The human condition refers to the traits, emotions and reactions that make us "human" and describe what it is to be human. The term is also used to describe joy, love, hate, humor, jealousy, and other emotions associated with existing. Humans are aware of the passage of time, can remember the past and imagine the future, and are intimately aware of their own mortality. Only humans ask questions about life beyond the base need for survival, and the very fact that we can conceive them and ask them, defines the human condition.
The human condition can also be described as the reason for conflict, or the reason why we all can't get along. Conflicts are caused by a set of limitations, such as ignorance or imperfection, which prevent humans from achieving peaceful coexistence. This friction, mental or real, and how they weigh upon us and society about us, is the human condition.
In literature, humans try to express what it is like to be human through art, song, and poetry. Writers will try to capture emotions, and portray the feelings of the characters as they happen in the story. Typically, there is a flaw in some character or some aspect of the story, which the targeted audience can all relate to, such as blind love in "Romeo and Juliet." The quest to solve the conflict of the story, or improve the human situation, empowers the story with meaning.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
This famous expression and a play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 expresses the fact that literature, when used correctly, has a greater impact than war. The quest to improve the human situation, by understanding the human condition, can unite people in similar situations, such as Thomas Pain's "Common Sense" did for Colonial America.