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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/LateralThinker13 on 2024-12-27 19:49:17+00:00.
Field Report: Regarding Human Empathy
Humanity has emerged onto the galactic stage. I was blessed (or cursed) to be one of the first to encounter and study them. Please, hear my words, for I have delved their histories (amazingly, open and available to all) and I have seen their museums (places to glorify past triumphs AND mistakes). I beg you, my bretheren, to learn from my experiences.
Much is made of the human ability to adopt (or to be adopted by) small 'cute' animals such as their felines and canids. Or even not-so-cute animals, such as their terrestrial lizards and snakes, or like the lethal, venomous Trisk'ellan swampsnakes, or the putrid-smelling (though to humans they smell like cinnamon(?)) leaf-jumper insects, and other creatures. Humans are capable of a connection, an empathy, that is rarely seen on other words.
Though perhaps we should have studied their 'lesser' evolved species more closely. Their great apes - close relations to humanity, sapient and tool-using but barely so - are intelligent enough to recognize pregnant sophonts, and to bring their own young over for comparison and, apparently, commiseration and cherishing.
Even their sea life, such as their cetacians, appear to be mostly beneficient, compassionate, and empathetic despite having a limited tonal vocabulary and vestigial limbs.
Others of their planetary species evince both intelligence and at times malevolence, such as the antics of their (somewhat) misnamed 'killer whales' and their dolphins, or their other cousins, the viscious Chimpanzees.
Humans are like all of these, and none of them. Capable of compassion, and of cruelty, unlike anything we have registered in Galactic history. We Kindix have waged wars of material, of resources, and of space; but never in our written records have we waged wars of genocide or ideology.
Perhaps that is why we are considered a peripheral race of marginal impact. We observe, we slowly grow, we do not object or interfere or meddle beyond tiny, incremental steps.
But we have studied Humanity, and found both horrors and marvels. Their worst war, recently having passed from living memory, was of two so-called civilized groups vying for resources. Or so we thought, upon surface survey. So, too, did one side of the conflict, think the battle was over resources.
Only it was over genocide. One side of the humans' fought, without ever even knowing that the other sought the obliteration of a subgroup within their population, a "final solution" to a tiny subracial group most of their world didn't even consider a problem.
After all, by the 20th century (17,396 GSR), humanity was emerging into a new dawn of post-tribal, post-racial, post-nationalistic growth. Or so their historians thought. Instead, they had one last gasp, one last hurrah, of homicidal mania in service to nihilistic, narcissistic leaders and ideologies so toxic they no longer translate into Galactic.
Yet at the same time, many humans fought this toxin, often even while unknowning of the depth of its depravity. They let their barely-weaned children, their fittest and youngest, take up arms and serve in the millions, to defeat these oppressive regimes, to fight with weapons terrible new and old, until man once more stood tall, conscience clear but spirit stained, ready to take the next step in their species' evolution.
We see that spirit intact today.
We see it in a human adopting (against all comfort and convenience) an abandoned kitten or puppy why journeying to another location.
We see it when one being (human or otherwise) goes missing, and many humans sign up to search for the missing one(s). It is quite likely, even commonplace, for a searcher to be killed in the process, but still they come, still they search, without pay or expectation.
We see it in a humanity where the concept of "voluntary firefighters and lifeguards" exist. Those who venture, without pay or assigned role, to save and safeguard their fellow citizens against the hazards of fire and water and technology and medical crises, without recompense or recognition.
Humanity is shockingly close to its animalistic, destructive roots. Yet at the same time it is capable of such striking acts of altruism (a human word) and empathy that it is scarcely comprehensible. This is a species of complexity and wonder that can not, MUST NOT, be underestimated. Befriend them at all costs; do not anger them unnecessarily, and worst case, LEAVE THEM ALONE.
I tremble at the thought of our Imperium doing anything to rile them into a temper.
Researcher Jor'Dan P'terson, Kindix Imperium