Humanism

During one of my classes, we discussed life and living things and organisms. There were debates about organisms coming and developing from other organisms and the fact that we are all in the same circle of life. After this, we compared the difference between humans and other organisms. Obviously, that is the scientific part of it, others emphasized that God created all living and non-living in seven days. Several students focused more on having a soul or spiritual value to be considered human. The following day we continued and kept discussing humanism and this was a pretty interesting debate and topic.

Are Humans Not Animals??? media1.giphy.com

What is humanism? What makes someone human? Some students in my class mentioned that humans have the ability to think about function and processes compared to other organisms but this was not fully true. One student brought this quote upon us in class and it mentioned that as humans "Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty" by Albert Einstein. She emphasized that as humans we value several things and ideas that other organisms do not need or even think about. Yes, animals do have a thought process. Humans tend to want to do good and sometimes do bad for their need to be human and the fact that we are able to rationalize about this is what makes us human as well. Humans are curious from the start just like animals. Humans also interact like other animals and in many different other ways compared to other animals. We differentiate but simultaneously react and function as animals. Humans stress potential value and goodness and on most occasions, this is not the case for animals. Survival of the fittest is more seen in the animal kingdom and life but for humans, we have the ability to do otherwise and help others instead.