Okay, so this one is interesting. I wrote this back in 2013 whilst in the U.K. visiting my folks and some of the friends I had made during my almost 4-year residency from 2006 to 2009. When I say ‘residency’, what I mean is: I lived there. I don’t want people to think that I was undertaking some kind of post-graduate medical training or the like.

I cannot recall if I had had a few drinks before I started or if the drinks started during the writing process. Either way, I think you can tell that the alcohol affected the writing as I get further into the piece. Regardless, I hope you find it interesting. It would be very cool if I was able to finish it or, at the very least, add to it before I depart this mortal realm.

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What can I say about people that hasn’t already been said? Already said by men and women better educated, better qualified and just plain better than I? Nothing, I suppose. Not that this will discourage me.

Why now? Why review something that has been around for, well, let’s just say a really, really, really long time? Is boredom a good enough answer? Maybe I’ve just had a revelation. Maybe I’ve just had a beer. Maybe I’ve made enough notes about the various people I have encountered over the past 30-odd years and feel that I should share some of this pseudo-wisdom.

Doubtless, some of you will be offended by this review, possibly even outraged. Get over it. Try and remember that this is not a personal attack on you and your loved ones but rather a broader, reasoned look at your race (and mine) as a whole. Its admirable qualities as well as its reprehensible qualities both of which every single one of us contains in varying ratios. And besides, you shouldn’t automatically assume that this will be a bad review. As a reasonably intelligent, open-minded and somewhat articulate individual, I consider myself as qualified as anyone to pass judgement on our species and to do so in a fair and even-handed manner. If, after considering all of this, you are still offended by the very idea of this review then FUCK YOU. That’s not sour grapes, that’s just my honest opinion of your opinion reducest to its simplest, albeit crudest form.

Shall we continue?

Where on earth to begin this review? Well yes, on earth obviously. Maybe the more pertinent question is ‘how’, not ‘where’. As in ‘how’ exactly do I review something as old, as complex and as random as people?

Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘people’ as “the body of persons who compose a community…”. Nope, fuck that, I’m not going to be that guy. We all know what I mean by ‘people’. I mean us. I mean human beings; men, women and children: the dominant (for better or worse) life form of this planet we call Earth.

Reviews usually begin with a quick synopsis, a brief outline of what the book/film/event/ album/experience/amazingly sumptuous sirloin steak is all about, without giving away anything too important about what actually happens/happened. This is a little bit difficult to achieve when reviewing ‘people’ as a whole because, well, as I stated earlier, we have quite a history.

Scientists estimate that ‘people’, as we recognise them these days, have been around for over 200,000 years. A large number of religions would dispute this ‘fact’ but we’ll get to that later. ‘People’ a.k.a. Human Beings, a.k.a. Humans as I shall hereby refer to them (us?) originated somewhere in Africa. Again, if you’re a religious fundamentalist please bare with me, your turn will come. For now, I’m going with the accepted version of events as per the majority of the most learned, not to mention well-researched, well-reasoned minds our species has to offer.

Somewhere in Africa about 315,000 years ago the universe saw the origins of a new species, somewhat later to be referred to as Homo Sapiens. This origin began with what is known as ‘anatomical modernity”, which basically refers to the moment we started walking on two legs. Sometime after that, approximately 50,000 years ago, we had another milestone when we achieved something now known as “behavioural modernity”. This one means the moment we began to exhibit many of the basic behaviours we still exhibit today and no I don’t mean texting, Facebooking, Tweeting and/or blogging. Or then again, perhaps I do?

Science tells us that the human lineage diverged from ‘the last common ancestor with its closest living relative, the chimpanzee. And yes, I’m informing you now that my major (but not only) source for a lot of this information is the commonly derided knowledge provider we all know and love: Wikipedia. And yes, this would seem like a good reason to immediately dismiss everything in the previous two paragraphs as utterly absurd, but it’s not. In fact, it would be a really shitty reason to do that. If anything the only thing it provides good reason for would be to henceforth acknowledge my supreme laziness.

After we started walking and thinking (sort of) we decided to start exploring a little bit of this rather amazing planet we had somehow lucked into. We started by migrating to and colonising (how’s that for a controversial c-word?) the continent of Eurasia somewhere in the vicinity of 125,000 to 60,000 years ago. Obviously, Eurasia is quite a big area and the whole process might have taken a fair bit of time. After that we moved onto Australasia about 40,000 years ago, the Americas about 15,000 years ago and “remote islands” such as Hawaii, Easter Island, Madagascar and, wait for it… New Zealand (what’s Kiwi for “ouch”?) between the years AD 300 and 1280.

Let’s take a break from the rudimentary history lesson for a second and consider some of what we know about humans. Some of what I know, and have noticed, anyway:

(a) Humans/people have a great capacity for compassion.

(b) Humans/people have, perhaps, an even greater capacity for cruelty.

and

(c) For as long as they have existed humans have been trying to reconcile these two opposing capacities.

Obviously, this is just one man’s simple observation of a small part of what makes humans human, but it is as good a place as any to get into the meat and potatoes of this review.

The first part of this observation is the more “feel good” part, the more self-indulgent part if you will and it’s the one I’m going to elaborate on first. It’s also the harder part to write about for some, depressing reason. Should it really be this difficult to recall great moments of human compassion off the top of my head?  On a global scale, our capacity for compassion over the many centuries can be witnessed in instances such as the way people banded together, and helped each other out, after horrific events such as the blitz of London during WW2 as well as post 9-11 in the United States of America. It can also be witnessed in… well at this point I am Googling ‘evidence of human compassion’ to try and add to this section, and failing.

Perhaps compassion doesn’t occur on a global scale, at least not often anyway. Perhaps compassion occurs at an individual level, a more personal level. I for one have witnessed some truly heart-warming acts of human compassion at a personal level, enough to give me at least some confidence in the continued necessity of humans and my own loose affiliation with the concept of Humanism.

To be continued…