Opinion | Are We Losing Our Humanity in the Race for Progress?

There was a time when being human seemed to mean something simple: to feel another person’s pain, to stop when someone was suffering, to protect what was vulnerable, and to understand that life has value even when it does not belong to us. Today, we live in a world that has achieved extraordinary things. We communicate across continents in seconds, explore the deepest parts of the oceans, send machines into space, and build technologies once unimaginable. Yet somewhere in the middle of all this progress, an uncomfortable question keeps returning: Are we still human?

That question sits at the heart of Are We Still Human?, a new book that makes no attempt to offer easy answers. Instead, it asks readers to pause, look around, and examine what we have gradually accepted as normal.

The book is not simply about humanity as an abstract idea. It is about us—our choices, our behaviour, our contradictions, and the world we are building. We often describe ourselves as the most intelligent species, taking pride in our ability to reason, create, invent and dominate. But intelligence without empathy can become dangerous. Progress without responsibility can become destruction. Power without compassion can turn human beings into the very thing they claim to stand against.

We speak of peace while violence continues around us. We talk about kindness while ignoring suffering that does not directly touch us. We celebrate development while destroying forests, polluting rivers and exhausting the planet that sustains us. We condemn cruelty when we see it in others, yet sometimes grow indifferent when silence is more convenient. These contradictions form the spine of the book.

Are We Still Human? asks readers to look beyond the labels we give ourselves and examine the values underneath. What does it actually mean to be civilised? Is technological advancement alone enough to call a society progressive? If we can build intelligent machines but cannot understand the pain of another human being, how much have we truly progressed?

“Perhaps the greatest danger facing humanity is not that we have become less intelligent, but that we are becoming less sensitive.”

We are surrounded, as never before, by information about suffering. A tragedy on the other side of the world can reach our screens within seconds. Wars, disasters, hunger, displacement, cruelty and injustice appear on our feeds almost every day. Yet repeated exposure can make even extraordinary suffering feel ordinary.

The book challenges this growing culture of indifference. It asks whether witnessing suffering without responding to it slowly changes us—whether convenience has begun to matter more than conscience, and whether our pursuit of progress has made us forget the responsibility that comes with power.

Importantly, Are We Still Human? does not simply blame humanity. Its purpose is not to convince readers that people are inherently evil, but to explore the choices we make and the circumstances that shape us.

Are people born cruel, or is cruelty learned? Can an individual remain compassionate in a society that repeatedly rewards selfishness? And if humanity has created many of the problems around us, can humanity also become the force that solves them?

These questions make the book deeply personal—because ultimately, it is not about them. It is about us.

Every reader may find a different reflection of themselves in its pages. One may reconsider how they treat another person. Another may think differently about our relationship with nature. Someone else may question what we really mean by progress, civilisation or success. The book does not demand that every reader arrive at the same conclusion. It asks something more valuable: that we think.

We do not necessarily need more information—we already have an abundance of it. What we need is reflection: a moment to step away from the noise and ask whether the direction in which we are moving is actually the direction in which we want humanity to go.

Are We Still Human? arrives at a time when the world is more connected than ever, yet people often feel increasingly disconnected from one another; when technology grows more powerful even as empathy resists automation; when we have more ways to speak than at any point in history, yet meaningful listening seems increasingly rare.

That is why this book deserves to be read—not because it promises to provide all the answers, but because it encourages us to ask better questions.

Reading it may not change the world overnight. Perhaps that is not the point. Perhaps change begins with something much smaller: a question that remains with us after the book is closed. A moment when we choose empathy over indifference. A moment when we question cruelty instead of accepting it. A moment when we recognise that the world does not only need intelligent human beings; it needs humane ones.

That is ultimately what Are We Still Human? asks us to consider—not whether we have stopped being human biologically, but whether we are still living up to the meaning of the word.

And perhaps the most important part is this: If we are losing our humanity, it is still not too late to find it again.

Email: firdousjavid1@gmail.com