Are you completely human?

[Quintessence]

I'm aware that to many of you, this probably sounds like a tremendously odd question, but bear with me for a moment, because I am going somewhere with this. I think.

Do you consider yourself to be completely human? If so, why? If not, in what fashion do you consider yourself to be not quite human?

In essence, I'm curious how central "humanness" is to personal identity. Poll should be up shortly after this post.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

I don't think anyone considers themselves "only human". We're all the protagonists of our personal ballads.

There's some weird part of me that thinks I'm an incarnate aspect of natural law, aka angel.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Genetically, I'm 100% human as far as I know.

 

[illykitty]

Well... Guess what I consider myself to (partially) be!

 

[Sunstone]

We're a very diverse species in many ways, but we're all recognizably human. For instance, there are few human noses that are identical to each other, but just about anyone can recognize a human nose from a non-human nose. There appears to be an essential commonality within our sometimes remarkable diversity.

 

[Infinitum]

This is something that has had me thinking a lot. Rationally speaking no one can be anything else than human, but it took me a long time to start feeling as a part of humanity in any way. As far as I know it's one symptom of mental distress like depression, and many of my friends with similar feelings have also had either depression or anxiety problems. The better question is which one comes first, the depression or the otherness?

For me it came down on a very early age to my connection with the animals we've had in the family. As a kid I wanted always to play a cat and I still feel more comfortable around cats than I do around people. I've outgrown a lot of it, but I still always pay attention more to the animals around me than to whoever I am with. I'm even known to mentally tag someone as "not people" when I deem them safe. It's something that feels silly at the same time as it's simply how my thinking works. (Then again my mind also tags items like cooked food and stone boulders as living beings. Hurray animism.)

To make it more interesting for my part some of my mental experimentation years ago brought out a separate part of my mind which, for simplicity's sake, could be called my Jungian shadow. This part identifies strongly as a demon and since I've taken up the task of coming to terms with my "personal demon" by accepting it as a part of myself, it kind of makes me a demon as well. It's a lot more complicated than that, but I'll spare you the ramblings about something that most likely sounds completely crazy to most people out here.

 

[Erebus]

On a cellular level I'm probably more bacteria than human to be honest.

In terms of my identity ... odd as it may seem I rarely think of myself as a human. I see myself as somewhat detached and distant from humanity, an outside observer more than an active participant. It occasionally comes as a shock to me when I consider myself as a member of the human race.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying here that I consider myself an inhuman entity, just that I don't feel connected to the species. Hard to describe properly.

 

[dust1n]

I don't know... I kind of just am. Is that an option?

 

[Amechania]

I don't have any trouble blending in with humans but for the most part I try to avoid direct contact. Its the smell.

 

[Sunstone]

I'm a firm believer that all of us on this Forum are human with the likely exception of only Badran. I have come, on the basis of information known only to me, that Badran is the spawn of a notorious intergalactic outlaw and a sexually precocious human tongue-artist. You can be sure of it!

 

[Quintessence]

I originally created this topic because I read an essay on otherkin recently, but I think it can apply to a broader context. For instance, how much of our identity is really defined by humanness? As Shyanekh pointed out, there's an entire ecosystem of bacteria living in our insides. They're not human. The air we breathe, the food we eat, isn't human either. We'll also label people who do certain kinds of behaviors not human, or inhuman; if we do evil, it was a malevolent entity, not us. Social identities we have can transcend our humanness as well - a part of you could be a cause or an ideal.

A simple question, yet one that has curious complexities. If one thinks overmuch about it. Which I have a tendency to do. Stupid brain.

 

[LuisDantas]

I consider myself completely human... but I'm far less certain about the societies I have met.

I assume that is just my chauvinism perceiving things.

 

[Erebus]

A simple question, yet one that has curious complexities. If one thinks overmuch about it. Which I have a tendency to do. Stupid brain.

It's certainly an interesting topic, are we defined by our biological make-up? (excluding for a moment all the non-human elements there of course ) I've briefly chatted with a couple of people who identify as otherkin and to be honest the first thing it made me think of was transgender people. A person identifying as non-human doesn't seem a far cry away from a biological male identifying as female (or vice versa).
Of course, I'm looking at it more in terms of identity while they described themselves as quite literally having a non-human soul or having been non-human in a past life. Still, I don't see much distinction between "soul" and "identity" as a general rule.

Oh and a little bonus, one that always does my head in: How old are you? My teeth are significantly older than my skin and my blood is younger than my brain

 

[Drolefille]

I want a "IDK" option.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

I am a human hybrid symbiotic organism. I am part bacteria.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I chose the second option.

 

[Penumbra]

I'm 96% human and 4% Olympian.

(Zeus got around.)

 

[Gjallarhorn]

I'm 96% human and 4% Olympian.

(Zeus got around.)

Pfft. That's not fair. That percentage is the same for everyone with Greek origin.

 

[esmith]

In the words of the typical sci-fi movie. I am a carbon based life form with genetic DNA passed down through my genetic forbears. If at one time in a galaxy far far away inhabitants of that galaxy traveled to this planet and inter-bred with the existing life forms then I may not be 100% related to the original inhabitants of this planet. Haven't had my DNA tested so I don't know.

 

[DreadFish]

I can relate to a few other posters here in that I dont really feel like im a human like everyone else. I guess, biologically speaking, I am a human organism, with everything that that entails but, psychologically speaking, or speaking of something deeper than biology, I dont feel very human.

At the risk of sounding weird and not all there, I definitely relate to animals and plants more than humans and I feel infinitely more comfortable around them than I do around humans. I often feel like I am an amalgamation of different creatures. I relate strongly to felines and monkeys, as well as crows, and I dreamed once where I learned that I used to be a tree. I also often automatically refer to myself as "we" when im thinking about things; it only recently struck me that I was doing that and that it might be kinda strange

Because I force myself to be rational so much, I explain it to myself that different animals are nature's embodiments of different attributes and the unique thing about humans is that they are not limited to only certain attributes, as are other species, but are varying combinations of different attributes, thus why so many different people relate to different animals so strongly; just about everyone has an animal that they relate to and our
histories of indigenous cultures show that trend too. So this is a way that we personify these attributes.

The imaginative side of me likes to believe that I actually am an amalgamation of nature spirits

I dont actually know.