"You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman"

Every human being is born with an innate sense of empathy, the capacity for connection, and a fundamental desire for community. These qualities are at the heart of what it means to be human. They manifest in our instinct to reach out, to console, to share, and to build relationships. Eldridge Cleaver’s words suggest that humanity does not require instruction, it develops naturally if allowed to flourish. However, what complicates our experience is the pervasive existence of inhumanity: oppression, prejudice, violence, and disconnect. Children are not born hating, distrusting, or devaluing others; they are socialized into such behaviors by the world around them.

As people move through society, they encounter structures, ideologies, and experiences that teach them to suppress their inherent empathy. Prejudices, fears, and competition are introduced, conditions that breed division and alienation. The process of dehumanization, whether inflicted by institutions or cultures, can erode the very qualities that make us human. Systems of injustice or inequality push individuals to close off, to treat others as less than themselves, to disregard suffering.

Cleaver’s observation demands attention to how society perpetuates inhumanity and what can be done to counteract it. Initiatives in education, activism, and social reform often focus on teaching positive virtues, but perhaps the deeper task is undoing the damage caused by systems that foster cruelty and indifference. To foster genuine human connection, people must challenge those forces that numb compassion and encourage exclusion or exploitation. Moral growth, then, becomes not a matter of learning something new but unlearning what is destructive.

Restoring humanity is about cultivating awareness and challenging internalized behaviors that alienate us from others. It requires courage to confront internal and external barriers to empathy, to resist the normalization of inhumanity, and to create environments in which our natural inclinations toward kindness and justice can thrive.