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Why I am not a humanist - Atheist Foundation of Australia
Finally some honesty and a solidly worded philosophical essay on the the tenuous relationship between atheism and humanism.
Why I am Not a Humanist
Author:
Nigel Sinnott
No, I have not forsaken three quarters of a lifetime's atheism and found myself a god or a guru. But I would like to set out my reasons for being profoundly unhappy - as I have been for 25 years - about belonging to a movement with the general label "humanist".
Until the 1940s what is now called the humanist movement was known as the freethought movement. In its broadest sense it did and does encompass a spectrum from militant irreligion through rationalism to groups of agnostics, some of whom regarded themselves as religious. The older word, "freethought", aptly described the common denominator of these disparate organisations, namely, that they attracted people who insisted on the right to follow their own line of musing and reasoning, specifically on religious matters, instead of accepting some dogmatic, supernatural creed.
The word "humanist" began to catch on in freethought circles in the 1950s, perhaps because it had connotations of the Renaissance and the university. (The Renaissance humanists changed stylised, rather rigid mediaeval forms of art and literature to naturalistic representation and more free expression; they also encouraged a reawakened interest in scientific inquiry. At universities the word humanist had long signified a student of the liberal arts, classics and philosophy, as distinct from engineering or "hard" sciences. The 1950s and '60s also witnessed a boom in secondary and tertiary education, so "humanism" had - or seemed to have - an educated, refined image which old working-class secularism allegedly lacked. The generic term "rationalism" had sometimes been used for the broad freethought movement, but some of the new humanists found rationalism an arid word, connoting an exclusive devotion to reason, despite the fact that sensible rationalists avoided any claim that reason was the only good in human life.
By the 1960s, however, "humanist" in a new sense had come into its own. During the period from 1959 to 1966 a large number of new humanist societies were formed, especially in Britain, and some rationalist organisations cashed in on the vogue word and changed their names to "humanist". For a while, "humanist" was flavour of the month. But fashions are fickle things, and the popularity of humanism has waned since the 1960s just as that of secularism did after the 1880s.
I do not wish to decry the 1960s. The period had its faults, such as the narcissism of the "me generation" and venal gurus who pandered to mass naïveté. But it was also a period of relative prosperity and full employment, of new-found freedom for the young; a time of optimism, unselfish idealism, experiment, protest and worthwhile change. I am glad I was young then, rather than now.
If humanism is no longer a band-wagon word, there is little pragmatic argument for its retention as a name for the freethought movement in general. My main contention, however, is that humanism is now more of a liability than an asset.
The people who promoted the word humanism in the 1960s had their merits. They knew what was politically relevant at the time and how to campaign on particular issues. However, they often seemed to have a horror of anything they perceived as "negative". Hustlers and some politicians show the same tendency today. Humanist had a "positive" ring to it, despite the fact that what unified the movement was its disbelief in supernaturalism and its rejection of authority in philosophy, two thoroughly negative - but valuable - features.
I strongly assert that the search for and maintenance of truth, which is often negative, is more important than contrived efforts always to seem "positive".
My principle objection to humanism is the implication by its promoters that freethinkers do - or should - "believe in Man". I dissent from this on two grounds. It is reminiscent of "I believe in God", and I contend that the freethought or rationalist movement should not be promoting an ersatz religious mode of thinking but offering a radical departure from it by saying that the whole concept of "believing in" (in the dogmatic religious sense) is erroneous. Belief, for a freethinker, should be tentative, and open to amendment and reasoned argument. Atheists rightly regard "Jesus saves" as a flatulent slogan; "Man is the measure of all things" is immodest, unscientific bunkum, and it is high time someone said so.
The cult of Man with a capital M is only a slight improvement on the cult of God. It still leaves a lot to be desired, women for instance. If the Christians' idea that they belong to the same exclusive club as the creator of the universe sounds to us infidels as monstrous conceit, I can only add that I find almost as pompous and egotistical the notion that man is some marvellous pinnacle of evolution; that because Homo sapiens has produced Einstein and Michelangelo we can forget about the Nazis, the Crusaders and the Khmer Rouge; or that a Gothic cathedral, an air-conditioned office block or the mausoleum of some ancient megalomaniac justify our destruction of the world's forests, some of the most biologically valuable and breath-takingly beautiful places on earth.
Worse still, the adulation by some humanists of the human intellect (unique as it appears to be) encourages the old-fashioned nonsense that men and women are specially set apart from other living organisms and, worst of all, that the human race has an evolutionary destiny (formerly God's permission) to conquer and subdue nature.
"Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things" wrote Swinburne, my favourite poet. The words are marvellous rhetoric, intended to shock mid-nineteenth century piety, but today, if taken seriously, they would be a recipe for an ecological nightmare. If any other species of animal had caused a quarter as much destruction of life (including annihilation of whole species), degradation of landscape, fouling of the seas and pollution of the air as humanity has, we would have declared such an animal - however smart and intelligent - to be dangerous vermin and would be spending vast resources on destroying it.
It seems to me to be callous and smug to adulate Humanity with a capital H. Yes, we can devise elaborate instruments and drop them on the planet Mars. Meanwhile, half the members of our own species are starving or nearly so. Another half, women, are often treated as drudges and serfs. Intelligence does not necessarily produce wisdom or goodness. It took brains and education to design the gas chambers at Auschwitz; skill to timetable the cattle trucks.
In addition to "Man's inhumanity to man" there is humanity's massive, cruel exploitation of non-human animals for food, clothing, experiments and what passes for amusement. Protests against exploitation of animals have come from many quarters, but within the freethought tradition from Shelley and Henry S. Salt. More than half a century ago Britain's National Secular Society added a better deal for animals to its aims and objects. Yet not so long ago (this article was first written in June and July 1987) a humanist said to me, "I don't think animals have anything to do with humanism." We were talking about the concept of animal rights. I certainly want nothing to do with that sort of retrograde human chauvinism.
Unlike humanists I am not very proud of my membership of the human race. Yet I hope I am a good freethinker; I would like to think I am a reasonable rationalist; and I am very sure that secularism offers a happier prospect for humanity than the hells on earth created wherever religious zealots obtain power.
More than a hundred years ago the militant freethought movement started a campaign to make the public aware that it was possible to limit family size. It was probably the most valuable thing the movement has ever done. Freethinkers promoted birth control because they realised that resources for human consumption were finite. They hoped that small families would reduce poverty and give ordinary people more control over their lives. It is not surprising that religious conservatives have always opposed birth control: they know - consciously or instinctively - that over-breeding in a human population makes for political and economic instability, poverty and anxiety, just the conditions in which supernatural religion flourishes. Orthodox religion is a more cynical business than some humanists imagine.
I want the world to be a place fit for my grandchildren, where they will have space to move, freedom and time to think, wilderness to admire; a world where people can live in harmony with plants and animals. I do not want them to be forced to elbow their way through an overcrowded, stressed, war-riddled civilisation that has degraded the face of the earth into either ugly cities or vast, intensively farmed monocultures. It would only be a matter of time before such a society destroyed itself.
If we want the first sort of civilisation in the future, rather than the second, we may have to forgo a few fancy gadgets or devise more sensible alternatives; we will need to control our human numbers, put world poverty and land misuse before national privilege, nuclear war-toys and space research (without blunting our scientific curiosity), and change the emphasis of our throw-away, consumer society. Above all, we will need a more sensitive, perceptive view of the role of the human race on this planet, one which will understand the right of other animals to breathe free in the air we at present pollute, one which will appreciate the value - practical and aesthetic - of plants, trees and wilderness.
In creating a better world the freethought movement, if it gets its priorities right, has a useful part to play. The movement can promote a reasoned, scientific approach to problems; can ensure that human beings have more personal control over their minds, bodies and lives; can support freedom of speech and expression against efforts by the far right and far left to muzzle society; it can oppose new superstitions and pseudo-science and continue its historic role of exposing the restrictive, irrational and essentially totalitarian pack mentality encouraged by orthodox religion.
We have seen the religious ethic of faith and universal love produce - in reality - hatred, intolerance and barbarism. For this reason, I think we should be wary of any general answer to the world's complex problems which is restricted to human considerations limited by the virtues and vices, diligence and greed, foresight and folly of just a section of humanity, the privileged middle class of the richer industrialised countries.
What has become pressingly important today is humanity's need to realise - and take action on the fact - that we do not stand apart from other living organisms. We are a part of nature: we can only "conquer" nature by destroying the natural world and ourselves with it. Homo sapiens badly needs a sense of ecological humility, combined with curiosity and intellectual integrity. We do not need blinkered conceit dignified as humanism, or evasion of the facts of life and death sanctified as religion.
Revised by N.H.S., 23 November 2001.
Why I am Not a Humanist
Author:
Nigel Sinnott
No, I have not forsaken three quarters of a lifetime's atheism and found myself a god or a guru. But I would like to set out my reasons for being profoundly unhappy - as I have been for 25 years - about belonging to a movement with the general label "humanist".
Until the 1940s what is now called the humanist movement was known as the freethought movement. In its broadest sense it did and does encompass a spectrum from militant irreligion through rationalism to groups of agnostics, some of whom regarded themselves as religious. The older word, "freethought", aptly described the common denominator of these disparate organisations, namely, that they attracted people who insisted on the right to follow their own line of musing and reasoning, specifically on religious matters, instead of accepting some dogmatic, supernatural creed.
The word "humanist" began to catch on in freethought circles in the 1950s, perhaps because it had connotations of the Renaissance and the university. (The Renaissance humanists changed stylised, rather rigid mediaeval forms of art and literature to naturalistic representation and more free expression; they also encouraged a reawakened interest in scientific inquiry. At universities the word humanist had long signified a student of the liberal arts, classics and philosophy, as distinct from engineering or "hard" sciences. The 1950s and '60s also witnessed a boom in secondary and tertiary education, so "humanism" had - or seemed to have - an educated, refined image which old working-class secularism allegedly lacked. The generic term "rationalism" had sometimes been used for the broad freethought movement, but some of the new humanists found rationalism an arid word, connoting an exclusive devotion to reason, despite the fact that sensible rationalists avoided any claim that reason was the only good in human life.
By the 1960s, however, "humanist" in a new sense had come into its own. During the period from 1959 to 1966 a large number of new humanist societies were formed, especially in Britain, and some rationalist organisations cashed in on the vogue word and changed their names to "humanist". For a while, "humanist" was flavour of the month. But fashions are fickle things, and the popularity of humanism has waned since the 1960s just as that of secularism did after the 1880s.
I do not wish to decry the 1960s. The period had its faults, such as the narcissism of the "me generation" and venal gurus who pandered to mass naïveté. But it was also a period of relative prosperity and full employment, of new-found freedom for the young; a time of optimism, unselfish idealism, experiment, protest and worthwhile change. I am glad I was young then, rather than now.
If humanism is no longer a band-wagon word, there is little pragmatic argument for its retention as a name for the freethought movement in general. My main contention, however, is that humanism is now more of a liability than an asset.
The people who promoted the word humanism in the 1960s had their merits. They knew what was politically relevant at the time and how to campaign on particular issues. However, they often seemed to have a horror of anything they perceived as "negative". Hustlers and some politicians show the same tendency today. Humanist had a "positive" ring to it, despite the fact that what unified the movement was its disbelief in supernaturalism and its rejection of authority in philosophy, two thoroughly negative - but valuable - features.
I strongly assert that the search for and maintenance of truth, which is often negative, is more important than contrived efforts always to seem "positive".
My principle objection to humanism is the implication by its promoters that freethinkers do - or should - "believe in Man". I dissent from this on two grounds. It is reminiscent of "I believe in God", and I contend that the freethought or rationalist movement should not be promoting an ersatz religious mode of thinking but offering a radical departure from it by saying that the whole concept of "believing in" (in the dogmatic religious sense) is erroneous. Belief, for a freethinker, should be tentative, and open to amendment and reasoned argument. Atheists rightly regard "Jesus saves" as a flatulent slogan; "Man is the measure of all things" is immodest, unscientific bunkum, and it is high time someone said so.
The cult of Man with a capital M is only a slight improvement on the cult of God. It still leaves a lot to be desired, women for instance. If the Christians' idea that they belong to the same exclusive club as the creator of the universe sounds to us infidels as monstrous conceit, I can only add that I find almost as pompous and egotistical the notion that man is some marvellous pinnacle of evolution; that because Homo sapiens has produced Einstein and Michelangelo we can forget about the Nazis, the Crusaders and the Khmer Rouge; or that a Gothic cathedral, an air-conditioned office block or the mausoleum of some ancient megalomaniac justify our destruction of the world's forests, some of the most biologically valuable and breath-takingly beautiful places on earth.
Worse still, the adulation by some humanists of the human intellect (unique as it appears to be) encourages the old-fashioned nonsense that men and women are specially set apart from other living organisms and, worst of all, that the human race has an evolutionary destiny (formerly God's permission) to conquer and subdue nature.
"Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things" wrote Swinburne, my favourite poet. The words are marvellous rhetoric, intended to shock mid-nineteenth century piety, but today, if taken seriously, they would be a recipe for an ecological nightmare. If any other species of animal had caused a quarter as much destruction of life (including annihilation of whole species), degradation of landscape, fouling of the seas and pollution of the air as humanity has, we would have declared such an animal - however smart and intelligent - to be dangerous vermin and would be spending vast resources on destroying it.
It seems to me to be callous and smug to adulate Humanity with a capital H. Yes, we can devise elaborate instruments and drop them on the planet Mars. Meanwhile, half the members of our own species are starving or nearly so. Another half, women, are often treated as drudges and serfs. Intelligence does not necessarily produce wisdom or goodness. It took brains and education to design the gas chambers at Auschwitz; skill to timetable the cattle trucks.
In addition to "Man's inhumanity to man" there is humanity's massive, cruel exploitation of non-human animals for food, clothing, experiments and what passes for amusement. Protests against exploitation of animals have come from many quarters, but within the freethought tradition from Shelley and Henry S. Salt. More than half a century ago Britain's National Secular Society added a better deal for animals to its aims and objects. Yet not so long ago (this article was first written in June and July 1987) a humanist said to me, "I don't think animals have anything to do with humanism." We were talking about the concept of animal rights. I certainly want nothing to do with that sort of retrograde human chauvinism.
Unlike humanists I am not very proud of my membership of the human race. Yet I hope I am a good freethinker; I would like to think I am a reasonable rationalist; and I am very sure that secularism offers a happier prospect for humanity than the hells on earth created wherever religious zealots obtain power.
More than a hundred years ago the militant freethought movement started a campaign to make the public aware that it was possible to limit family size. It was probably the most valuable thing the movement has ever done. Freethinkers promoted birth control because they realised that resources for human consumption were finite. They hoped that small families would reduce poverty and give ordinary people more control over their lives. It is not surprising that religious conservatives have always opposed birth control: they know - consciously or instinctively - that over-breeding in a human population makes for political and economic instability, poverty and anxiety, just the conditions in which supernatural religion flourishes. Orthodox religion is a more cynical business than some humanists imagine.
I want the world to be a place fit for my grandchildren, where they will have space to move, freedom and time to think, wilderness to admire; a world where people can live in harmony with plants and animals. I do not want them to be forced to elbow their way through an overcrowded, stressed, war-riddled civilisation that has degraded the face of the earth into either ugly cities or vast, intensively farmed monocultures. It would only be a matter of time before such a society destroyed itself.
If we want the first sort of civilisation in the future, rather than the second, we may have to forgo a few fancy gadgets or devise more sensible alternatives; we will need to control our human numbers, put world poverty and land misuse before national privilege, nuclear war-toys and space research (without blunting our scientific curiosity), and change the emphasis of our throw-away, consumer society. Above all, we will need a more sensitive, perceptive view of the role of the human race on this planet, one which will understand the right of other animals to breathe free in the air we at present pollute, one which will appreciate the value - practical and aesthetic - of plants, trees and wilderness.
In creating a better world the freethought movement, if it gets its priorities right, has a useful part to play. The movement can promote a reasoned, scientific approach to problems; can ensure that human beings have more personal control over their minds, bodies and lives; can support freedom of speech and expression against efforts by the far right and far left to muzzle society; it can oppose new superstitions and pseudo-science and continue its historic role of exposing the restrictive, irrational and essentially totalitarian pack mentality encouraged by orthodox religion.
We have seen the religious ethic of faith and universal love produce - in reality - hatred, intolerance and barbarism. For this reason, I think we should be wary of any general answer to the world's complex problems which is restricted to human considerations limited by the virtues and vices, diligence and greed, foresight and folly of just a section of humanity, the privileged middle class of the richer industrialised countries.
What has become pressingly important today is humanity's need to realise - and take action on the fact - that we do not stand apart from other living organisms. We are a part of nature: we can only "conquer" nature by destroying the natural world and ourselves with it. Homo sapiens badly needs a sense of ecological humility, combined with curiosity and intellectual integrity. We do not need blinkered conceit dignified as humanism, or evasion of the facts of life and death sanctified as religion.
Revised by N.H.S., 23 November 2001.
Tags: atheism, ecology, humanism, morality, overpopulation
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by OutlawGirl on -
Position changed. Nice post, Felch.
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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on -
Felch,
You hit the nail on the head for me. Sometimes when I let my guard down, and see on the sidebar that someone has posted in the omnivore group, I click on it and see what people are saying there. Human exceptionalism is the name of the game, although "human narcissism" might be equally valid. I also get to read about willful ignorance about human nutrition, climate change, and what humans were 'intended' to be - such as, we were evolved to eat meat, so it's more "natural". Of course, in the neolithic and paleolithic times, human life expectancy was 18-20 years, and only in the mid 20th century did humans start to expect lives more than 40 years in duration, so "natural" also means early death and most of the writers would be dead (including me) if they went back to the lives of our "natural" predecessors.
Not wanting to be a troll, I don't join and don't stay long. It's one reason we have groups, so that people can self-select who they talk to about a topic.
Unfortunately, in my work- and internet-addled brain, my eyes glaze over when text goes beyond one or 2 screens, and I don't have the patience for extended essays. That's the case for this discussion, as well as some of the more fired-up political discussions.
Sacha, I'm with you that the word "humane" is ironic. Many authors would agree. "Kind" seems more appropriate.
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Permalink Reply by Nate on -
With respect for the eloquent deconstruction of what humanism has come to mean- human exceptionalism- for some of us it simply means "We're all we have, so we'd better take care of ourselves and one another. There's no one or no thing that's coming to bail us out."
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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on
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Nate,
That's actually what I always thought it meant as well. "humanism" as opposed to "godism".
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Permalink Reply by Nate on
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The best way to transform society from a 'corporate market' to a 'humane market' is to not provide them with plentiful cheap labour. If we all stopped procreating (to what extent remains to be negotiated) the inhumane powers that be would pardon my language shit themselves. Without mobs of cheap labour offering themselves up for corporate slavery and government submission, the value of human life would go up, and all would be happier.
The issue of procreation has been a religious taboo for far too long. In the context of North America, I would suggest immigrant descendants stop procreating completely, long enough for first nations populations to catch up and attain a point of equilibrium. This would halve the population of North America within a little less than a century...
Fun quick world population breakdown:
Polar Bears : 20,000
Orcas: 100,000
1970 Harp seals: 1,500,000
Deer: 1,000,000
Canada goose: 3,000,000
Horses : 58,000,000
Cows: 1,500,000,000
Humans :6,800,000,000
Rats: estimated at equal population with humans
THAT's our value...
It's unlikely that the immigrant descendants will follow your suggestion to simply stop procreating so that more orcas and deer can experience existence. This means you'll have to take it to the next level and suggest summary exterminations of the immigrant descendants. Then the "equilibrium" that you desire should be more easily obtained. These efforts should be about as effective as those of AI.
Back to reality.
I suggest a less generalized approach to the subject of overpopulation- what drives it and its effects. In great irony, the overabundance of "cheap" and therefore highly exploitable humans occurs where living conditions are less desirable for human survival than in places where population growth is nearly stagnant. There are numerous psychological, cultural, religious and economic reasons for this. In the poorest regions of the world, where human population is exploding:
1. Infant mortality is higher
2. Women have limited access to education/limited opportunities for employment/disproportionate income
3. Little or no social security to provide for aging parents
4. Religious and cultural mores unchecked by education create resistance to the use of contraceptives and encourage practices like "going for the male"
1. Infant mortality:
At first glance, higher infant mortality would appear to lower population growth. It has quite the opposite effect. If parents take it for granted, this is what they've observed, that at least some of their children will be lost at an early age, they feel that a large family(make all the babies that you can while you can) will cover their losses. This tendency to "overproduce" offspring is compounded by factors #2-#4.
2. The status of women in areas experiencing overpopulation:
Where women have limited access to education and limited opportunities to produce income(this includes disproportionate income) for the sustenance of the family, their greatest contribution is often considered to be childbearing. Why limit the family to what she can earn when she can produce three, four or even eight "earners"? It gets worse. If she's producing females, that's nice, but males will offer the best return on our investment(see #4). In the case of an infant girl and and an infant boy, the thought is to attempt another birth, as the boy may be lost(see #1). But another girl is born. So another attempt. Soon the family, already living in abject poverty, has four children- as part of a plan to provide for their future(see #3 and #4). They could probably give reasonable care to one. But they have four.
3. Little or no provision of a public safety net for the aging:
Children(especially male children) are considered to be the best insurance policy for the future financial security of the parents. It's overlooked that overburdening the family with more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe(forget about intellectual stimulation and emotional nurturance- what's that?) is actually miring them more deeply in the cycle of poverty.
4. Religious and cultural pressures to procreate(in particular, male offspring):
Where deeply entrenched poverty exists, access to education is limited. This leaves the population(the rapidly exploding population) more vulnerable to religious dogma, irrational cultural mores and superstition. In less secularized populations, religious views promoting large families and discouraging contraception are taken more seriously. Cultural pressures exist that glorify copious procreation. If a couple remains childless for a considerable time(more than a year) after uniting(be it by decision or inability to conceive), they'll find themselves assaulted by questions and stares. If only girls have been produced, there will be pressure to "go for the male". In some cultures, sex is not spoken about publicly(or privately, for that matter). In some places, it's believed that sex with virgin females, even female infants, will cure or prevent AIDS. In places where such superstitious thinking abounds about sexual activity, the concept of contraception is obviously not well understood. Further complicating this mess has been meddling from some governments in the developed world. The Reagan administration in the U.S. set responsible family planning back by decades, cutting off funding for educational programs where they were most desperately needed.
The reasons for overpopulation are complicated and it will not be dealt with successfully by simply telling people to stop having babies- not when everything they "know" tells them to do the opposite. Efforts from the developed world(where population is largely stable) to aid in controlling overpopulation include:
1. Concerted efforts to reduce infant mortality
2. Improving the status of women everywhere
3. Assistance to developing nations to set up public safety nets to care for the aging
4. Assistance to developing nations to increase access to education and availabilty of family planning resources.
Of course, this will only happen if the developed world cares. The humanist approach, as I understand it, is not human exceptionalism, it's saying "We're all in this together, let's cut the ideological bullshit- religious superstition and nationalistic(tribal) pride, that maybe served a purpose at one point in our evolution, but is now getting in our way- and care for ourselves and one another. In the process, we'll exist more harmoniously with the other life forms we share this planet with. No one is coming to make it all better. We do this or we drown in our own hatred. The universe will not care either way. But here we are, without asking to be. Might as well try to quit hurting ourselves."
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Permalink Reply by John D on -
Sorry if I sound a bit too harsh. Blogs sometimes come out that way. BIG HUG!
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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on
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Nate, this gets to the heart of many daunting issues. As the human population grows, our ability to reduce conflict and suffering diminishes. That includes suffering of the 2-legged, no-legged, and 4-legged types.
Religion, tradition, ignorance, tribalism, all make the population issue almost impossible to address. I haven't seen population in the forefront of climate change discussion - instead, it's alternative energy, atmospheric carbon reduction, etc - all very important, but human overpopulation will make the rest futile. I suspect that people know better, but are afraid to address population due to the power of political and religious forces.
I suspect that homo sapiens would not have become the dominant species without a lack of empathy for "them" - however we define "them". Same as for other species. But if life is to be tolerable and sustainable, I think we need to transcend that lizard-brain part of our development, and learn a new way of thinking. That way involves humanity, and other life, as interdependent. With us, as the species with the power to destroy all, or make it all work, as the responsible organisms.
Whether it's labeled humanism or something else, I don't know. Also, whether people agree or disagree on nuances of linguistics and philosophy, if we agree on the major issues, the rest will fall into place.
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Permalink Reply by Nate on
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Religion, tradition, ignorance, tribalism, all make the population issue almost impossible to address. I haven't seen population in the forefront of climate change discussion - instead, it's alternative energy, atmospheric carbon reduction, etc - all very important, but human overpopulation will make the rest futile.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, does a good job of addressing the issue of overpopulation as it relates to environmental concerns in Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. He points out that viable solutions are not at all out of our reach.
Whether it's labeled humanism or something else, I don't know. Also, whether people agree or disagree on nuances of linguistics and philosophy, if we agree on the major issues, the rest will fall into place.
Absolutely, Daniel. The war over semantics can get tiresome, especially when we are so quick to tell one another what we really mean when we use a particular word or phrase. But I guess it can't be avoided when you have a group of freethinking homo sapiens all exercising their brains with each seeing reality from their own unique perspective.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on -
Yeah, I think of myself as an atheist and a humanist. Not because humans are so special, but because I have a hard time not caring about my species. I'm a humanist not because humans are so wonderful, but because they seem to need a lot of help. I'm a humanist in the same way I'm a doggist or a catist when I visit the pound.
Human exceptionalism is really unsupportable in the abstract, though there's no question that we have the most developed intellect, language, society, etc. Humans are different from other animals, but only quantitatively, not qualitatively. Though like Stalin said, quantity has a quality all of its own. As such, we are luckier than the other animals, and also bear a responsibility to the planet because we can see down the road further.
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Permalink Reply by sacha on -
I'm a humanist not because humans are so wonderful, but because they seem to need a lot of help. I'm a humanist in the same way I'm a doggist or a catist when I visit the pound.
I'll agree with that, and the rest of what you have to say Jason. Well put. Still does not change my mind about the Humanist label, but I like what you have written.
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