Humans are Weird

Humans are weird.

They speak different languages, have different religions or no religion at all (and find it very important, whichever way they go), paint or tattoo their bodies or leave them as is, have different tastes in food and music and fashion, tell different kinds of stories, have different kinds of minds. They look different from one another, because of skin or hair or scars or bone structure or clothing, and yet all are immediately identifiable as human. Even the ones in T-Rex costumes.

There are different conversations to be had with each, different things to learn and different social minefields to avoid. It would be awesome if they didn’t spend all their time arguing.

Okay, a lot of their time. Sometimes they’re asleep.

Lately there’s been a trend in certain corners of the Internet, to tell brief stories in which humans bewilder hypothetical aliens with their resilience or customs or tendency to bare their teeth as a friendly greeting. There’s been talk of “how to care for a human” pamphlets getting distributed to ship captains and medical officers, but I’m not sure those pamphlets would be as helpful as the hypothetical aliens might like them to be. Sure, they might cover basic facial expressions and how human bodies work, but predicting how any one human might react in a hypothetical situation? Even humans are still working on figuring out how human brains work. Might as well try to write a pamphlet for every human the aliens meet. Good luck.

There are so many ways to be a human being, after all. Roughly seven billion.

Even twins identical in appearance and raised in the same household turn out differently from each other. Dealing with humans from differing countries, or with contradictory political beliefs, or any other  major differences is exhausting for those of us who actually are human. Aliens don’t stand a chance at getting us to be predictable.