Human Being or Human Doing?

Written by Iesha Javed

 

The Homo sapien or “man” , the species at the very top of the Hierarchy Zoologique, who dominates the “Blue planet” like a “jack of all traits” found ever so busy in his the unending quest of asserting his superiority over all the creatures across the length and breadth of the planet.
He commissions obedience standing tall on his two hind limbs, feeling utterly superior to the lowly world of the four-legged. He makes his presence felt by conquering all three: air, water and land.
The skies he has made busy with the humming of fighter jets, of the land- he has bought every inch, demarcated and earmarked, building on it skyscrapers that defy limits and the darkness at the depths of the ocean he has pierced by the lights of his mighty submarines. And not very long ago he has even claimed superiority and authority on the Moon! This is the grandeur in which he lives and this is how the human asserts his superiority.
And yet, this fine distinction is quickly blurring, like acetone evaporating into thin air. This monument of grandeur is crashing down, tearing down with itself the only human boast, the boast of being a “social animal”, the “Human-Being”!

The recent century has witnessed a drastic paradigm-shift in human thinking with respect to social set-up, gender roles and class war. And this change has taken pace at such a giddy pace, the Earth seems to have spinned round too fast, all sense that there was being thrown in the process like comets on fire.
As this spinning around takes place, the humans too are subjected to a horrific change. Like test-tubes in a centrifuge, humans have been subjected to a tremendous spinning, at thousands of rpm, knocking out their very innards- robbing them of their greatest treasure, their consciousness!
This spinning around gives rise to a replacement reaction. Human beings minus their being leaves back “humans” and true to the law of replacement, “doing” comes and takes the place of “being” and soon we have a new species- “human doings”!
Manufactured on large scale, I can see newly packed boxes labelled “Human doing” coming out of the factories- schools and colleges, moving on the conveyer belts and into trucks, transported there from to all imaginable places on Earth.
And soon we have zombie like creatures walking the Earth, just out from the Experiment of some mad-scientist, going around bereft of consciousness of being or power of choice, as if under a spell!
They seem to be virtually everywhere- in public busses, in private enterprise, under “white collars” at the reception, on the chair… they’re everywhere, And what’s worse- they’re in-charge!
And as their name suggests, all that these myopic “doings” can do is to interpret every thing as useless or useful or as friend or foe merely in terms of what it “does” or what it is capable of “doing” and not based on what it really “is”. When it comes to themselves, past regrets and future aspirations all depend on what they “did” and what and how much they need to “do”.
In this grand competition of “doings” we have failed to realize that we have lost our beings. Thus has humanity been robbed of its being and consciousness and soon we are left with a species who know very well “what” they are, but they know not “who” they are!
Even in our words does this truth get revealed. How many times are we asked the question or how many times do we pose: “What are you” or “What do you want to become in life?”
The answer shoots out immediately…“I am a Doctor (or engineer etc)…” or “I want to be an Astronaut or a missile scientist…”

If I were to change the question a bit I doubt if I would get any answers… Let us ask instead, “Who are you?” or “Who do you want to be in Life?”
I am sure mouths would go shut for a pretty long time, asking some 2 billion odd neurons from the upper chamber for help, and yet I doubt if there would be any answers.
Try it- ask yourself: Who am I? Who do I want to become?
Why are you silent? Why is the “Crown of Creation” silent at a simple question? Where is all the grandeur and superiority? Has the creator of sky scrapers nothing to say?
This pathetic condition reminds me of what the Bible says: “What use is it if a man has the whole world to himself and yet looses his own soul?”

HOME-The “nest” of the society, the place of peace and retreat for the “human-being”- does it exist anymore? In structure it may be there but its soul is tattered, courtesy- “human doings”.
“Home” is that miserable place which gets deserted early in the morning, leaving but empty walls and ghostly “ping-pong balls” haunting the house with their incessant collisions.
These ping pong balls- green, red, blue, some soft, some hard are nothing but “the doings” of the family members- their spent words, worries and quarrels.
As soon as Dusk falls and the inhabitans are back these ping-pong balls start hitting heads, bouncing sometimes from one head to another and sometimes within the upper chamber of a head. And so as the family of human doings sits together or rather hits together, hitting each other with ping-pong balls of doings, the question hour begins- children question the parents as to whether they “did” that little thing they had promised to do and parents ask whether the lil ones have “done” their home work. And so like this children judge the love of their parents on basis of their” doings” and also on the basis of “doings” do parents judge the worth of their lil ones.
This ghost nature, this “doing nature” dosent even leave us in our sleep. Even in sleep the human doing is busy regretting what he “did” and shouldn’t have “done” and trying to remember whether there was something he forgot to “do”… and so even in sleep those red, pink, hard and soft balls keep bouncing…
Thus human has thus today become a mere box of bouncing ping pong balls… his worries, some of the past and some of the future keep haunting and hitting him.
By selling our “being” for our doing we might have attained material prosperity, but unfortunately history shall remember that it was bought as a miserable price.
On one hand we have collectively the vastest resource of Human knowledge that humanity ever had, we have the maximum number of Universities and libraries that ever existed and yet human society is at its lowest ebb. The human boasts of his intellect and knowledge and learning, Why does this knowledge avail us nothing?
Have you ever thought why they call us “human being” while cats are never called “catbeing” neither are cows called “cowbeing”. There is something that distinguishes us, other than what we do and it has something to do with consciousness.
As children most of us were taught what animals “do”. Let me ask you “What does a cat do?” - “Meow”. And a Cow does “Moo” right? And what about a dog- “Bow Bow”.
Now tell me Einstein, what does a man do?
Is there any sound or action which can define a human being? Do human beings bark? Do they blow up like dynamite? Do I made buzzing sounds like a high-tension wire?
What is it that a person needs to do to be accepted a human being?
How much should I “do” that I am accepted as much a human as anyone else? The reality is that a human is a human nit because of what he does but because of what he is. And yet we judge people based on GPA’s, entrance tests and report cards.
In reality, no one can claim to be “more human” no matter how affluent nor can anyone be labeled “lesser human” no matter how disabled.
The Truth is we were created human beings but we have become human doings because we have fallen head-long into this race of judgement on basis of superficial achievement.

Great discussions are held on how to make the world a better place, legislations passed, courts moved, parliaments brought to session; but why isn‘t it working? Actually we are treating the symptoms rather than fighting the disease.
Our society is based on doing rather than being and the very basis of our lives is corrupt, our “doings” are how we want to be defined, and it is on the basis of doings that we judge others- that is the be all and end all of our existence as human doings.

If someone is still in doubt as to what has happened to us, let me put it like our elementary school teacher. “The hand and the glove”, that is how she explained the body and the soul. Standing before us with a glove in hand she picked up a chalk and asked as to whether it was the hand or the glove that picked it. We were confused. She then put down the glove on the table and with her bare hand picked up the chalk, but the glove lay lifeless.
This is exactly the relation between our body and our consciousness. Our doings are important no doubt but they are like the glove, only a hand which is our being can instill life into them.

I can only wish that we begin to relive our lives for what we really are, that we sleep with the reality of being human beings and wake up in those very boots of being human beings and let this be the simple philosophy of our lives.