Humanity, Humane, Humanitarian, etc. I'm writing a story where the characters aren't human, but I know I'm going to use words like this to describe a hospital scene. Any ideas for synonyms?
Humanity: compassion, empathy, decency... Humane: compassionate, caring, decent... Humanitarian: cannibal philanthropist, altruist, benefactor...
If the characters are not human, but you need 'humane' as a character trait... then it comes down to what type of creatures you are writing about. Xenomorphs (the aliens from the film Alien) could have: Xenomanism, which could be their cannibalism. Xenomatarian; Humanitarian Those are just examples, but if you are not including humans in the story at all at any level, then you will probably have to make words up. If however there are humans, you could still use descriptions for the human characteristics by having a human draw the comparison. "That was very compassionate; for a grotesque green blob. Very... humane." I think Simpson had it covered though. Civilized, Good, Good natured, gentle, considerate, understanding, compassionate, sympathetic, tolerant, leniancy, mercy, generosity, pity, magnanimity, charitable, philanthropic ... Of course, those are the good traits... unless you are Vulcan, in which case they only cloud judgement, logic and reason... The opposites should also be evident unless they are ultimately benevolent akin to a God.
Are the aliens in any way in contact with humanity? Unless they are speaking english and have a politically-correct bent, I would just ignore that the words are based on "human" and have it be translation from words based on their concept of community. Um, Xeno means foreign. But with that example, they could just replace the "human" part with their species name. Such as "Vogonity"
