THE HUMAN ELEMENTS
Kurt Hoffman
The highest potential of any thing is defined by its nature. The wholeness of any thing is determined by how well all of its diverse parts are fully developed and integrated in unity. Cultivating human flourishing individually and collectively, therefore, first requires holistically understanding and affirming human nature as it is, basically and fully. Then, freeing us to treat everyone as fundamentally equal and diversely equipped whole persons. While diverse in expression, even when neglected, avoided, resisted, or denied, every human being has these basic qualities in common. It is what we are and yes, it is kind of a big deal... THINKERS Our most basic element. Enlivened by reason, the laws of thought, we find ourselves cognitive, conscious, and empowered to seek, understand, and interpret our life, experiences, and environments. Reason is so basic to our essence as human beings we cannot even question it without using it. APPLICATION: Human dignity is affirmed when our potential and responsibility to seek and understand ourselves, our world, and our origin is affirmed. Wherein, we all have the right to be treated with equal dignity, and the responsibility to treat others the same.
GOAL GETTERS Humans have virtues and values. Every virtue and every less basic value is sought and used as the means to the end of his or her highest value called, “The good.” It is the essence of ones perceived purpose and meaning of life as derived from ones view of humanity’s nature, origin, and destiny. APPLICATION: However consciously or consistently held every person has a highest value and supreme goal of life that derives all lower goals, drives all behaviors and choices, and defines ones meaning in life. One’s view of the good must always be examined for coherence.
MEANING SEEKERS We have reason, and we use it. Experienced in our existential need to know “why,” we desire and need meaning in, through, and above all else. And the degree to which we use our reason critically is the degree to which we find it. APPLICATION: Doing what is good for ourselves based on our nature, we ought to critically examine all beliefs in pursuit and submission to truth alone, not believing things uncritically or blindly.
CREATORS Driven by curiosity and empowered by talent and ability humans cannot escape their desire to express and work. Through creating and sustaining we seek to cultivate our view of the good life. APPLICATION: Cultivating human excellence requires knowing, developing, and using our unique talents for the true good of ourselves and others.
FEELERS Stemming from thoughts about or world and interpretations of our experiences humans have deep capacities to feel, desire, and want. Feeling a variety of emotions, in a variety of intensities, therefore, we are moved to choose, seek, speak, act, react, and create. APPLICATION: Our feelings and emotional responses reveal the truth about what we think and believe even when we tell ourselves or others otherwise.
FIGHTERS Humans grow strongest through challenges. Like well-trained athletes, the more we persevere and endure, the more resilient we become, and the higher the potential we can reach. APPLICATION: Going through hardships thoughtfully enriches life and strengthens unity; escaping suffering empties life of hope, purpose, and meaning.
CHOOSERS As an act of the will every human person makes choices. Every choice reveals what we think is the good life and the highest value. Even to not choose is a choice. APPLICATION: Human excellence requires affirming our rights and responsibilities to choose wisely and reap the rewards and consequences of our choices.
INTERDEPENDENT Humans are independent, freedomloving, individuals. Paradoxically, we are also wholly dependent on innumerable people and elements to exist and thrive. APPLICATION: To emphasize only one or the other, we become narcissistically autonomous or woefully codeependent. It enlivens us to affirm we are independent individuals who need others, richly and sensibly.
HAPPINESS WANTERS Humans want to be happy and have the right to pursue it. Happiness is not our highest good, however, happiness is the side-effect of getting what we think is good—in general, and the highest good in particular. APPLICATION: Integrity requires we do not blindly pursue happiness but examine if what brings us happiness should. Likewise, we must notice the stark difference between temporary happiness and the kind that lasts.
WHOLESTERS Humans are the unity of many unique yet fittingly diverse parts. Wherein, we long for fullness, wholeness, and the properly ordered unity of all our parts. APPLICATION: To love ourselves is to seek consistency between what we say, feel, and do, and to develop ourselves totally and holistically. Being neglectful of this we suffer varied senses of incompleteness, disunity, disorder, and despair.
CHIT CHATTERS Being rational, humans inherently reflect, express, and reveal their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings through body Language, words, deeds, and actions. APPLICATION: Our ability to flourish rests upon how well we communicate, dialogue, debate, teach, examine, inquire, seek, reflect, and listen toward the common pursuit of capturing meaning, understanding truth, and sharing knowledge.
CHANGEABLE Through learning, growing, and adapting, humans change. Ensuring we change for the better requires we live the examined life, are teachable, and desire consistency between what we say and do. APPLICATION: Through even the greatest of changes, knowledge is the rarest of goods as it alone accumulates, grows, and deepens to enrich every area of life, including through generations and millennia.
MORAL What is good for a thing is based on its nature. Stemming from our view of the human person, therefore, we conclude what we think is good and evil and right and wrong for people, then act accordingly. APPLICATION: How consistent our worldview is with reality determines whether we grow in true goodness, virtue, knowledge, and enjoyment or if we instead reap confusion, frustration, emptiness, and meaninglessness.
BELLY LAUGHERS Enjoying the peculiar, ironic, witty, weird, silly, satirical, and uncommon caveats and connotations of the human experience pure laughter brings pure joy. APPLICATION: Enlivened in our rational selves good humor is good medicine. Filling our emotions with cheer, gladness, and hilarity evaporates anxiety. Expressed through our relational natures biting comedy can be used to stir dissent and rage or cultivate dialogue and delight.
DEEP WATERS Throughout our human development and unique social environments the interconnections of our memory and mind, experiences and emotions, desires and will, become the invisible, layered, and integrated depths of our personhood - what we call the psyche. APPLICATION: The accumulation of unexamined, ignored, and forgotten experiences, beliefs, and choices becomes a powerful mover some refer to as the subconscious.
SOUL MEETS BODY Humans are integrated and whole unities of physical and non-physical attributes. Most elements listed above are first non-physical, yet, inseparably mixed with, experienced in, and expressed through, our physical selves—what is visible manifests the invisible. APPLICATION: Seen in our unique appearances, felt in our physical needs, and manifested through our physical abilities, our bodies and senses connect us to the natural world as our minds enable us to perceive, interpret, understand, and cultivate it.
RELATIONAL Through experiencing and sharing life, few things are stronger than our desire to know others and be known by others. APPLICATION: The quality, unity, and longevity of a society is based on how well its diversely equipped people sharpen, relate to, and work with each other toward a common goal. The depth of a friendship or marriage is based on how likeminded the persons are concerning humanities biggest questions.
INDIVIDUALLY UNIQUE In both physical and non-physical ways no two humans are entirely alike. Yet, just as cars and trucks are different but equally automobiles, so too, despite look, color, talent, personality, ability, or gender, all humans are equally human. APPLICATION: Emphasizing diversity alone is destructive and divisive. Affirming human diversity in light of human equality is enriching and unifying.
TOE TAPPERS Pulsating with sound and color, patterns and motion, our environments and experiences stir our bodies and souls to express our beliefs, pour our feelings, and tell our stories through layers of melodies, harmonies, rhythms, rhymes, and movements. APPLICATION: As meaning, truth, justice, beauty, and flourishing are discovered, deepened, and expressed, myths and legends, cultures and traditions, and eons and eras, become identifiable by their styles of art, music, dance, and all out good vibes.
WIND RIDERS Seeped in our nature is a hunger for life through adventure and exploration of all that is unknown, mysterious, and beautiful. Mixing our muscles with our imaginations few things can tame the human spirit’s desire for undomesticated discovery. APPLICATION: Shrinking from seeking, engaging, and flourishing our world we stir with meaninglessness and boredom. Affirming our rationally wild nature we grow enlivened by meaning, purpose, beauty, excellence, and the relational truth that is our living reality. Do not Copy, Not for Redistribution - Drummer Boy Books and Media - © 2014 Kurt Hoffman