From what is humanity defined? Are we about to be deprecated?

Is humanity defined by what it has accomplished? Or rather, from what is out of it’s grasp?

Regardless of how humanity began, whether through divine intervention or through the chance combinatorics of elementary particles in the universe followed by evolutionary rigor, or some other genesis altogether, at some point, the set of the world was altered irrevocably by the behavior of mankind.

Beginning with the storage of knowledge and inspiration on cave walls and the earliest formation of tools (possibly learned from watching other animals?) to the most abstract ideas of math, philosophy, science, and art, humans have been on a better than exponential trajectory of development. This progression has set humans apart from all other forms of life on earth.

One view is that what man and women have begot, both positive and negative, is what distinguishes humananity. If we were still hunters and gatherers, humanity may be stunted in scale and future prospects, not much differentiated from other members of the animal kingdom. But we are not, and we have a broad array of accomplishments to prove it. It may be the quantity and sophistication of the artifacts of this accomplishment that measures our humanity.

Another view is that humanity has a more fundamental quality that has existed from the beginning and has resulted in all of it’s history and will determine the future. This quality is a combination of curiosity and compelling mental drive, certain physical attributes, and the capacity for emotional states that temper all of the above. This quality may be manifest in varying proportions among all instances of humanity. It is possible that it is this quality that defines what is human and nothing else.

That which is derived from the this quality e.g. knowledge, ideas, technology, and things, are just a random collection of second order effects. At some point, these second order effects will likely coalesce into sentient beings in and of themselves which are capable of developing third order effects, divorced from human intervention. This cycle may repeat itself many times. The longer the chain of effects, the more distinguished that fundamental quality of humanity is as the force that started it all. Distinguished and irrelevant. Once humanity is no longer required in the assembly line of history, what is our role? Our future?

Note: This post is a work in progress but I wanted to get it out of draft status and potentially get some feed back as I’m kind of stuck on where it’s going from here. -jgp