What Is Humia?

I didn’t set out to invent a word.

I was trying to name a feeling I kept running into again and again — a quiet but persistent sense that the systems we live our lives in aren’t designed for us.

Not just my life, but most people’s lives.

We’re told we live in an age of progress, yet so many people feel worn down, anxious, disposable, or behind — even when they’re doing everything “right.” Work gets harder. Systems get more complex. Dignity often feels conditional: tied to productivity, health, age, conformity, or usefulness.

At some point, I realized the problem wasn’t motivation, mindset, or moral failure.

It was design — systems that work well for a few while leaving many people struggling to fit.

The Question That Wouldn’t Go Away

The question that kept returning was simple:

What would the world look like if it were designed for human beings as they actually are — not as abstractions, metrics, or inputs?

Humans have bodies.
We age.
We get sick.
We get tired.

We need meaning, care, autonomy, and belonging — not as luxuries, but as basics.

Yet many of the systems we live inside seem to forget this.

I didn’t want a slogan.
I wanted a word for the condition that exists when those realities are taken seriously.

That word became Humia.

What Humia Means

Humia combines:

  • hum- (human)

  • -ia (a state, condition, or place)

Together, it means:

The condition in which human dignity and wellbeing are treated as the baseline — not something you have to earn.

Humia isn’t a fantasy future.
It’s not a utopia.
It doesn’t assume perfect people or perfect systems.

It assumes that human dignity is a matter of reality, not belief, and asks whether the world we are building is actually livable for real human lives.

Why This Matters Now

Technology is accelerating.

Artificial intelligence, automation, and new economic systems are reshaping work, income, and daily life faster than most people can absorb.

That change can move in very different directions.

It can:

  • reduce human lives to optimization problems

Or it can:

  • free people to live with more security, creativity, and dignity

Humia doesn’t oppose progress.

It insists that progress be measured differently.

Not just by growth.
Not just by efficiency.

But by a quieter, more human metric:

Does this make human life easier to inhabit?

Why This Is Personal

Humia is not an abstract project for me.

It emerged at a time when I was facing real health and financial challenges — the kind that make it very easy to feel expendable, out of place, or quietly written off by the systems around you.

In moments like that, it becomes painfully clear how quickly dignity is treated as conditional — how easily worth is tied to output, resilience, or usefulness.

Humia gave me a way to make sense of that experience without turning inward in blame or giving up entirely.

It gave me direction when it would have been easier to lose it.
And it gave me a reason to keep asking better questions instead of retreating into despair or denial.

I’m building Humia because it helped me stay oriented toward life — and I hope it can do the same for others who find themselves at similar crossroads.

This Is Personal — and Shared

Even so, Humia isn’t about me.

If you’ve ever felt:

  • like you don’t quite fit the system you’re in

  • like dignity is conditional instead of inherent

  • like “success” often ignores what it costs people to achieve it

Then you already understand Humia — even if you’ve never had a word for it.

What You’ll Find Here

Humia is a place to explore:

  • why human dignity is real in fact, not just in belief

  • how systems can be redesigned around that reality

  • how technology can support, rather than erode, human agency

  • how work and income might evolve toward stability instead of anxiety

  • how kindness, realism, and optimism can coexist

Not through hype.
Not through ideology.

But through careful thinking, lived experience, and honest questions.

In the End

Humia is simply a way of saying:

Let’s stop treating human lives as statistics — and start designing the world as if they are the point.

If that resonates, you’re already in the right place.

You don’t need to believe anything to be here.
You only need to believe that human lives should be easier to live than they often are.

That’s Humia.

David Blood

David Mitchell Blood

the founder of humia, a reflective space exploring how technology, design, and culture can be realigned toward human dignity, shared prosperity, and lives that feel worth living.

This work is shaped by a lifelong curiosity about systems—how they form, how they drift away from human needs, and how they can be gently redirected rather than fought. From early dreams of a kinder, more coherent future to present-day engagement with AI, economics, and social design, his focus has remained consistent: helping people orient themselves toward possibility without denying reality.

humia is not about utopia or escape. It is about practical hope—clear thinking, humane values, and the belief that better futures are built through understanding, care, and thoughtful design.

Below is a Deep Dive audio overview of humia.