Essentially Human

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly performs tasks once thought uniquely human—complex reasoning, composition, even what appears as creativity—many feel a reasonable anxiety. If machines can think and create, what's special about being human? If a machine can fill that role in the world, where do humans belong?

If a machine thinks and works better than me, what, if anything, am I for?

This anxiety springs from an error obscured by roughly 200 years of post-Enlightenment scientific materialism. Put simply, today we primarily view people as things, whereas we once viewed people as thing/divinity composites. Matter from below joins with form above to create humans who exist where the two meet. Through the scientific materialist lens, we only see the matter from below.

Whether as—clears throat—objective observers of material phenomena, units of economic output, loci of credit and debt, economic classes, operators of institutions and businesses, pedigrees of education and institutional status, vocational and technical skillsets, sophisticated apes, conscious meat-suits, emotion reservoirs, smart-device users, consumers of all things—modern people have developed every vector for slicing, construing, measuring, and computing human beings except the one that comports with reality. If, in reality, we are thing/divinity composites, then each of these clever parameters captures only a fragment of a much greater whole. And as long as we understand ourselves this way, we drift further toward sadness or mania—both of which are abundant today.

From classical Greek philosophy onward, major interlocutors in the history of thought have offered serious answers to the question of human being. I'll mention two here, though others are worth seeking out if interested. Aristotle did not define human being by its computational power or productivity, but as a sustained activity of the soul in accordance with the good. Both "the good" and "the soul" are central concepts in philosophy and human life. I recommend reading about them. Try the Nicomachean Ethics for the good, and this for the soul.

Nietzsche diagnosed the danger that emerges when this orientation is lost. In the absence of a clear telos, human beings grasp at substitutes: power, pleasure, status, moral self-righteousness, productivity etc. Today, cognitive superiority has joined the list. In an industrial, technical, machine economy, the cleverest is the best. He who autists the hardest for the machines is paid and valued the most. Yet none of these constitute the essence of human being. They are instrumental goods at best, empty distractions at worst.

Stripped to its essence, human being is characterized by spending the limited time and energy of one's body and mind making moral choices toward the good, the true, and the beautiful—and then suffering the consequences. This moral drama, not intelligence, productivity, or creativity as such, defines human life.

Suffering, therefore, is not incidental. It is structurally necessary. The Greeks understood that character (ēthos) is formed through repeated choices under conditions of resistance. A close plesionym might be the modern concept of identity. The more character is forged through suffering, the more one becomes somebody.

Christianity builds on the Greeks' natural philosophy. For Roman Catholics, suffering united to Christ brings the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit, participates in Jesus' redemptive work, and purifies the soul in preparation for the beatific vision. In Orthodox theology, suffering purifies, loosens the grip of the passions, and prepares the human person for theosis—participation in divine life. In both traditions, suffering is not merely endured; it is integral to the process of becoming good and essential to union with God.

From Aristotle's account of virtue and the soul, through Nietzsche's warning about life without a telos, to the Greek and Christian understanding of suffering as formative rather than accidental, human identity is revealed as something forged through choice, love, and sacrifice. What matters most is not what one can do better than others, but what one is willing to endure for love of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Machines can do none of that.

One is fortunate to live in a time whose circumstances forcefully thrust the question of human being into view. The arrival of thinking machines does not threaten the meaning of human life; it exposes how long it has been misunderstood. The question, "What am I for, if a machine can do what I do better?", warmly beckons human reflection back to the beginning. As long as we can remember what we are—and are willing to bear the cost of acting accordingly—there is nothing to fear.