We are all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us, and wealth classified us.
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Humanity is the quality of being humane. The definition of humanity, however, isn't really a concern. The concern is how we act and believe in humanity. How we express our love and benevolence is the prior picture of humanity. Every humans is bound to humanity to some extend but the question is how much ??
Suppose you are travelling by some strange places. Suddenly you see a kid crying and asking for help. There were other kids who were torturing that kid, they were making fun of him, teasing him, and even humiliating him. So, what will you do? Go and help that kid, persuading others not to torture him, or you would call their parents or teachers or whatever you would wanna do, the question is why would you want to do that ? Why would you even want to help that kid ? Why does it even matter to you? So, okay you feel humanity, right? You feel it is the right thing to do or may be you just don't want to live with the idea of leaving the kid cry.
Humans will do things what they feel right because of natural compassion. According to Mengzi, a Chinese philosopher, " humans are born with benevolent urges that they can develop into systematic thoughtful benevolent." The more you do good acts, the more you become moral.
I believe humans are born innocent. They are neither good nor bad when they are born. They just copy the things they have seen or taught when they were young. It depends on how they are raised and the environment and other variables to determine if they are good or bad people in general. With the acquisition of goodness or badness, they tend to acquire humanity as well. As a human, everybody is bound to humanity but it might really be different for different individuals based on circumstances and the environment they were grown in.
There might be various reasons why one can somehow deviate from the goodness of humanity. I would like to cover some which I think are considerable.
- Position:
Position is something that corrupts people's mind. Powerful people appear more corrupt because they are caught more publicly. They set ethical rules much higher for other than they do themselves. - Imitation:
The way people are seen and treated influences the way they act. They imitate the acts of others and reflect their environment. If the environment is bad, it's so obvious that people living in that environment commit bad things. - Arrogance:
Self images describes the character and behavior of a person. Those people who consider themselves superior to the others feel that they are less responsible for their wrongdoings.
The Free Will Defense:
God maximized the goodness in the world by creating free beings. And being are free means that they have the choice to do the evil things - a choice that some of us exercise.
Given the right circumstances and various other factors, some people tends to deviate from the goodness of humanity. All in all humans are bound to humanity which arises due to natural compassion. Since we are humans we have to see the things that helps develop humans into humane.
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”
-C. S. Lewis