know it, is sufficient for all intents and purposes, and therefore does not necessitate any upgrades.
Many transhumanists hold a positive and embracing view of life itself, but see the existence of the human mind and its human body as a something of a cosmic tragedy, because every human being is consigned to death after a relatively short and delimited life, even while humans have the intellectual capacity to imagine a better world that is presently beyond their experience. The human condition, to the transhumanist, is an oppressive circumstance to be rationally overcome through the judicious application of science and technology.
See also
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