Before Anything Else, You’re Human.

WHAT IS “HUMAN”?

To be human is to exist in motion: breathing, feeling, learning, and changing. We are born into bodies we did not choose, shaped by families, histories, and landscapes we spend our lives trying to understand. At our core, we are made of the same elements: bone, blood, and water. We laugh, we break, we build.

Humanity is more than biology. It is a story written across continents and centuries. We are thinkers and feelers, artists and laborers, caregivers and fighters. We love deeply, make mistakes, grieve, and begin the cycle over again.

There is no single version of human.

We come in every shape, color, and expression. Some of us speak one or more of the thousands of languages. Some of us do not speak at all. Some of us believe in gods; others believe in science, or silence, or the stars. But every single one of us carries the same truth inside us: the desire to be known, to be safe, and to be free.

Being human means we get things wrong, but it also means we try to make them right. It means we carry each other forward, even when we stumble. And it means that no matter how different we appear, at the beginning and the end we are the same.

Living as Human

To live as a human is to move through constant contradiction. We crave individuality but need community. We build tools to save time, then rush through the time we gain. We search for truth, but sometimes fear what it might reveal.

Humanity carries belief systems passed down through generations while shaping new ones in real time. We express ourselves through kinship, cuisine, ceremony, and art. Each region, each culture, carries its own ways of dressing, mourning, celebrating, and belonging. In some places we live communally. In others we prize independence. Some honor elders with ritual. Some fight for the future through protest. Some pray. Some paint. Some parent. Some run.

What unites all these expressions is the desire to matter. Human beings do more than survive. We symbolize, ask why, and create meaning.

Despite profound cultural, political, and spiritual divides, humans everywhere are bound by the same needs: to be seen, safe, and loved.

This is what it means to be human.

A History of Humanity

The Ascent of Ethiopia - Painting by Lois Mailou Jones - 1932 — Our story begins more than 300,000 years ago in Africa, where the first anatomically modern humans appeared. From there we moved across deserts, mountains, and oceans, adapting to every environment we encountered. We built shelters and shaped tools. We hunted, gathered, planted, and learned. Along the way we developed languages to connect, stories to remember, and systems to survive.

The Course of Empire — Thomas Cole (1833–1836) — Over time we formed tribes, then villages, then cities and civilizations. We studied the stars, cultivated the land, invented writing, and laid the foundations for religion, philosophy, and art. We discovered fire, electricity, and medicine. Yet our history has never been a straight line of progress. It is a cycle of creation and destruction. For every era of rebirth there was a time of ruin. For every leap forward there was a loss.

The Slave Ship — J.M.W. Turner (1840) — Religions rose and reshaped how we understood the world and each other. Borders were drawn and redrawn. Cultures were born, merged, and erased. Colonialism, industrialization, and global wars transformed how we lived, moved, and treated one another.

The Rosetta Stone — 196 B.C.E. — Still, through every moment we recorded ourselves on stone, in ink, through song, and code. The record of our humanity is vast, contradictory, and unfinished. It is a living archive of who we have been and who we are still becoming.

Major Struggles — Identity

MAJOR STRUGGLES

The greatest danger we have ever faced has not come from the natural world. It has come from ourselves.

Again and again, we struggled to see the full worth in one another. We have drawn false lines of division: race, gender, class, belief. We have labeled some lives as valuable and others as expendable. From that illusion we have built systems of power that oppress, erase, and exploit.

Genocide. Colonization. War. Segregation. Exploitation.

These are not isolated tragedies, they are patterns. They grow from the same root: forgetting that every life is human.

Even now, in our modern world, too many of us live without safety, without autonomy, without access to basic needs like clean water, education, shelter, or a voice. Our planet, our shared home, is suffering under the weight of our industries, consumption, and denial. Climate change does not only threaten the earth but the very existence of our species.

To be human is to be vulnerable yet we so often turn away from the vulnerability of others. History teaches us this: when we forget each other’s humanity, we all lose.

WHERE HUMANS ARE NOW

There are more than 8 billion of us now, living in every corner of Earth. We speak across oceans in real time, explore the stars, and edit our own DNA. We build machines that can think and share music through invisible waves in the air.

Yet through all this progress, the core of who we are has not changed. Each of us arrives with a beating heart.

Our lives today are shaped by contradiction:

One may live in a city that scrapes the sky, surrounded by innovation and opportunity.
Another is born into war, poverty, or exile.

We have made knowledge more accessible than ever while also unleashing floods of misinformation. We are more connected than at any point in history, and yet loneliness remains one of the most universal human experiences.

Still, we keep going. The future is uncertain, but it is ours to shape.

Looking Ahead · Identity

LOOKING AHEAD

To be proud of being human is not to pretend we have gotten everything right. It is to believe we still can. It means facing our failures and holding onto hope anyway.

Wearing I Am Human does not erase where you come from. It honors what came first. Before you were anything else, you were alive, fragile, capable, and human.

In a world that profits from division and rewards disconnection, choosing to see each other as human is quite the act of rebellion. It is the foundation of empathy, the seed of justice, the first breath of real change.

Wear this identity as a promise to yourself and to everyone else that dignity isn’t conditional. It’s...

Last updated: August 4th, 2025

If you feel your story, culture, or identity has been misrepresented, please let us know at
support@identityofficial.com.
This work is ongoing, and your voice matters.

JOIN THE MOVEMENT

We’re just getting started. And there’s room for you here.

Say it loud. Wear it proud.
Wear what makes you, you.

We’re always listening. Always celebrating.

Before Anything Else, You’re Human.

WHAT IS “HUMAN”?

Living as Human

A History of Humanity

MAJOR STRUGGLES

WHERE HUMANS ARE NOW

LOOKING AHEAD

Human statement in editorial two-column layout

JOIN THE MOVEMENT