All too human

In the 2018 film “Zoe”, set in the not-too-distant future, the protagonist Zoe works for a research facility that has developed a digital test to accurately assess compatibility and the likelihood of a successful romantic relationship. The facility also designs and produces so-called “synthetics,” androids that are optimized to be ideal romantic partners without any of the messy pitfalls of inter-human relationships.

Warning: Spoilers ahead. 

Zoe is infatuated with one of her colleagues, Cole, and decides to use the test to check their compatibility. To her surprise (and disappointment) the results show 0% compatibility. She shares this information with Cole, only to learn that she is a synthetic and thus fundamentally incompatible with him – a human. We learn that Zoe, a new generation of the tech, is being tested to see whether it would be possible to create androids that could fully pass for humans even in terms of their own sense of self. Zoe cannot shake her feelings for Cole and although they pursue a relationship with many twists and turns, as a viewer you are drawn into the painful conflict between Cole’s feelings for her and his deep-seated discomfort at the fact that Zoe is not a human. 

This film confronts us with several themes and questions, one of which is as old as time itself: What is a human? 

It is worth acknowledging at this juncture that there are a number of foundational questions the majority of us do not routinely ponder, often for very pragmatic reasons. Questions that seem to bend, or even contort, our minds and hearts in ways that may seem quite incompatible with the rhythms of everyday life. But seeing as you are reading this article, let’s consider this one for a moment. 

What is a human? How would you answer this question? Who would you look to for answers? 

One cacophony of sources that have become increasingly influential in shaping our understanding of what it means to be a human are the social sciences – at times they have also been referred to as the moral or human sciences: a set of academic disciplines broadly united by an imperative to study the social world and enrich our understanding of different aspects of it. 

It seems reasonable to assume that for social scientists, humans are a key priority, whether they are looking at the experiences of individuals or seeking to study phenomena at the levels of entire communities, neighborhoods, cities, cultures or nations. So, how do they answer this question? 

Short answer: Many of them don’t. 

I recently attended an academic conference where I gave a presentation about how a central aspect of my apprenticeship as a social researcher has been about clarifying the philosophical foundations that I build my work on. At one point, I turned to a room of social scientists and asked them, “How would you answer this question: What is a human?” I was met with silence until one sheepishly suggested that no one was answering because they were all worried they might say the wrong thing. 

Now one might argue that this story is just one anecdote. Maybe a lot of social scientists do answer this clearly and ensure that the way they make sense of the world is consistent with their beliefs and assumptions about what humans are. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking and reading about this question and my review of some of the social science and humanities literature points to two main groups:   

• Those who explicitly grapple with the question of what it means to be a human from the perspective of different disciplinary traditions and write entire chapters and books where they explore questions of humanity and personhood. 
• Those who appear to operate on the assumption that we all know what a human is and/or have at some point agreed on a definition – generally theirs – and thus why waste words on stating the obvious?  

At this juncture you might be asking yourself: Why should they care about this question? Why should they spend time that could be invested in asking questions about urgent social phenomena in philosophical rumination about being and reality? Surely this can be left to the philosophers.

As Christians we have a compelling and edifying answer to the question of what a human is. We are created in the image of God with all the wonder and mystery that entails. In some ways we are a bit like the second group of social scientists I described, we live in and from the grace of God’s good and perfect design, so why state the obvious? Because as the anecdote I shared above highlights, it really isn’t.  

In his book Moral, Believing Animals (2003) Christian Smith responds to a general silence in his discipline sociology, as well as other social science disciplines, on this question of what a human is and makes a compelling case for humans as moral, believing, narrating animals who inhabit and make sense of the world in these terms regardless of whether they are part of any organized religious tradition or not:

• Moral because humans are oriented “toward understandings about what is right and wrong, good and bad, worthy and unworthy, just and unjust.” This orientation is not merely based on our own desires, preferences or decisions but reaches beyond us to standards by which our desires, preferences and decisions can be judged (p. 8).
• Believing because humans’ knowledge and understanding of the world “is situated within particularistic knowledge systems that are ultimately based on beliefs and assumptions.” These beliefs and assumptions are not universal and they cannot necessarily be verified independently or objectively (p. 55). 
• Narrating because humans are storied beings and the socio-cultural networks within which our “morally oriented believings” make sense of the world take a narrative form. As Smith puts it: “We are makers, tellers, and believers of narrative construals of existence and history” (Smith 2003, p. 151). 

Smith provides us with a very useful starting point that opens up conversation about the question of what a human is. Drawing on the work of David Lyon, C. Stephen Evans and Chris Watkin, I would suggest that we expand on Smith’s definition and make a small amendment to it: 

Humans are moral, believing, narrating, relating, agentic, becoming creatures.

• Relating because communion with God and others is central to our design as we see from the very beginning of our story in the Garden of Eden. 
• Agentic because we are created with free will and given a mandate to be fruitful and multiply. Here we are also confronted with the faultline of sin and rebellion that runs through our being, but in the Gospel we are presented with a grace-saturated invitation to use our will to choose surrender and receive new, eternal life.
• Becoming because we see throughout the Scriptures that as part of God’s dynamic creation we are not cast in stone. Some of this change is physically embodied and to some extent a reflection of the fact that we are bound by time, but some of it reflects the allegiance of our heart: whether we are increasingly transformed through our love of God or disordered through our love of self. 
• Creatures because we are created by a Creator. This is central to a Christian worldview or ontology. We are not merely animals, although we exist as part of God’s creation. We also aren’t demi Gods living our best lives with only ourselves as reference points. We are, to quote half*alive, “creation both haunted and holy.”  

I framed all the additions to this list from a distinctly Christian perspective. The answer we have to this question is good news for anyone who actively or tacitly grapples with it and why would we put this light under a bowl when so many people are stumbling around in the dark? In his book We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power Jason Blakely highlights that social scientists do not merely describe or analyse reality they build it. When they don’t know what a human is or lean on their own understanding instead of God’s revealed design in creation and His Word, they build on shifting sand. We know there is a different, eternally sound way to build. To use Chris Watkin’s turn of phrase, the story we live by out-narrates any others that are on offer. Let’s not hesitate to share it.