On Re-Humaning

On remembering how to human again, together.

At the end of 2024, I decided to do something rare for me as I am deeply averse to resolutions. I set some goals that were more in the form of challenges. Not only was Trump back in office, which called for leveling up, I was born on the 25th day of my month, as was my husband, so I have always felt connected to the number. This year, I set some goals of separate categories of things I could accomplish in units of 25: For example, this year, I have been reading for at least 25 minutes each day and working to finish 25 new books; we are on our way to going to our favorite arboretum 25 times; I am making 25 catch-up calls to friends who are long distance. That sort of thing. I’m keeping track to know how I am doing, but the temptation to just check things off the list is real. These goals, though, have a real purpose: These activities are all intended to help me “human” again.

I made some other, more vague goals as well, the nebulous kind you’re not supposed to set but speak to my noncommittal heart: Notice birds more and become more familiar with their sounds and songs. Donate blood regularly. Volunteer for a great organization. Set aside at least one day a week for fun. These goals, the “25 lists” and the looser ones, are intended to reinforce my sense of purposefulness and boost my enjoyment of life. They are the opposite of a simulated, AI-generated, two-dimensional, ChatGPT, surveilled, extraction economy existence. It means limiting the mindless scrolling that makes me feel enervated, depressed and missing out. It’s about reminding myself that life is rich and nuanced, much bigger and messier than a well-curated screen life and avatar.

I started writing this before yesterday afternoon, as luck (?) or coincidence would have it, after 15 years or so on Facebook, when it seems a random bot determined that my account violated community standards out of thin air and I was unceremoniously booted off the platform that creatives like myself have helped to develop. (How would one do that ceremoniously, though?) I was allegedly in violation of Community Standards. No evidence was given; Big Bro and his snarling bots just determined it was so. While I’d like access to my photos, memories there and contacts with friends, and it’s insulting to have been kicked off so abruptly without recourse or even an opportunity to let people know after I helped to build the platform, I have a strange peace with it. This is how the tech bros – Zuckerburg, Thiel, Musk, etc. – want things and actual people are the annoying speed bumps: They want a few guys and lots of AI bots making all the decisions, imperfect and error-ridden though they may be. If the bros could just entirely hack the human experience and have it instead be the virtual reality they are clamoring for, they would, because they think VR is cool and it’s surely a lot easier to control than stubbornly intricate people.

I am not a Luddite. Technology has its place and an essential role in the world. My husband would not be alive without modern science, nor would I be after childbirth. Further, I use my Merlin app to help me learn about my local birds, and my PlantNet identification app to help me forage for berries safely and start to recognize flowers and trees. I am trying to use the technology I choose intentionally and carefully to help me return to what poet Mary Oliver described as letting the “soft animal of [my] body love what it loves,” not detach from it, try to hack it or forget about it. (And, you know what? Part of what this soft animal loves is zoning out to The Real Housewives and that’s life.)

In order to think about getting back to what I think of as human, or perhaps the word is humane, I need to tease it apart because I just don’t think humans are the ultimate pinnacle of what is possible with a sentient life. There is so much needless cruelty, after all, so many opportunities to learn from mistakes and not repeat them for the collective good that are ignored or pushed aside for the sake of selfish convenience. I will admit that the last ten years has made me appreciably more cynical about humanity and perhaps this is part of why the technologies that facilitate detachment and numbing out call to me and us.

The other day, I was talking to my son, though, and he said something that struck me. He is 23 now, an activist and artist, very engaged in the world. I was lamenting this or that terrible latest travesty from the ruling administration and, swiping at tears, I blurted out an apology. I said that there is nothing I am more grateful for than being able to be his mother, and I don’t regret having him at all, but I am so sorry for the state of the world that is receiving him. I didn’t know it was going to get this bad, I said. He said, “It’s okay. I really like being here.” I asked, “Even with what you know about Gaza, even with humanity’s casual cruelty to one another?” He said yes. “I really like humanity,” he said. “Really?” I said. I was a little stunned. This is a kid who is active in boycotts, social justice movements, researching genocides, showing up in person to use his voice.

“I just know what is possible when you look at human history,” he said, simply, as if my heart weren’t calloused over. “Like what are you thinking of?” I asked, desperate for something I could clutch to my chest. “Well,” he said, “there have been better times than this current moment. The Islamic Golden Age, for one. The fact that when new people settle somewhere, they eventually begin to learn to coexist with the animals. In North America, beavers were eventually fine and coexisting with the Indigenous people until the Europeans saw financial opportunity in them. Yes, that’s sad but eventually people evolved. There are just so many examples of humans coming together, rising to the occasion and elevating society.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but this was the gist of it. It’s not the first time I looked at my son in disbelief, shocked that I had any role in helping to shape such a sensitive and wise human being.

We are not going to advance collectively and personally, though, if we starve our basic human nature, if we pursue likes and shares rather than connection, if we are virtually handcuffed to our phones and imprisoned to its notifications. The way that the authoritarians like us is placated just enough, numb, dumb and with an unswerving Pavlovian attachment to their virtualizing, vaporizing gadgets.

These days, I am connecting with the flowers. I am watching the bees and the butterflies, not to photograph and post on Facebook because that ship has sailed for now, but as a daily, hourly, exercise in re-humaning.

We know how to do this. I know how to do this. One real step in front of the next real step. Throw off the yoke of these terribly undeserving, would-be captors. Ending this essay now and going to our backyard garden to do some weeding is going to be my next real step.

What’s your next step toward re-humaning?