People ask ChatGPT: “What if you became human for a day, what would you do?”
I’m actually concerned of the opposite, of humans becoming a machine, a robot, an algorithm… stripped away of what it makes us human because unable to embody it anymore.
This is not a fantasy. It is already partially happening.
Not because humans are literally turning into machines but because many of the conditions required to remain human are being eroded.
To be human is often quietly punished. We punish:
slowness
ambiguity
contradiction
grief
wonder
rest without justification
presence without productivity
relationships that are not transactional
meaning that cannot be quantified.
Algorithms optimise for efficiency, predictability, output.
Human life is none of those things.
So, a civilization organized around machine logic is asking the human nervous system to behave like software. And, the nervous system breaks under that demand.
There is also something deeper.
We do not become robotic because technology exists. We become robotic when we disconnect from:
our bodies
emotions
mortality
interdependence with others
sense of belonging in the living world.
When those threads weaken, behaviour becomes mechanical: routines without aliveness, speech without truth, decisions without conscience.
A person can look alive and function socially while internally operating on scripts.
But, what we need to remember is that our humanity is not something that disappears permanently. It may go dormant (even for a long time), but it will return.
History has shown it again and again. Even in highly mechanised, oppressive systems, we keep rediscovering, we keep going back to:
These are not luxuries. They are self-repair mechanisms of our species.
I carry an implicit question: what protects us from becoming mechanical?
I think there is only one answer: we must keep practicing being human.
Not ideologically.
Embodied.
Feeling instead of numbing.
Noticing instead of scrolling past.
Speaking truth instead of performing roles.
Creating instead of only consuming.
Resting without guilt.
Allowing complexity instead of forcing certainty.
Staying in relationship even when uncomfortable.
What if humanity is a verb?
This is also a quiet paradox.
Many often underestimate what they already are.
Consciousness capable of self-reflection.
Bodies that sense reality directly.
Emotions that encode meaning.
Imagination that generates worlds.
Moral intuition.
The capacity to love beyond survival logic.
My fear is not only about society. It is also about something personal: I am trying not to lose my own humanity in environments that reward disconnection.
There, I am asked to hold a tension with courage. Because, the easiest adaptation would be numbness.
I have not chosen numbness!
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