Resisting dehumanisation: The quiet power of being human in an age of technology

20 hours ago

4 min read

By Baluku Shafik Siriwayo

In a world increasingly dominated by technology, productivity and instant answers, are we losing the art of truly understanding one another? Ugandan humanist Baluku Shafik Siriwayo explores the quiet power of empathy, curiosity and attentive listening, arguing that genuine human connection offers its own form of resistance to dehumanisation.

Shafik is Vice President of the Humanist Club at Isaac Newton High School and Chief Editor of The Pulse, the school magazine. He is also Director of the Bahasi Help Orphans Family Foundation which is a a small youth-led charitable organisation in Bundibugyo, Uganda.

We live in a world that rewards being busy. We measure productivity in emails sent, tasks completed and goals achieved. But rarely do we measure the one thing people actually crave: being seen.

Not “seen” as in watched but “seen” as in understood. The humanities remind us that humans are not problems to solve. We are stories to listen to. Before psychology, before economics, before artificial intelligence, there was a simple act: one person looking at another and saying, “I get it. You matter.”

That's what literature does. That's what history does. That's what a good conversation does.

More than numbers

Technology gives us speed, but it can sometimes strip away context. We get brief opinions instead of life stories. We get data about people instead of dialogue with people. The humanities encourage us to slow down. Reading a novel can teach us empathy because we spend hundreds of pages inside someone else's mind. Studying history teaches us humility because we discover how often people have believed they had all the answers. Studying art reminds us that meaning cannot always be measured in terms of efficiency.

When we forget these lessons, we risk treating people like metrics. Students become test scores. Patients become cases. Employees become performance indicators. Of course, numbers and technology have their place. Data can reveal suffering and injustice that might otherwise remain invisible. But statistics alone cannot capture the richness of an individual life.

Data tells us what's happening. Stories tell us why it matters.

In a world of answers, ask better questions

We're living in the age of answers. Ask your phone almost anything and it replies in seconds. Ask AI to write an essay, a poem or a business plan, and the result appears almost instantly. But in our rush to get answers, have we forgotten the power of questions?

Philosophy, literature, history and art remind us that understanding often begins with uncertainty. They encourage us to question what we think we know, and consider perspectives beyond our own.

Socrates didn't teach by lecturing. He asked questions: What is justice? What is a good life? More than 2,000 years later, we are still exploring them.

A novel puts us inside someone else's life and asks, “What would you do?” History invites us to examine what happened before and ask what we might learn from it.

Answers can give us certainty. Questions give us depth. When we chase only quick answers, we may become efficient but shallow. We optimise, produce and move on. But do we stop to wonder?

Who benefits from this? What are we losing in the name of progress? What does it mean to be human when machines can do so much of what we do? Technology can help us discover how. The humanities encourage us to ask why.

Students wearing Isaac Newton Humanist School tee shirts

The lost art of not knowing

We've made not knowing feel like failure. In school, on social media and at work, we're often rewarded for sounding confident. Yet some of our most human moments happen in the pause before an answer. In a therapy session. In a late-night conversation. In reading a poem we don't fully understand but somehow feel in our hearts. That pause is where empathy grows. Because to ask a real question, you have to admit: “I don't already know you.” And that takes humility.

Perhaps the humanistic antidote to a hurried world is simpler than we imagine: curiosity instead of judgement, presence instead of performance, and a willingness to listen before offering advice.

You don't always need the perfect answer. Sometimes people just need ten minutes in which no one is scrolling, interrupting, or trying to solve their problems.

A small act of resistance

This week, try replacing one answer with one question. Instead of “You should do this”, try “What do you think would help?” Instead of scrolling past a headline, ask “Who's missing from this story?” Instead of finishing someone's sentence, say “Tell me more about that.” You may not become more efficient. But you might become more human.

The future will be built by engineers, coders and entrepreneurs. But it will only be worth living in if it is also shaped by people who read poetry, study culture, and remember that every person has an inner world. We don't need more content. We need more connection. In a world of noise, choosing to listen, to question and to understand another person is a quiet form of resistance. No algorithm can replace the feeling of being truly understood. And perhaps the quality of our lives will be determined not by how quickly we find answers, but by what we have the courage to ask.