Member-only story
On Humankind-ness
by Michelle Montoro
I have said this 100 times, maybe 1,000 times, maybe more…Experience is knowledge. Knowledge is power. And when we have those things, we have an obligation to share what we know in a helpful way.
What good is having experience and knowledge and power and hoarding it away in secrecy? What good is hiding our talents and our expertise from the world and from those who could benefit from it? What good is living on this earth if we are not going help each other through the whole messy ride? What good is being a human if we aren’t being, well, human?
Humankind.
That is an interesting term, isn’t it?
When we are so often not very kind at all. Yet the word kind is part of the very word that has been used to label our species for, I don’t know, a really long time. Being the insanely obsessed wordsmith that I am, I had to go research the etymology of the word humankind and more precisely, the suffix -kind. The word kind as a noun (the very noun affixed to the end of the word human to describe our species) means simply “class, sort, variety, nature, race, family, kin.”
But if you look at the meaning of the word kind as an adjective, you will see these descriptors…”friendly, deliberately doing good to others, well disposed.”
