Humanity

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Humanity, all people in the world as a whole, or the qualities characteristic of people (Cambridge Dictionary, 2026). A species defined by its classification, Homo sapiens, characterized by bipedalism. A species with a large and complex developed brain and shared mammalian physiology.

Humanity, understanding and kindness toward other people (Cambridge Dictionary, 2026). Humanity as a moral quality is the capacity for compassion, empathy, and benevolent action directed toward others without expecting a reward.

We've spent significant resources studying the first, and over time have made tremendous scientific gains in terms of knowledge, medical advances, and understanding of our own system.

We have traced our likely evolutionary path and debated its meaning. Homo sapiens being approximately 300,000 years old, are still relatively young in universal terms—the universe being approximately 13.8 billion years old. In those 300,000 years the accomplishments are truly, perhaps objectively, astonishingly vast.

Evidence suggests that a mere ~200,000 years into existence, traces of shared communication were present (symbolic art). We created watercraft while still adolescents and animal domestication shortly (relatively speaking) thereafter. We built civilizations as early as 10000 BCE and the wheel 6500 years later. We continued advancements in language and writing, mechanical engineering, forms of organization for civilizations.

We've been innovating since learning to walk and never stopped.

We distributed knowledge to the masses via the printing press in 1400s and even more with the internet in earnest in the 1990s. In between, we constructed more libraries and institutions of higher learning and opened education to more groups previously excluded or segregated.

We saw suffering and disease and created antibiotics and surgeries and extended our lifespan.

Roughly 10000 years ago we settled more, adopted permanent settlements and agricultural structures. Approximately the same timeframe, we found evidence of the first known "war" occurring, The Nataruk Massacre.

We trace wars like we trace genealogy, as if they're inseparable concepts. Entire civilizations have been conquered and decimated. The knowledge we innovated to distribute, frequently destroyed in the process. Languages that took 10000s of years to create lost to the blood soaked earth.

We used language as a weapon, to identify and classify as other, Homo sapiens sub species other became the reason or perhaps the permission for genocides and forced conversions.

We claimed we didn't know, yet philosophers were debating the very nature of such things. Erasmus on War was printed and spread across Europe in 1517 as was The Complaint of Peace. The European Religion Wars started 7 years later. We created religions of peace and murdered in their name.

Kant published in 1795, Thoreau in 1849, and Tolstoy in 1894, well before the world wars.

We let curiosity guide us to discovery in 1938 and turned it into a bomb in 1945.

We turned farming equipment from the early 1900s to treads of war and chemicals to prevent famine into gas chambers for sub species "other".

Systems designed to keep us from getting lost and track weather systems serve surveillance and weapons guidance.

We took the most human instinct of all, to innovate, and used it to diminish humanity, figuratively and literally, repeatedly throughout history.

Both are a choice, innovation and how it's used, one is a cost paid by "others".

BV Hughes Letters

Humanity