What is humanity mean

In our era of climate crisis, environmental degradation and multiple species extinction, the moral principle of humanity is looking increasingly self-referential and incomplete as a primary ethic for the human species. Quite simply, it is not enough for humans only to be kind to humans. The principle of humanity as currently expressed is a classic example of speciesism in ethics.

It cares only about one species — our own. We may claim that the principle of humanity is a niche ethic for calamitous human situations which rightly trumps wider ethical considerations in extremis, but this is neither true nor realistic. It is not true because the principle of humanity already takes account of the natural environment in the laws of war and the norms of disaster response and so recognizes the importance of non-human life in its own right and as means to human life. Nor is it realistic at a time when our biggest existential challenge as a species arises from our relationship with the non-human world around us.

The principle of humanity must, therefore, keep pace with the ethical evolution of humanity the species and needs to expand its purpose and behaviour towards non-human life. This currently includes all animal and vegetative life. But, in future, it is increasingly also likely to include non-human machines like robots and AI which may develop their own levels of consciousness, feelings and rights as they increasingly merge with humanity — the species and its ethics — in hybrid forms.

Here time is pressing. We may have little time to work out what it means to apply humane behaviour within non-human machines and towards non-human machines. This means agreeing how non-human machines and new models of human-machine interactions can behave with humanity, especially as new weapons systems. It will also mean thinking about how we should show humanity to increasingly machine-like humans and human-like machines. At the moment, our humanitarian action can be profoundly inhumane to non-human life, neither protecting nor respecting it.

With all this uncertainty about what exactly it may mean to be human in future and the persistent record of our inhumanity to each other and towards non-human life, what sense does it make to try to aspire to a single global identity as billions of human beings?

Over the last years, a third sense of humanity has increasingly referred to a single global identity across all human societies. This is not a simple biological identity but the idea that as a conflicted species we can and must build a single global political identity in which every human has a stake. This global identity is a meta identity which transcends smaller identities shaped by culture, nation, class, political opinion and religion. This political sense of being a single global group is experiencing push-back today as a broad-based politics of ethnic and economic nationalism expresses scepticism about globalism of all kinds.

But our Movement continues to argue that it is important to imagine and build a global sense of humanity because our common human problems are intense and interdependent, and can only be solved internationally not just nationally. There are five truly existential problems that we all share as members of the human species, and always have done.

This is what we try to do at the International Conference. Our perennial five problems are:. The problem of our violence as a species as it plays out terribly in war and violent crime. Our struggle for fairness and our desire to reduce inequalities between us.

Our predators and their threat to our health which now take mainly microscopic form as infectious microbes, or chronic and autoimmune diseases in which we attack ourselves.

Our relationship with the non-human environment and its impact on human survival. The promethean risk of our creativity and how our technological inventions help and harm as they change the world around us and redefine humanity itself in new hybrid forms. These five deep species problems will all be raised in various forms at our Conference in December. They will require a powerful response by all humanity, with an ethic of humanity, to ensure the survival of humanity.

Great piece Hugo. It looks like a redundancy, but suspect you have a very good reason for using it. Group Homo Humaneness. It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?

Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities? For we have too much likeness as it is, and if an explorer should come back and bring word of other sexes looking through the branches of other trees at other skies, nothing would be of greater service to humanity ; and we should have the immense pleasure into the bargain of watching Professor X rush for his measuring-rods to prove himself superior.

During times like these it kinda restores your faith in humanity a little, the way the world is now you see a lot of anger, tension, and selfish behavior.

What we witnessed was pure kindness and it was a breath of fresh air really. Qais Hussain Rashid :. They are people from another planet, they take pride in nothing. Their mentality is completely petrified. They don't think of all this as the accomplishments of humanity. The aim is to scare immigrant communities. And so, hes going to Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.

A well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. Forgot your password? Retrieve it. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate image within your search results please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. Term » Definition.

New Word List Word List. Save This Word! See synonyms for humanity on Thesaurus. See antonyms for humanity on Thesaurus. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.

See human , -ity. All rights reserved. Filters 0. Words form: humanities. See word origin. The definition of humanity is the entire human race or the characteristics that belong uniquely to human beings, such as kindness, mercy and sympathy. An example of humanity is all the people in the world. An example of humanity is treating someone with kindness.