Andrew Farmer

F Block Scripture

The Human Experience

The Human Experience, released in 2010, is a film starring two brothers, Jeffrey and

Clifford, stepping outside of their comfort zone in pursuit of discovering what it means to be a

human. Although I did not have the pleasure of watching all 90 minutes of it due to my absences,

I absorbed enough wisdom from the two brothers that I reconsidered certain attitudes I have

toward society.

Jeffrey and Clifford have their first “human experience” when they go to the bitter, cold

streets of New York and sleep with homeless people for a week. In this situation, they are truly

living by the words of Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird, in crawling around in someone

else’s skin. The pain and loneliness all homeless people must feel is unimaginable to me, and I’m

sure it was to the Azize brothers before they went through this experience. Being without a

shelter may be painful and lonely, but this experience taught me that humans never lose all hope.

There is no such thing as complete hopelessness. The homeless people in New York City

combined their materials to create a shelter to sleep in - together.

“And that’s learning. Everyone lives differently,” Jeffrey says. Always thinking from one

point of view is ignorance. We can never truly understand any situation until we relate to all

feelings involved. We are all equal, anatomically similar human beings that experience the same

emotions. We must learn not to disregard the opinions and experiences of others. For example,

we are all taught from a young age how the Europeans settled the Americas, giving them

religious freedom. Learning this as a second grader, my classmates and I felt happy for the

victory of the Europeans. What is not mentioned in elementary school, however, is the fact that

Native American culture was destroyed. Entire cities and populations were wiped out. Just as

learning about the tragedy of the Native Americans changes one’s perspective on colonization,

learning about certain people in a certain situation can change our perspective on their situation.

The third experience of the Azize brothers influenced me the most. Jeffrey and Clifford

go to Africa to visit families suffering from AIDS as well as people with leprosy who have been

exiled from their villages. Previous to watching this movie, I had always had the terms “poor

people in Africa”, “lepers”, and “people who are dying,” tossed around loosely. I had heard about

these people who are much less fortunate than me, but never quite associated a reality with these

terms. Seeing these people living in terrible conditions made me realize just how fortunate I truly

am. However what amazed me is how these people were not despairing over their lives. In fact,

they were delighted to meet the two brothers. They were experiencing emotions we all feel on an

everyday basis. This did away with any classist or ableist ideas.

The Human Experience did a wonderful job of displaying how all humans experience the

same things. No human is better than another, despite what they have. I often like to compare

human beings to animals, since that is what we really are. Certain members of a species are not

better than another member of a species because they come from different regions. They are the

same species. The idea of inequality in animalistic societies sounds absurd to us… then why has

society- human beings- created the idea that certain genders or races are better than others, or

that money can buy you happiness? We make our species much more complex than it is in

reality. At an underlying level, we are a very simple species with nearly 8 billion members who

experience the same chemical reactions in their brains. We all relate to one another, breathe, eat,

cry, smile, and countless other things. The human experience would not be called the human

experience if all humans did not have it.