I disagree. We don't talk about caninity or felinity because to the best of our knowledge those animals do not form any kind of global community. They interact with each other, but they do not form a political landscape beyond their own territorial borders. If a pack of wolves were even aware of another pack of wolves two territories over, it would be news to the zoological community.
The concept of humanity comes from our awareness of the workings of other humans that we have never and will never meet. This awareness is, to the best of my knowledge, unique in homo sapiens. If we determined that another animal also had this capacity, we might have to invent an abstract term to refer to such a cultural reality.
I am not imitating that, uh, portentious fake Byronic nihilism rather popular here ---
See ! I care for nothing ! I am heedless and careless of all life... My only God is Myself ! Tremble before my computer keys ! --- when I point out that this
awareness is fake, brought to you by the same people who work at Hallmark. The knowledge that others exist has been around a long time: the Romans visited China --- yet nearly anyone Chinese up to the 18th century had very little awareness that people outside China's orbit existed, and cared less ( which did them no harm ) --- that doesn't mean the Greeks and Romans felt any kinship with others solely because those others happened to have similar physical forms. In fact it was common for ancients, and even mediaevals, to be immensely distrustful of anyone not from the same
city as themselves. Peasants everywhere were even more suspicious.
The natural priorities in most ages are God, King, loved ones, self, extended family, tribe; then outsiders, to whom one has a duty of immediate preservation ( ie: if they are drowning in front of one, although that need not demand the sacrifice of self ), but to whom no aid is necessary save if one feels like it. 'God' may include a organized church as a body to which one adheres or sundry religious practices; or may just mean a sense of doing things in harmony with the cosmos. Whilst for 'outsiders' the nearer they are in race, the greater was any duty to succour them --- mostly because they have nearer genes to oneself and people want their own genes to survive for darwinian reasons. A Chinese from Qingdao will naturally prefer the chances of someone even from Shanghai over those of a westerner or a Japanese whose ultimate relationship is too remote to matter.
However, even in the modern age, with all the appliances of travel, film and recording devices possible, no-one can meet more than a minute fraction of 'humanity' personally; and even of those they do, are unlikely to become slightly friendly with more than a fragment of that fraction. To piously pretend that their lives and deaths matter to oneself is pure delusion. ( I'm being awfully polite here. ) If you live in Europe or America and the whole of India was wiped out by accident or Act of China, it
might put you off your breakfast for a moment --- although many of us are less impressionable --- but it would be absurd for you to mourn for days or consider the matter at all unless you had relatives or business there. This is not hard-heartedness, merely something everyone privately knows. Exactly the same would apply if Europe or America was wiped out; the Chinese or Indians would feel a certain modulated grief, but life would go on as normal.
We may share our basic humanity with untold millions and millions --- and ultimately billions and
billions; but at our level, unless they have something at least of shared culture, they are merely of descrete civilisations who may have points of interest from their arts and customs, but are as disposable to us as we are to them.
I would find it difficult to worry too much if half my own country's over-populace crossed the great divide --- and I understand also that they would feel the same way about myself:
not because they dislike me or know me, but because one can't get worked up over every little thing.
None of that really addresses your perspective of "the common good" being used to oppress or control, but I believe efforts on its behalf are entirely selfish, and thus fall within our instinctual survival motives. With our awareness of this distant "similar otherness" we define our environment with our predictions about what impact these unknowns will have on us. If we can oppress them, we need not worry about anything detrimental coming from that source (though as we know, no oppression is quite sufficient to remove that risk). If we can control them, we will know about the danger beforehand and influence those "others" into redirecting it away from us. Whatever means by which you try to accomplish this (even means that have mutual benefit as their intent) it comes down to survival instinct.
Actually... you really shouldn't underestimate people's sincerity: those who call God or 'Humanity' into their quarrels are rarely openly hypocritical. They usually
truly believe in whatever they are doing and saying.
It also serves the
prime function of any belief or action: it makes them feel good about themselves...
Claverhouse
.
).
I'm also pretty social, I like people but I really really need my alone time to recharge.
