Mastering The Art Of Living Like a Human
By: Varun Lokeswaran
Tags: Self Improvement, Humanity, Life Hacking, Mindfulness, Self-awareness

Image source: Ben Sweet/Unsplash

What does it mean to be human? Is “being human" analogous to “being empathetic”? Is it our ability to invent things? Is it our unique ability to be aware of our own thoughts and actions? These are the most common auto-suggestions that our brain throws at us when we think about human behaviour. Our auto-suggestion system can only be as good as our own conditioning.

What it really means to be Human

I try my best to be as objective as possible when trying to comprehend the meaning of a lot of commonly used terms which are generally misunderstood collectively by a lot of us. As emotional creatures, we tend to blend our own momentary bias, prejudices, personal preferences and other funny feelings into forming phrases that would end up being used so commonly that those who pick it up on their daily language do not know what they end up talking.

I have seen people do impulsive acts of stupidity(including me) and say something like —

I’m only human after all

This is actually a self contradicting statement and fundamentally messed up. It has originated from a naive understanding of human life and has unfortunately become mainstream just like a lot of other fundamentally incorrect statements that has been plaguing minds since their conception.

Let us break down and understand the fundamentals and significance of the uniquely evolved human faculties. Let us understand how we are different from the other walking(or crawling) living organisms on this blue planet — how we are different from the animals.

I’m not an expert on how life processes function within biological systems like ours and the other animals but I do have a fundamental understanding of the differences between how my own mind functions compared to my neighbour’s dog or my friend’s goldfish.

As humans we have a large cerebral cortex — our decision making and reasoning mind, the driver in the driver seat of a powerful automobile. This most evolved part of the brain is what helps us resist ourselves from behaving inappropriately(in other words — behaving like an animal). So in other words what it means to be human is to be able to exercise our cerebral cortex and be in complete control of our responses on various stimulus. This doesn’t come easy, it comes with a good amount of self awareness and some practice. Human behaviour is supposed to be the epitome of self controlled behaviour. It is actually shameful to call oneself human when they have lost control of their own responses.

Most animals have a limbic system just like we do — it takes care of all emotional behaviours and responses concerning self preservation, feeding, reproduction etc — the autopilot responses. These auto responses are helpful for survival, but many times they just get triggered for no specific reason — like your heart rate spiking up and the release of adrenaline before an important interview. This response is automated but you can control it to an extent by being more aware of why these responses are getting triggered — you are anxious, from here you can find various ways to reduce or control your anxiety before important interviews. The more anxious you are, the more better you get suited for fight or flight, this will be at the cost of your cognitive performance. Your cognitive system will be turned down in favour of this automated behaviour, as a consequence you do bad at your interview or you make the worst possible decisions.

Considering how sorted and organized the basic needs of human life is at a time like this, these auto responses are just getting triggered at all the wrong places and at inappropriate situations and this is something we can control with practice. We don’t have to be conquered by this inappropriate life preserving behaviour, not at all times at least.

Just like the animals, we do exhibit behaviours triggered by urges to fulfil certain needs concerning self preservation, but the difference is that our behaviour or our responses doesn’t have to be overpowered by these urges — the response can be controlled. These urges occur continuously throughout our life and there’s no way of turning it off, in fact life experience would be negatively affected if there was a way to turn it off — you will not feel positive emotions if you could turn off your limbic system. But as beings with a large prefrontal cortex and trillions of neurons in our brain we have the privilege of having a small gap between the stimulus and response — that gap is elastic it can be extended with awareness and practice.

This gap is what makes us human.

Every time you get the urge to respond in a certain way, practice pausing for a few seconds and reconsider your response — be it a physical or a verbal response. You’ll slowly start making decisions which are more aligned towards reality and not your temporary state of mind. The more you practice this the more you get better at it just like any other learning process.

In my view, this is the premise on which the whole concept of moral principles and good human behaviour was formed — the art of mastering self control and applying the same in the interest of the well being and preservation of our species, in the interest of the well being and preservation of homo sapiens. Those who have mastered this are well respected in the society not because they do not trouble other humans, but because they exhibit the epitome of human behaviour, they have mastered and exhibited self control.