Can Our Common Humanity Unite Us? | The Saturday Evening Post:
My vision of us as human beings holds that people are, and should be, united by our common humanity. And this commonality originates in our shared evolution. It is written in our genes. Precisely for this reason, I believe we can achieve a mutual understanding among ourselves.
My favorite part of genealogy is pedigree collapse, the end result of which is, as Gandhi said, “All men are brothers.” We are all at least 50th cousins of one another.
If one doesn’t know that now, they likely will in the end:
Death and grief unite us like nothing else. The universality of death and of our responses to it cannot help but impress human similarity upon any observer. I have held the hands of countless dying people from all sorts of backgrounds, and I do not think I have met a single person who didn’t share the exact same aspirations at the end of life: to make amends for mistakes, to be close to loved ones, to tell one’s story to someone who will listen, and to die free of pain. The desire for social connection and interpersonal understanding is so deep that it is with each of us until the end.
Mortality crumbles the facade. Memento mori.