"Lately I’ve found myself circling the question of identity through a more basic intuition: a felt absence of unity or totality in what we call “humanity.” When I speak from that place, it’s not abstract speculation so much as attunement to a shared lack. Being in a theatre full of people recently made this palpable to me—I sensed that others were moved by the same unease, the same question.

I’ve tried to express this intuition simply: I believe that if I closed my eyes, a stranger would not let me die. This is the humanity I believe in. I was met with the familiar reply: yes, but the world we live in makes that difficult.

And yet, if the ideal is what motivates the real—as Hegel suggests—then holding onto such an inconceivable trust is not naïveté but orientation. If all that remains to me is speculation, then I choose this one: an idea of humanity that persists not because the world confirms it, but because without it, nothing could move at all".