Overview

A group of people are any collective group of persons. Such groups may be related by their location, ethnicity, religion, skin color, occupation or other similar characteristic. A specific group of people may hold certain beliefs and values, form organizations or live together. An individual person is typically thought to be a human, but other species and supernatural beings may also be given personhood.

Some people are widely-known are considered celebrities, meaning a person who is celebrated. Celebrities may have to achieve very little to gain their celebrity status, while others may work very hard or go to extraordinary lengths. The development of the mass media has lead to a huge number of celebrities, many of whom are "fleeting celebrities" that attract public attention for a short amount of time. In the words of artist Andy Warhol, such celebrities experience only "fifteen minutes of fame".

Personhood

An individual person may typically have a conscious mind with imagination which is able to think towards the future. A person may also be characterized by their physical or mental development, the ability to love or feel emotion, the ability to communicate or other human characteristics. A person is expected to be both morally responsible and in turn have moral rights, while a non-person is not expected to follow moral guidelines.

The United Nations and other organizations strongly support the need for the rights and responsibilities of all humans be upheld, including the right to live. However, whether one can be considered a living human is questionable. For instance, anti-abortionists claim that abortion is the murder of living creature, yet others argue that an unborn baby is not living. Equally, a person who is not fully physically or mentally developed or is not in a conscious state may not be considered a person. Less-evolved human individuals, groups or cultures have also not been given person status in the past.