This is the human test, a test to see if you are a human.
These questions were posed by the American comedian, Ze Frank, to see whether his audience was human. I will ask you some of them, and you can see if they apply.
- Have you ever made a small, weird sound when you remembered something embarrassing?
- Have you ever seemed to lose your aeroplane ticket a thousand times as you walked from the check-in to the gate?
- Have you ever laughed or smiled when someone said something mean to you and then spent the rest of the day wondering why you reacted that way?
- Have you ever had a nagging feeling that one day you will be discovered as a fraud?
- Have you ever stared at your phone smiling like an idiot while texting with someone?
Well, congratulations you are human.
With these questions, Ze Frank taps into the parts of being human we so rarely discuss. Our deep anxieties, our senseless irrationalities, our abilities to love people completely.
Perhaps we laugh because they are embarrassing. It feels awkward to acknowledge that we feel all these things.
But we do. They are, truly, what makes us human.
In 1950, the English mathematician Alan Turing developed a series of tests to distinguish between robots and people. The questions, called ‘The Turing Test,’ can be used with some accuracy to ascertain whether, when speaking to a character online, they are a real human being or a highly intelligent software programme.
This year, those questions gained an entirely new relevance. An AI Language Model, called ChatGTP, became a viral sensation. You can pose the most fascinating questions to this robot, and it will answer them as if you were speaking to a real human being. It can have conversations and play word games and share thoughts on current events. It can even write a half-decent sermon.
But there were some questions it couldn’t answer. It still cannot pass the Turing Test. Tech experts promise that, very soon, it might. But, for now, there are certain things it cannot find adequate responses for.
The questions the Turing Test poses of robots to distinguish them from humans ask them to think critically about their inner lives. You might ask them:
- “What event from your life changed the way you think?”
- “How do you feel when you remember your childhood?”
- “Can you describe your emotions in only shapes and colours?”
What makes us human, provably so, is that we feel. We rejoice by laughing from our bellies. We hurt by letting tears fall from our eyes. We rage by clenching our fists. We cringe by curling our toes in our shoes. We fall in love by feeling butterflies in our stomachs.
No algorithm can do that. An algorithm cannot pass that test.
Although machines cannot pass human tests, humans are nevertheless often tested by machines, and measured according to standards set by software.
From the moment children first enter schooling, they are subjected to rigorous examination. Can they multiply figures? Can they recall important historical events and their dates? Can they identify adjectives, verbs, and nouns in sentences?
Of course, it is impressive when children can do these things. But it also measures them by the kinds of things machines can do much better. Often, these exams are even marked by machines.
By the time we finish schooling, we may have spent most of our formative years revising for, sitting, or fretting about the results of exams.
This process doesn’t stop once you enter adulthood. Throughout our working lives, many of us find ourselves undertaking tests to prove we are competent in our jobs.
It’s not entirely a bad thing.
We’d all be quite worried if doctors weren’t checked for their abilities to carry out surgeries or bus drivers didn’t prove they could drive without crashing. Food hygiene certificates and accountancy qualifications are an important part of life.
But they are not all of life. They are not what makes us human.
And, sometimes, they detract from our humanity.
I am going to talk briefly about suicide, and how dehumanising tests can drive people to take their own lives. If you are not in a place where you can hear that right now, I do welcome you to take a break, without judgement, because it is a difficult topic. And if this discussion brings up anything for you, please know that me and Rabbi Jordan are always on-hand for pastoral support and a listening ear.
Earlier this year, a headteacher at a primary school in my hometown, named Ruth Perry, killed herself after receiving a poor Ofsted report.
A study in 2017 found that teen suicides peaked around exam season, as the pressures to do well affronted young people’s mental health.
There are data spreadsheets that recommend redundancies, crashing people’s entire working lives. Disabled people in Britain have to prove to computers that they are sufficiently unwell, or they will have all their benefits cut.
We live in a world full of judgements. You must prove your competence. Or you must flagellate yourself to prove your incompetence. You must prove that you are who you say you are. You must prove you can be somebody else. You must prove your worth.
But, here, you are in God’s house. Your value is not determined by what you can do. You are valuable in this space because God has chosen to make you human.
On Yom Kippur, we are summoned to face a test. But, this time, it’s the human test. The only question you have to answer today is “are you human?”
During the course of this year, have you breathed? Has your heart beat? Has your blood pumped through your veins?
Have you felt sadness and grief and elation and worry and love?
Have you been moved by events in the lives of others, and have you formed new memories of your own?
Congratulations. You have passed the human test.
This is the task that God set for you. That you would be alive. And you are. You are here with us.
God has set you the task of being human, which means feeling, in all its complexity.
Even if you can only remember feeling one thing this year. Even if you only felt bored or exhausted or impatient or in pain, you still felt. You succeeded at doing everything God wanted of you just by being human.
We cannot take it for granted. You might have given up. But if you felt like giving up, well, that was also a success, because that was a feeling. You were being human, just the way God wanted for you.
On Yom Kippur, we read “Kedoshim,” a glorious compilation of the Torah’s greatest laws from the Holiness Code. The first dictum of this parsha from Leviticus is “you will be holy people because the Eternal your God is holy.” It is less a commandment than a statement of fact. You are sacred by the virtue of being human. Your life is blessed because your God is blessed.
There may have been moments this year when you felt like you were being treated as less than human. On Yom Kippur, you are reminded of your humanity. You were never supposed to be a cog in a machine. You were supposed to hunger, and thirst, and tire, and mourn, and reminisce, and sing, and connect, and pray.
Once you have passed the test of being human, all you need to do is extend that humanity to others. Kedoshim continues by reminding you of how to treat others with maximum humanity.
It is a summons to empathy. You will be human and you will treat others as human. You will not only laugh, but you will laugh with others. You will not only hurt, but you will share the hurt of others. When you feel, others will feel with you. And when others feel, you will feel with them.
Torah gives specific examples.
You will feed the poor and house the foreigner. You will be honest with people who do not know if you are lying. You will pay workers straight away.
You will never insult the deaf or lead the blind astray. You will not defer to the powerful, no matter how wealthy they are. You will not take advantage of people who work for you.
All of these laws refer to moments when human beings are at their most vulnerable. They refer to people experiencing poverty, disability, homelessness, and exile. These are people experiencing the greatest possible despair, terror, and misery.
And because they are experiencing these emotions, this is when they are most mortal. This is a picture of humanity at its most human.
Confronted with others in this susceptible state, your Torah commands you to remember that you are human and so are they. You will see the most vulnerable people as if God is shining out through them, and treat them as you would the greatest among yourself.
You will see yourself as fully human, and set aside that robotic urge to calculate kindness or run profit assessments on your mitzvot. You will feel with them instead. You will experience empathy.
If you can feel, you are human. And, if you are human, you have passed God’s test.
That is the human test. The test to see if you are human.
Congratulations. You have passed.
Sim Lev 