The Humanity We Can’t Relinquish (12bigideasIyer) (12bigideasIyer)

Mr. Iyer is a brilliant observer and writer—thank you for this much-needed essay.

Wonderful essay immediately reminded me of fine book The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre describing vividly how even the poorest of the poor keep their humanity by helping and serving each other even in extreme duress. "Calcutta which gives this book its title is one of the poorest areas of the city, where five million people live out their lives on the sidewalks and streets. Called Anand Nagar—the City of Joy—in which more than two hundred thousand human beings exist together per square mile. A book, an unsparing portrait of poverty, disease, vermin, and filth, fundamentally a story of courage and hope. At the heart of this downtrodden mass of humanity, the author discovered more heroism, more happiness, and ultimately more sharing than in many cities of the affluent West. Above all, he clearly demonstrates that this seemingly inhuman place has spawned heroes and heroines of all ages from all walks of life. For Calcutta is the home not only of saints such as Mother Teresa but also of countless other inspiring people who do their good works completely unknown. The story concerns men, women, and children, who have been uprooted from their placid rural homes by implacable natural and economic forces and driven into a city whose capacity for both cruelty and hospitality exceed Western norms. The volume is filled with examples of how people learn, despite incredibly difficult odds, to survive, to share, and to love". (https://www.enotes.com/topics/city-joy-59549)

While even vastly immoral and jaded individuals contradict their image with acts of kindness and compassion at times. But do not be fooled by the creature who is occupying in the Oval Office. The infrequent acts of appearing concerned is just one of his many illusions that this hollow selfish con man. His complete void of humanity has been clearly self defined by authorizing agents to kidnap babies and toddler from parent seeking refuge from violence, then conveniently displacing the records to insure these act of inhumanity would be effective and long lasting. There is not even the slightest concern for these victims. It's taking a federal court order to ament this fracture and there is now more than 1,000 children still misplaced without their parents. Humanity is one of the many WARS of Donald J. Trump, along with his declared WAR on the planet, health, women, and of course, everyone else, excepting brutal dictators.

Although “no one can fully deprive us of our humanity but ourselves” we do a relentless job of it, slamming the door and stomping on so many in need. The end of the trip, where Iyer suspects his North Korean minder may be trained to fudge good will but bonds empathetically with him anyways, is a gracious move. I think giving others the benefit of the doubt helps people be better. Still, it leaves you open for a sucker punch.

Wonderful. Hopefully sooner rather than later more will come to realize their part in fulfilling their sentient obligations.

Beautiful essay. Always enjoy Iyer's writing. This one is thought provoking as to what really constitutes a sentient being, what are our innate rights and why is it that we let them go so easily? Thanks Pico Iyer for elevating the conversation.

North Korea is not all that different from Russia. The Russian people risk being imprisoned, poisioned or killed in cold blood if they oppose Putin!

A reminder, that travel is much more than sights and sounds unfamiliar to us. Travel in its truest form involves learning to use one’s heart to ‘listen’ to the world with a heightened sensitivity. To humanity, as Iyer says, and our different interpretations of it that in their diversity stitch is together with some shared thread. Whether it’s the setting of North Korea, or simply heightening our observational powers with an open heart. And an open mind.

Perhaps the more frightful part missing from Pico Lyer's essay is not the depriving us of our humanity, rather, it is inciting the inhumanity in ourselves and those around us. As the Trump era has progressed, a wide swath of inhumanity has emerged and spread. Presumed leaders have wilted under its shadow until their souls are absorbed and they defer to it. Resistance is futile.

If there’s a "humanity we can’t relinquish," why is the humanity of unborn children denied? If neo-Nazism is among the worst violations of humanity in our time, why are Down syndrome children being exterminated in the womb through abortion without significant exposure or protest? What could be more neo-Nazi than this extermination? I am weary of human rights-oriented reporting and writing that confines itself to feel-good nostrums and skirts the dehumanization of children in the womb.

Ooooh, what is this?? -is my reaction. I understand first the themes are humanity and oppressive governmental bodies in the present and the past. Then, religions of the world are mentioned in a mix of the intellectual and the aboriginal. Shinto is an animism, which has been kept through regimes’ changes over centuries, yes, mingled into cultural traditions. *** Let me continue on Japan; otherwise, I cannot find any other engeagible point (for me) in the piece. The seemingly unserious and self-encouragedly mockerish post-war (WW II) culture in Japan has its root as reactionary. The past-deceptions in the Imperial militarism made the people realize after the war, that they had been completely up side down. How to deal intellectually with the situations, became the utmost issue besides the question - how to bring up the country’s economy. Around here, the Korean War came along, which drastically pushed up the Japanese economy of the era. *** The opinion piece appears to be a very short essay, that is fine. But, the problem I see is; because many NYT readers are neither Japanese nor those who read the Japanese language on a certain level, (= means their knowledge of Japan is sporadic, in my opinion), what the writer says here would be taken as it is, or mistaken as it truly must be, as authentically objective, rather than understood as a personal view of a non-Japanese about Japan, which is inserted as a topic into his refective piece on human beings and the world.

Above all else, the American people should be able to appreciate the struggles of the North Korean people. We're both ruled by complete wackos that no one has any control over. Two oppressed nationals run by maniacs. Both nations can certainly relate to that!

Americans should not throw stones in a glass house. Over 2 million people in prisons simply because the majority hated black and brown people.

We share a common humanity just as we all share a common inhumanity. Liberals ought to come to grips with this fact of life.

The Consciousness of all humans is the same. What is different is the personality and body of each individual. So we are unique beings but share a common awareness. Once this is realized Racism is seen for what it is, Ignorance or worse Stupidity. Religions are often built on fantasies and delusions that defy Reality. These delusions block the person's awareness of universal consciousness and create divisiveness.

What you say is so important. Please keep writing.

Kudos! A fine essay, particularly when it appears English isn’t your native language.

Vunerabilty and compassion are the keys to our humanity. What is troubling in these times, is that in these United States we are being led by a man and his cronies in the Congress who do not show any humanity, which in turn has given permission to their supporters to show the same lack of compassion for those who are different from themselves. We have a choice as humans . We can recognize each other as fellow humans, all with struggles and show compassion for each other, or do what these supposed leaders do. Insult us by their greed, selfishness, corruption and prejudices. We need to remember what makes us different than animals or robots. We can make choices. We can think for ourselves. We need to stop listening to those who would imprison our sensibilities and use our compassion and brains to make this a better country, not the country we live in now. Any man, such as Trump, who would cage children, insult those with disabilities, insult immigrants, legal and illegal, insult and assault women and line his pockets from the taxpayers should not be allowed to lead our once great country. Trump is like a abusive parent who brings out the worst in their children. He and his Administration are abusing our country and its citizens. And it is depriving some of us of our humanity.

It's hard to figure: Is it that, "at the heart of every human lies a puppet," or "at the heart of every puppet lies a human?" Maybe both.

Enough of "humanness" and humanity! I look forward to the day when the entire human species is wiped off from the earth.....We are the WORST ever species that has ever evolved on this planet!

I worry that revealing that remark from his minder 24 years ago will land that person -- and his family -- in jail.

Who is "we"? Africans in America while black along with Natives in America while brown know how inhumane inhuman callous cruel cynical and hypocritical white Judeo-Christian Europeans in America have been and still are. Neither condescending paternalistic liberal white American pity nor condescending paternalistic conservative white American contempt accepts the individual accountable diverse humanity of Africans or Natives. There is no North nor South Korea. There is only one ethnic sectarian historical Korean reality. Korea is as ethnically homogeneous as Japan. America is not like either. The humanity of Palestinians under the dominion of Zionist Jewish Israel by occupation, blockade / siege, exile and 2nd class citizenship is routinely denied. Egypt is a military dictatorship. Saudi Arabia is a royal theocracy. There is no humanity in either regime. And all are American allies.

Ethnorelative musings, active listening and situational awareness are life lessons to employ at home and abroad.

Insipid. I do not know anyone who doubts that people are people around the world. I do read people who think themselves wise and virtuous for belaboring what everyone knows while pretending the real issues that confound and destroy do not exist. In the words of Confucian cultures such as the Korean, these people are not even human.

To be human in retirement means most of all to love; to have the time and humility to see all of humanity as worth seeing - and, as a believer in Christ, to realize why God let his son go through the horrors He went through to save us from the usual results of what we've done wrong. Even as a stickler for keeping all the sin of this wold out of his Heaven, God turns right around and sets up a route for evry one of us to be truly valued here and included there as His own children. While I knew all this in my youth, it makes sense as I look back in time and around this current world and see how little difference it takes to make one person a giver and carer while one just like that one turns out to be only a hate-filled source of trouble. Perhaps it is grandchildren that bestow this view of humanity.

It's not particularly difficult to find shared "humanness" in North Korea or anywhere else. Even a dictator and a slave share humanness. The real issue is whether those who are subject to the North Korean government and other brutal regimes are able to share humanEness and human dignity with the rest of humanity.

I remember going to China in 1984 having read a dumb book about customs and norms. A "do this" but not "that"-- list of items. However, I was shocked," shocked" -- at similarities and noted few difference intellectually and culturally. Just people but human.

A bad deed has a bad result.

That power can be best protected by women: not women who are the playthings of men, and not women who are the killers of fetuses. Rather to a lot of women who belong to the gentler half of humanity, a half to which Gandhi belongs and to which Pico Iyer also belongs, but a half which is still dominated by women. My ideal world would be a world run by non-feminist women, by women who do not think in terms of women's rights, but in terms of human well being. Perhaps that day will come. But right now it does not seem even to be on the horizon.

Your essay is so well wrought, I am tempted to accept your last credulous phrase: "...I felt with fresh power how no one can fully deprive us of our humanity but ourselves." IMHO much more than an 'ambiguous' look, phrase, or contact is necessary in deciding another humans humanity. I am speaking about North Koreans--admittedly having not met one--or the one you referenced. As an educator for almost 30 years, I've seen too many victims of abuse seemingly unable to escape their traumas. I think societies steeped in humanity--wish mine were--can help heal wounds, but scars remain. Where they exist, the area is rigid and impotent of their usefulness. Their humanity has been diminished; therefore, so is ours.

Human, humanity, humanness; nice concepts, unrelated to what we know about biology, evolution, or most importantly, our recorded history. Something like spirituality, nice ideas, no evidence. That we walk upright and have free use of hands, or are omnivores who do not need to spend all day eating, or are temporarily dominating, and probably ruining, the planet; no proof at all that we represent the apogee of organic existence. In fact, being human is seriously undefined. I hope nobody defines humanity by what we have done, and continue to do.

What is humanity - there are many attempts to capture this post modernist buzz word, see the manifesto of humanity, 2003. This piece is an emotional out pouring of a left Intellectual who has difficulty with God in his life, and specially interesting, it came out in the day when New York Times on its front page announced the death of Naipal. It seems world is a jumble of all disconnected acts when we look to the life through our post modernist lens of utilitarian world - real world is not utilitarian, it has meaning. Only science, reason and humanism can not reach the depth to unfold that reality. We need to go much deeper inside - beyond our intellectual persuade, and scholarly memorization - we have to experience beyond awareness, the ultimate consciousness. This experience may not come to an utilitarian post modernist life.

This is so beautiful and moving. So much I'd like to say in return to this thoughtful piece, Mr. Iyer. As I was reading it, and knowing that you live in Japan for 30 years, one deeply embedded memory sprang up. Several years ago there was an article in this paper about the suvivors of the Tsunami. One man lost his wife. One woman lost her daughter. Both were grief stricken years later. The man learned to dive and went deep sea diving daily to find his lost wife. The woman went to the sea, at the same spot she lost her daughter and sent her lunch daily. This article shook my emotional earth daily for weeks after reading it and I spoke to everyone I knew about them. Many people felt that their grief left them mentally ill. Who would go diving the seas for years in search of your lost wife? Mission Impossible. Who would prepare lunch daily and send it out to sea? I simply loved these two people for doing daily what they felt compelled to do and could not do otherwise. I love that your wife puts food out for her father! I love this love. I love this humanness. Just hearing such stories makes profound effects on me. My 92 year old father just came to stay and brought me letters from great-grandparents, grandparents. He knew who to leave them with. I read every single one. They came alive. My great-grandmother was 99 when she left me. I was 25. There's not a day that passess that I don't speak with her. Touch her grace and humanness. Love her, feel her alive!

South Korean liberals are traditionally reluctant to addressing human rights issue in the North as they fear that reproaching it might undermine the peace program with Pyongyang. By contrast, conservatives have fervently been interested in the issue but it's hard to think they do care about encouraging something like human right, if not scrapping it, on the contrary, as they did during the dictatorial era. It's way more political (if we narrow the meaning of 'political') rather than humanitarian than you think. It is therefore needed to be considered that human rights crisis in North Korea tends to have been cashed in on for political purpose in the South whether it is for toppling the Kim regime or pushing forward the reunification. It's tenable and understandable that Americans raise the issue to put pressure on Pyongyang, but you have to know it's not that simple and more like complication.

Mr. Iyer, I’ve been an admirer of your writing since the Time magazine essays - thank you for another great piece.

"To me this only confirms the visceral sense many of us have that holiness and humanness may be more closely entwined than we imagine. " It would be difficult to assert that any other animal has a sense of holiness--or holy war, theological dogma or any number of other related principles. As far as what that means in the grand scheme of the universe, I have no clue. But I am sure any number of other people would want to tell me.

Your fellow observer of humanity, Eric Hoffer, points out (in either The True Believer or The Temper of Our Time) the infinite plasticity of the human spirit, for good and evil. And it is so true. Alas, there is the danger of equivalency of similar magnitude, that humanity can bounce back from man made calamities with similar vigor. While genuine spiritual leaders like the Dalai Lama and idealistic pragmatists like Hoffer would like to believe it, worldly leaders know better. People like Warren Buffett know it may take decades to build a reputation but it will take only an instance to lose it all. Or escalator up and elevator down. Buddhists may know Ashin Wirathu's hate filled teaching is no Buddhist teaching, but Buddhist teaching is tannish. This is like Hitler using the swastika, originally a Buddhist symbol, to denote the Nazi's hatred. Perhaps this is why there are still Japanese who try to deny the Nanking massacre. It is just to painful to admit a sublime culture could have fallen so fast and so hard. So, while one mustn't doubt the innate light of humanity to shine through at some spontaneous moment, we need to worry about the possibility of regressing to baser human nature a 100 times more. For every addict knows, your sobriety last as long as you don't fall off. After all, people like Nelson Mandela and events like the Truth Commission, amnesty & reconciliation are once in a many lifetime rarity

This discussions maybe the most essentia Yes, I agree with the author that vulnerability may be a great strength, as it's essential to our humanity. The iinterest in robo-humanity and physical longevity and the post 9/11 quest for invulnerable borders may be futile attempts to block an awareness: mortality is universal and inescapable. It is our common crucible. St Paul said, "When I am weak then I am strong" & Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and "Love your enemies". Maybe they were onto something. There's a saying: "What you resist persists". We resist the recognition of our common humanity, so it may pursue us. Climate changes may bring us shockingly together, as local differences 'melt' before shared global conditions. Normal weather patterns over N. America and Eurasia are dependent on high altitude air currents that are stalling so that now the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. That means recent (predicted!!!) extreme weather events (heat waves, flash floods, wildfires, tornadoes...) last longer over northern areas. In the long run it could mean that migration by desperate people trying to escape "Hothouse Earth" may be from the North to the South. In other words, N. Americans may seek refuge down south. Suddenly lots of people who are labeling the current movement of desperate people as animals and criminal illegals may start to think of them quite differently. As humans.

Whenever I hear Pico Ayer speak, or read him, I learn something. Sometimes it's something new sometimes it's something relearned in a different light. "It’s in our vulnerability, Greene knew, that our strength truly lies." This sentence opens up world's of compassion and understanding, as we see our useless leaders strut and fret, always showing strength, never embodying it. It's weakness, fear, and insecurity that makes the mischief either in Pyongyang, in Moscow, or in Washington. And it's always those who seek peace, those with real courage, that they aim for: MLK, Gandhi, Jesus. It's too late for the current ones, but how do we show future Kims, Trumps or Putins that they can stop being afraid? That their humanity, and humanity itself depends on it?

It's not clear what the point is of this article. Yes, the North Koreans are people with human aspirations and desires. But, they are caught in a system that is dedicated to the dominance of a one family dynasty. To perpetuate that dynasty, the government murders dissenters and rivals, it starves its own people, and it happily careless tosses around the world's most dangerous weapons. The key is not to sing kumbaya with the people, the question is how to pull that country out of a viscous and largely self-inflicted sprial of destruction so that the future is better for its people.

Yes. Locke was wrong. We are not (just) a blank slate at birth. If we were, the foreignness of foreigners would be absolute. We are (like) two slates at birth. One is fully written on. On it is OUR human nature. Only the other is blank. On to it can be written consequences of our experience, or content of our experience that remains with us. Most importantly: words, and what is conveyed through their use - true beliefs (or knowledge), false beliefs believed to be true and values. Such can include those about or in reference to ourselves. If believed or accepted, such can subvert some of what is written on the first slate, rendering it - perhaps permanently and without fail - null and void, for good and for ill. But it can't ALL be rendered null and void - and though it is OUR human nature, a great deal of it is common to all others. Hence Humanity is one, though individual human beings may be encultured very differently; and what is not common of OUR human nature, marks us as not alike in every way with all others to start with, but only with some, or as unique to a degree. Doesn't everybody know this stuff? (:))

Of course all of us retain some semblance or spark of humanity even in the darkest times and moments of our existence. And I too was deeply inspired as a young man by the humanity of Graham Greene's "whisky priest in his greatest novel "The Power and the Glory". And there is much else in Mr. Iyer's fine essay I found agreeable (as I have in much of his other writings over the years). Having said all of that, his essay left me wondering what good has all our shared humanity done for us to as a species? Has it made us Americans and the other Haves of the world more ready, willing and able to live according to the message of Jesus and others by sharing our wealth with the world's Have-Nots? I remember my childhood idealism and the potential this country had to do so much good for its own people who had been oppressed and abused, as well as for those elsewhere suffering similarly. That idealism and potential seems to have been crushed by and squandered in unnecessary and costly foreign wars and by the greed of corporations and plutocrats. It's hard, very hard, for me to experience any sense of shared humanity with those who cheer mindlessly at Trump rallies every time he calls people nasty names and makes false accusations against them. I can only hope for the sake of my children and grandchildren that America and the rest of the world are passing through a period of idiocy and close-mindedness and that we'll emerge with what remains of our humanity intact, more or less.

The author appears motivated to equate humanity with reality and freedom, which is a sage idea, albeit one which places excessive reliance upon subjective idealizations. It is all too true that the free is readily identifiable with "the open", without which there would be no such thing as reality, which is contingent upon stimulus objects. The idealizations perhaps result from learned experience, which implies emotive contact, thus relegated to the limbic system, if not others as well. That cultures condition members in palpably different ways accentuates the fact that humanness cannot be relinquished. At least that is what I gleaned from this essay. When there are clashes brought about by differences in cultures it is the authoritarian side of things which provides the setting for such clashes. The demand for emulative behavior within one's own milieu is posited as the condition for the success of the adversity. Dissent is a reaction based upon learned experience as well. It is certainly true that mankind has to learn to live in a world of differences; it should be a world inured to life without nuclear weapons, which is a sign of the possibility of relinquishing humanity.

Humanity weaves all lives together. Isn’t life just moving the ball forward- progression toward compassion with humanity better off than before. What else really matters? Nothing lasts.

We are all human. Trouble is, some of us humans are evil and rape, rob, kill.

It is a dichotomy that in the age of the internet where long distance communication is essentially free, and the whole world is at our fingertips or on our screens, we are more closed off than ever. Aye, there are many of us (I know we are the majority, but on many an occasion it does not seem that way) that tap into humanism and empathy that crosses borders. (no matter how well they are guarded) Life can be crushing sometimes (especially when you are bombarded with the overwhelming propaganda from all sides) to think that all of the complex problems of humanity can be solved with such simple ideas, if we all worked together. It is like it is right there for the touch, that it becomes surreal that we see things with our own eyes and experience them firsthand, but are told differently in places like North Korea. The world population is rapidly approaching a tipping point that will make these lines on a map useless, where we will need to dig down deep to tap into that humanity if it is going to save us all. Better we start now ...

This puts so accurately and intricately what my experiences have been threading through the world. Thanks.

Oddly enough, these stories of the authour's visits to North Korea reminded me of my own encounters when visiting East Berlin, which was once divided from West Berlin by the now infamous Wall. And like North Korea, the German Democratic Republic (or DDR, as it was known to us in the then Federal Republic of Germany), was a Communist state administered by the U.S.S.R.; which also explains why they all acted as if they were under surveillance if they ever into contact with someone obviously from the West -- it's because they were. But there were always opportunities to start a conversation, or even share a wildly subversive joke poking at the political situation in East Germany that showed not only humour and awareness, but their humanity in an otherwise tightly controlled state. These days, it's almost difficult to imagine just how divided Germany and the rest of Europe was with the so-called 'Iron Curtain', but many of us in West-Berliner were long separated from family and friends because of it. And aside from the two Koreas, I can think of few countries that still exist today with such great socio-economic and political contrasts between the two divided halves. But the Humanity -- that's always there.

The epigenetics of circumstances can redound for generations. These modifications of genomic activity can profoundly alter moods and sensitivities. In three generations, a nation can be transformed, as North Korea has been, and also the US.

Whatever we say about North Korea has to be seen within the framework of the Korean War and its consequences. US planes painstakingly flattened the country, bombing everything in sight, producing at least two million casualties. It is grotesque to imagine that anything "normal" could emerge from such an experience. In America, the South, devastated by the Civil War, still has not made a spiritual and emotional recovery. How long will it take Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan to recover from brutal harm inflicted by others?

Wonderfully written essay. Thank you. I think we can conceal or suppress our humanity, but we can't kill it. In the US, we suppress our humanity and freedom because we see life solely in terms of individual choice. We're fascinated with the illusion that the individual is an autonomous unit, standing in opposition to society, as if we lived in a totalitarian state. We are told to see our democracy as the thing that oppresses us, and so we surrender our power to the oligarchs and technocrats, who use the power we give them to reshape the culture and tell us what our choices are. We subject ourselves to the eyes and manipulations of a Big Brother more pervasive and powerful than anything Orwell imagined, and we tell ourselves that we are exercising freedom simply because we can choose between iPhones and Androids. Obviously, we all prefer it to North Korea, but we diminish ourselves with our inability to talk about, and choose, what we want our society to be.

Thanks for the simple reminder - people are people are people. Only environments and circumstances change.