I see a lot of dialogue about language is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and how labels as they pertain to sexuality and gender etc are descriptive rather than prescriptive, but I don't really see any dialogue about how the human experience is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

but I do see a LOT of people who say things like "I don't know how to be human" or "after I clock out I forgot how to be human" or shit like that. and we gotta reframe this and i'll tell you why exactly

(this post got long so i'm putting it under a read more)

see, statements like this assume a particular definition of "human". it means that to be human, you have to react in a particular way, it means you have to be attentive in a particular way, it means you need to behave and act and feel a particular way. and if you're not doing all that, you're not human. In a coincidence that will shock approximately nobody, all these things you have to do to be "human" are behaviors required and enforced by the social moors enshrined within capitalism. This all descends from two origins:

• employment and customer service: being employed (in the united states especially) means you are required to act in a very predictable manner, or else customers will express disappointment, fellow employees will express discomfort, and management will express dissatisfaction. which came first: the expectations, or the behaviors? probably the former, because an expectation of a subservient mode of behavior is an aspect of hierarchy, and a rigidly defined hierarchy has been a fundamental aspect of western culture since ever. yeah we've come a long way from the idea of servants being seen and not heard, but we still have a while to go, too. employment expectations get intertwined in all sorts of nasty shit: racism, ableism, homophobia... that shit sucks. it makes it feel like they are holding your nature hostage in exchange for money needed to live. anyway, im encroaching on my second point:

• the social hierarchy: for a very long time (all written record?), humanity has been stratified by hierarchies, and this hierarchy determines how you act when you're around someone with a different, uh, "power level" than you. if someone has more power than you, you're deferential. if someone has less, you assert yourself. that has resulted in an insanely complex code of rules for how you are expected to act around someone who isn't the same "station" or "class" as you. and while it's not as dramatic as, like, 100 years ago when differing accents between the rich and the poor made it seem like there's two (or more) wholly different cultures of people within one country, it still exists and it's still a huge problem. anyone who has ever heard a customer or a manager say "you can't talk to me that way!" has already experienced it. someone just tried to put themselves above you, and they'll try to make you feel less human for it. the social hierarchy enforced by capitalism makes it so you only feel human if you adhere rigidly to your class.

anyway, capitalism therefore assumes a prescriptive definition for "being human": you need to act this way to be human, and if you act other ways, you're not human! and idk, i know there's bigger battles to fight, but i feel like telling yourself that shit only reinforces this concept. it puts yourself down. the truth is this: being human is descriptive. everything you do, everything you say and believe and feel, is human at all times, because you are a human and you are doing that. you define what it means to be human by doing. it is countercultural to both believe and assert that.

if you go mute and inexpressive after a trying day, that isn't you "not being human". that's a lie from the ingrained ableism of our society. by affirming to yourself "this is human activity because im a human and i'm doing this", you're recentering the definition of humanity away from the expectations of capitalism, and onto your lived experiences. not only that, but you are throwing a lifeline to any person who does not feel human. you are expanding the definition of existing inclusively. a lot of people throughout history have tried to frame neurodivergent people as less human because of their behavior and that's straight up a lie from the devil. throw it away.

reframing humanity like this within your own brain is magical, too. no matter what you do, no matter how far you go, you are defining the human experience. you are expanding the human experience. you are pushing it. you are treading unknown territory in the human experience. that's extremely cool to me. you are defining what it means to be human. it connects you to all of humanity and its history. capitalism wants to isolate your experience to only that which serves and allows it.

i know it's become a really popular thing lately to say "i'm not human, i'm [animal]" etc, and that's great. that's also escaping capitalism's hierarchy, that's a way for people to recenter their experiences away from capitalism's expectations. the furry fandom, therianism, etc have all been really great frameworks for people to take ownership of their identity away from the expectations of a capitalist, ableist, homephobic society. but i think its also very cool to understand that reframing your existence this way is just another way of expanding and defining the human experience as a whole, rather than "escaping" the human experience. the important part is: escaping capitalism's behavioral expectations is not escaping the human experience; it actually does the opposite. escaping capitalism's behavioral expectations gets you closer to the human experience.

i have a lot of incredibly wonderful autistic/neurodivergent friends who feel like they need to Act Human around certain people, at work, etc, and it just fuckin breaks my heart. i can see how much it hurts them to be forced to do that, forced to hide parts of themselves for the sake of the job. that shit sucks. they're not worth any less for how they act naturally and i want them to know that

idk if i had a point here, other than this: capitalism very much benefits from you feeling like you are not human because of the way you naturally want to be and act. so i am assuring you that what you naturally want to do and the natural way you act are, in fact, human by definition. and i think knowing that can help make capitalism have a little bit less of a hold on how you treat yourself, based on how you instinctively want to act.

as always, please feel free to let me know if this post made you pissed as hell at me