A friend  asked me what it truly means to be human. Is it breathing? Procreating? Is it the way we evolve over time? What really separates us from every other species on this earth?

In the Netflix film The Great Flood (2025),  human emotion is described as a striking, non-negotiable factor—one that defines us as human. Yet, those same emotions raise difficult questions about our choices and actions: how we respond to threat or danger, how we treat one another, and who we become when pushed to the edge.

Human emotion, then, requires balance. We can be savage when survival demands it, or gentle—almost dolphin-like—when we don’t feel cornered. We are capable of warmth and cruelty, empathy and indifference, often within the same moment.

If emotion is truly the key to our humanity, the question remains:
Do we hold the lock to it, or is it as unstable as water, shifting shape depending on the vessel that contains it?