*Whoooooo are we? Who who! Who who?

Lori of Write Mind, Open Heart said, "We often ponder the question “Who Am I?” But for the first time the larger question was posed to me:"

If the question were asked by someone from outer space — WHO ARE WE? Who are we humans, we citizens of planet Earth?

Of course, this got me thinking. I'm not sure I have any definitive answers because I'm not sure I even have any finalized answers about who I am. However, I definitely have some thoughts on who WE are.

Humanity is both insignificant and all important. Truly, despite all our advances and all our developments, **Mother Earth could shake us off like a bad case of fleas anytime she wanted to. Earth survived whatever catastrophe killed off the dinosaurs. What makes us think she won't survive anything we might accidentally do to her. Yet, as a group, humanity has the intelligence and skills to make things better for the other inhabitants of this planet. No other group around has those abilities so that makes us all important.

Humanity is inquisitive, determined, and filled with an innate goodness. Humanity can also be greedy, backstabbing, and repressive. For every group that spreads hate and intolerance, there is a group that promotes inclusiveness and understanding. Humanity can be incredibly stubborn when it comes to learning from our mistakes but, usually, even the most boneheaded of us does figure it out.

Humanity is warlike. We can and have fought wars over the simplest (some would say stupidest) of things. There seems to be an eternal pissing contest going on often focusing on "my God is better than your God" which is incredibly silly because, by definition, a God is someone so far above us that we can't presume to compare and judge.

Humanity is peace loving. Despite these ongoing wars, despite evidence that we may never agree, we never ever give up brokering a lasting peace.

Humanity strives for advancement while longing for a simpler time.

Truly, the only statement you can make about humanity that is ALWAYS true is that we are truly a study in contrasts.

So, like Lori asked, who are we? What is your take on humanity?


*Sorry for stealing the title Lori. It was too perfect not to use it.
**A loosely paraphrased quote from the late, great George Carlin.