What is the Human Condition?

From ancient philosophers to modern thinkers, the question of what it means to be human (the human condition) has fascinated people for centuries.

Humans have been trying to understand themselves and their role in the world for as long as they have existed.

Where does the phrase The Human Condition come from

The term “The Human Condition” grew popular when Masaki Kobayashi directed a film trilogy by that name.

The film is a Japanese epic trilogy made between 1959 and 1961.

It is based on the six-volume novel published from 1956 to 1958 by Junpei Gomikawa.

What is the human condition though, and why does it sound like we are sick or something is wrong with us?

People exhibit terrible qualities like hypocrisy, vanity, and overconfidence that don’t show humanity in our best light.

However, so many more qualities are beautiful and equally human.

The full spectrum of human emotions exists in all of us.

The kindest people can still be cruel, and the cruelest people have moments of kindness.

That’s hard for most of us to understand, and I think the struggle is part of unraveling the human condition.

“I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.” — Mercedes McCambridge

What do we mean when we talk about the human condition?

“This idea of how everything is interconnected, and the impermanence of things… It sums up the human condition to me, and it helps me on my path.” — Jeff Bridges

Understanding the precise nature and scope of the human condition is a philosophical question.

The human condition is all the characteristics and events that make up the essentials of human existence.

We are born, and then we grow and eventually face our mortality.

Our lives consist of emotions, aspirations, and conflicts.

The human condition is how we react and cope with these events.

When we wonder about the meaning of life or face moral dilemmas, we take part in the quest to explain the human condition.

The biological aspects of being human (birth, growth, and death) are the same for every human on the planet.

All 7.674 billion of us.

We must each be born to be human.

We grow similarly and reach developmental milestones around the same time.

Some of us live longer than others, but eventually, we all reach the end of our lives.

The circumstances that happen between birth and death are vastly different for each of us, but most of us experience similar emotions.

For instance, we have experienced joy, love, pain, and sadness, even though the initial experience might have differed.

My daughter is going through a pretty tough breakup right now with her girlfriend of two years.

I was trying to explain to her how she will be ok, and she said to me, “What do you know about this? Dad was your first serious relationship, and you are still married! The boyfriends you had in high school were not serious relationships.”

She is not wrong, but the two years I spent being repeatedly rejected by the boy I thought I loved in high school hurt… a lot.

I felt those feelings of inadequacy she is experiencing now.

I cried more than I should have because the person I loved didn’t love me back.

She doesn’t see how the process and emotions are the same, even though the situation differs.

The most fundamental element of the human condition is our humanity.

But just as our experiences differ, so does the definition of the things that make up who we are.

For some of us, our careers and life positions define who we are.

Others define their identity based on their religion (or lack of one) and the philosophies they believe.

We each use our own perspectives to see the world and define the human condition.

Why does it have a negative connotation or sound like a disease?

“I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don’t think that’s only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition.” — Kevin Bacon

Humans can feel intense joy, do immeasurable acts of kindness, and devise innovative ways to solve problems.

That is as much of the human condition as the human tendency to be selfish, evil, and cruel.

Check out these mean quotes.

However, whenever I have spoken with people about the human condition, the focus is on the negative. 

Christian Jarrett points out, “Through history humans have demonstrated a sickening willingness to inflict cruelty on one another. Part of the explanation may be that we have an unfortunate tendency to see certain groups—especially outsiders and vulnerable people perceived as low status—as being less than fully human.”

He goes on to say, “One striking example of this ‘blatant dehumanization’ came from a small brain-scan study that found students exhibited less neural activity associated with thinking about people when they looked at pictures of the homeless or of drug addicts, as compared with higher-status individuals.”

Schadenfreude, which means experiencing pleasure in another person’s distress, has been noted in young children, showing that this is an almost innate part of humanity.

I remember watching America’s Funniest Home Videos as a kid and laughing at the unfortunate accidents that people experienced on camera.

It sounds wrong to take pleasure in the pain of others, but I am aware of how often “good people” do just that.

The human condition also encompasses ideas like justice and karma

Part of the human condition we experience with others is a belief that there is justice and we get what we deserve in this world.

So when something bad happens to us, we ask what we did wrong.

I jokingly say, “I wonder what I did in a past life to deserve this…” far more often than I should.

The flip side is that we assume it is their fault when bad things happen to someone else.

Christian Jarrett also notes that “So strong is our inherent need to believe in a just world, we seem to have an inbuilt tendency to perceive the vulnerable and suffering as to some extent deserving their fate (an unfortunate flip-side to the Karmic idea, propagated by most religions, that the cosmos rewards those who do good—a belief that emerges in children aged just four).”

The human brain is wired to focus on the negative experiences in our lives.

It is a psychological phenomenon referred to as the negativity bias. 

Kendra Cherry explains, “The negativity bias is our tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events.

Also known as positive-negative asymmetry, this negativity bias means that we feel the sting of a rebuke more powerfully than we feel the joy of praise.”

This negativity bias also finds its way into the philosophical debate about the human condition.

We use the human condition to explain things like death and suffering.

It is easier to view those traumatic experiences in our life as some outside philosophical idea that we can not escape because we are human.

Being human means these things happen

However, love, birth, and kindness are as much a part of the human condition as the rest.

If we shifted our perspective to talk about the human condition when we were at our peak experiences and not our lowest, I wonder what humanity would look like.

Would we heal some of the ‘sickness’ and willingness to be cruel in our nature?

Would referring to the daily acts of kindness, incredible innovations, and humanitarian efforts worldwide as the human condition improve humanity for all?

Want to join in on the philosophical debate; leave your thoughts in the comment section below.