Are you human?

There are just two types of people in the world. There are the machines and there are the humans.

The machines attempt to overcome themselves to meet goals determined by society. They are slaves to money, power, and status. They live within the human realm, have families, eat food, drive cars, but these are necessary evils in order to meet the goals prescribed for them.

I am a machine. My family is full of machines. Every time I interact with my family, I am reminded of my machine training and culture. School teaches us to be machines and ignores the human aspects of life. We don't get graded for caring, for helping others, for sharing our lunch or volunteering our time. These actions exist despite taking time away from measured and graded machine life. Being human is often a great hindrance to machine success.

The humans live in a different realm. They choose to work in far off tiny towns in what they call advocacy. They try to provide and promote health care, education, and prevent abuse for populations who are forgotten. These groups don't have the right to vote, they aren't allowed to get passports and cannot legally travel. They are restricted in job possibilities by culture and language. They must be smuggled beyond government checkpoints for jobs to provide for their families.

The humans in this type of advocacy work for no salary, rather they often spend their own money to provide for others. They get sick and exist at low living standards so that they have a longer rope until they have to make difficult decisions about next steps. Do they leave their work and become machines for a period to earn money to be used to return to their human life?

The pure human life is unsustainable. The humans must spend some of their time in machine mode. There is a spectrum of human to machine that is ideal for each person. Often groups provide this balance for individuals. I am far on the machine side, and thus always find myself with a partner far on the human side. This pairing provides an important education for both parties.

We must accept who we are and where we lie on the machine/human spectrum. To attempt to stray too far will only cause damage.