Let us for a moment, forget about the existence of the future. Suspend, too, the assumption that “humanity” is a self-evident reality. Strip away the inherited layers of philosophy, law, religion, and ideology, and ask a more foundational question: Does humanity exist?

Not as a collection of individual humans—but as a singular entity, a cohesive “we,” something worthy of ethical commitment or emotional attachment. Is humanity a real thing, or merely an abstraction, a ghost conjured by imagination, a placeholder that never truly held form?