How to care for a human, Chapter 1: basic needs

Welcome to your guide to humanity and basic human functioning. The purpose of this text is to guide you through owning and operating your human’s body. This text presumes that you have a fully functioning adult human on your hands or that you are assisting a teenage human on the path to becoming a fully functioning human. This text is not meant to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of human operations but rather a quick reference to get you started. For a more in depth treatise on care and feeding of humans we recommend Xlok’s Idiot’s Guide to Humans: the A to Z encyclopedia on humanity. Or if you’d like a human’s view of humanity you could consult wikipedia.org. Both are constantly being updated and are relatively reliable sources.

First and foremost, human mouths are disgusting and should be cleaned often. Each of a human’s ~32 teeth has crevices where bacteria grow and food gets lodged. Your human should brush its teeth twice a day and floss its teeth once a day. Specific instructions for both operations are found on the internet. Most humans like to do this when they arise from their slumber and before they shut down for the night. Occasionally your human should also visit a dentist for a more thorough cleaning and repair of the teeth. Teeth in humans are especially interesting as they were, in days past, not just an annoyance but a major source of death. An infection in the tooth can lead to death quite rapidly and should never be ignored. Shakespeare (noted human author) once wrote an entire motive around a toothache for one of his most mysterious villains, Iago from the movie Alladin. One can often tell if a human isn’t brushing their teeth often enough by the smell of the human’s breath. It will smell like raw compost which may appeal to some of you but is incredibly repulsive to other humans. If you’d like your human to live a long life, fall in love, and have friends, a clean mouth is a necessity.

Like the mouth, humans’ bodies accumulate filth quite easily and should be washed carefully multiple times a week or even multiple times a day depending on the activity. Human skin, in particular, secretes oils and salts and attracts funguses and bacteria. If your human isn’t cleaned occasionally, they will begin to omit an odor which smells like sour cream or worse, a garbage dump. This odor is offensive to other humans and even literally repulsive if left untreated for too long. There is quite a lot of debate about the use of soaps and deodorants on your human body. These debates are tedious. Please use soap and make sure that your human washes their hair unless you want the human to smell like a wet dog.

Humans need sleep, though exactly how much sleep they need is usually down to the individual human. Often the human need for sleep will clash with other needs like the need for money in order to provide the other basic needs like food and shelter. If your human isn’t getting enough sleep they will become irritable, distracted, and can even hallucinate depending on how long they have gone without sleep.

Humans require sustenance and must eat nourishing meals two to six times a day depending on the activity and function of the human. While the human body can live off of mostly “junk” food it isn’t recommended as the main diet if longevity and high function is expected. If your expectation of your human is to be a “couch potato” sub-type (aka. a “writer” or “thinker”) and long life is not a goal, then nearly any diet is fine. However, if long life is a goal then particular care should be taken to feed the human a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables along with lean meats and fish*. You can supplement your human’s diet with grains but care should be taken not to feed them too much grains as this leads to poor functioning of the human body. Also, avoid processed foods which are often high in fats, salts, and sugars and other preservatives which damage your human’s organs like liver, kidney, arteries, and heart.

One curiosity of human societies is that these dangerous processed foods are extremely cheap and plentiful. Thus, most humans can only afford to eat a diet of mostly processed foods, especially in the so-called wealthy societies. These foods also cause the human brain to release chemicals which create a temporary sense of euphoria and are in a sense addictive to humans. The human brain evolved eons ago to release these chemicals in order to train the human to seek out foods high in fat, salt, and sugar because eating these foods correlated with a higher chance of survival. However, your human is no longer scavenging for food on the high plains and food scarcity is a rare problem for most humans. Recognizing this as a reality, your human should be instructed to try to eat as much whole fresh vegetables, grains, and meats as possible and avoid processed foods as much as possible. But you should also understand that sometimes a human is just going to eat a “hot dog”. We will talk more about how to address this in the section on instructing the human to prepare their own food.

Some humans require specialty diets. This is just something you must understand. Some humans literally cannot eat certain foods or they will die. Please pay careful attention to your human. If they show signs of inflammation, diarrhea, vomiting, and anaphylaxis, you must get them to a doctor immediately and be prepared to adjust their diet according to their needs. The human body is odd and the human mind is even odder still. While you might think that a human should just have a steady diet of food that is good for them and while this makes perfect sense, some humans are picky about what they eat and will refuse to eat certain foods. In addition, human societies are organized around scarcity and plenty and as noted above some humans cannot afford to eat healthy foods because healthy foods are more expensive than junk food. Again, the only real option here is to understand when your human eats “like shit” since humanity seems to think that this is the only and best way to function.

One quick tip: humans generally don’t need vitamins and supplements in their diet with a few notable exceptions. Vitamin C and D are clinically proven to provide the human body with much needed micronutrients. A daily vitamin C and D supplement is recommended for all humans. Sunlight is also recommended for almost all humans and exposing a human’s legs and arms to brief periods of sunlight is essential. Beware, however, of scammers who will try to sell the human supplements that they don’t need like “ionized water” and garbage like “athletic greens”. Vitamin C and D (and maybe calcium) are all that a human needs if they are eating a well balanced diet.

Humans need nature. The human body evolved in tandem with nature and requires brief sojourns into nature for proper functioning of the body and mind. We know, for example, that the human gut biome requires bacteria from nature. Without this the human body cannot digest food and survive. Some recent research suggests that many diseases can be prevented and cured simply by changing a human’s gut biome. We also know that prolonged space travel damages human DNA which is why humans will never be able to live on Mars or the Moon. They are an unusual species in this regard, they have the technology to leave the planet’s atmosphere but are planetary bound by their physical bodies. This makes it all the more ironic that they are destroying their biome. This “back to nature” requirement can be a simple 1 hour walk once a week in the woods or it can be multiple, long, trips into the woods.

Shelter is also one of the human’s basic needs. Without shelter your human will likely die of exposure to the elements. Human societies often are organized around shelter and sheltering centers (called cities) and the human family is often a prime means of gaining shelter. Some humans exploit this need for shelter by becoming landlords and charging another human for the privilege of providing them with shelter. Ironically, by paying the landlord their “rent” the renter enables the landlord to own the property which the renter rents. It’s a crazy system which harkens back to early human societies in which wealthy landowners used their wealth and power to essentially enslave a local population who would be forced to work the land in order to survive. Humans could solve this problem by building more shelters or passing laws which control profits on shelter but they choose not to because controlled scarcity is one of the main ways that humans generate wealth and most humans live in a fantasy world where they could one day become wealthy. It’s best for humans not to think about this system too much or it will drive them crazy. But the important thing is that your human will need to work to have shelter or it will die under an overpass somewhere, which is the actual policy of the conservative parties of the USA and UK.

Humans should also wear clothing. Most human societies frown on nudity and especially genital nudity. Clothing, however, is not a drag! Humans can be colorfully decorated in their clothing and choosing a fashion is often the only joy a human can experience (along with eating junk food). Fashion can also be a means of organizing humans into sub-groups called “cultures” and “sub-cultures” and provide a veritable cornucopia of signifiers about your human’s chosen or imposed identity. Clothing can also be used as a form of oppression, unfortunately, as humans have a special way of turning their most beautiful inventions into way to harm their fellow humans. If at all possible, allow the human to choose their own clothing. It can become a powerful tool for their self-expression. We will discuss identity and the human need for self-expression later but for now just note that most humans are deeply unhappy when they are not allowed to express themselves and suppression of this need leads to maladaptive humans which can lead to suicide and other forms of violence.

Work. Most humans have to work. They have to work to earn money. Money buys them shelter and food. For the vast majority of humans having a “job” is required. Most humans will hate their job until they find one that they can tolerate. Most jobs, however, are bullshit jobs and humans just do them in order to have money to buy shelter and food.

There are some exceptions to the need to have a job but they are rare and mostly undesirable. Some humans are born with or acquire a disability and cannot work. One would think that the human society would want to care for these individuals because at any moment they too could become disabled but human societies are often cruel and heartless and humans like to pretend that these things will never happen to them or their loved ones so as a result many human societies don’t care for disabled humans very well if at all (see above, the “go die under an overpass” policy which is prevalent in many societies).

Another class of humans who don’t work are scammers. Some humans are adept at scamming other humans into giving them money in exchange for little or no work. Politicians, CEOs, landlords, generationally wealthy people, royalty (these people still exist! It’s incredible!), evangelical preachers, supplement scammers, sports journalists, bloggers, vloggers, influencers, and local TV 11pm news weather forecasters are all scammers. We know this, the humans know this, but humans seem to love being scammed, it’s their number one economic activity. The humans of the USA elected the biggest fraudster in US history to be president of the United States! But even on a small level, humans almost can’t resist being scammed. For example, if a human is reading this right now and I say “here’s a link to my paypal, send me $5 in exchange for nothing. I will give you nothing! And I promise that I won’t even use this money in any way that will benefit anyone but myself!” some humans will send me money. It’s a strange phenomenon.

Humans also need love and community (there are always exceptions but this applies to most humans). Humans are social animals and as such they crave interaction with others. Some more so than others. But we will cover social and emotional needs in chapter 2.

Qq

*humans often pretend that fish is not a meat and I have kept the pretence here in case any humans are accidentally reading this guide.