Emotional Control

Being a Humanist is all about taking personal responsibility for your life and for your happiness. A big part of this is learning how to control your emotions. It isn’t that being emotional is a bad thing. It is just that not all emotions are good and it is usually prudent to think about what you really want to accomplish before deciding to act on any given emotion. This applies to both good and bad emotions but it is especially important for the negative ones..

The first thing you need to know when trying to get your emotions under control is that all emotions are temporary. They come and go like waves. So, even if you are angry or sad, you aren’t likely to stay that way for long. Paradoxically you don’t actually control your emotions by controlling them. You simply need to recognize their transience.

The next thing you need to know is that just because you are feeling something doesn’t mean you need to act on that feeling. Learn to relax and not take your negative emotions seriously and you will feel better immediately. When making plans based on how you are feeling it is usually best to be objective about what you really want to see happen and what the potential consequences of your actions will be. That way you will be making your decisions based on reason and that will improve your chances of having a positive outcome.

Just remember, while you can’t always control your emotions, you can control how you respond to them. Do not let your emotions control you.  And yes, many Humanists do practice meditation as a way to help them control their emotions.

Educated Opinion

In order to have an educated opinion, you must first be educated.

You are entitled to your opinion, whatever that may be, but unless your opinion is based on facts, it simply won’t carry the same weight as one that is. Again, you need to have the facts on your side and that means you need to know what those are and that means you must be educated. Otherwise, your opinion is useless to those with whom you share it.

Lesson of the day, if you want your opinions to be taken seriously, make sure your opinions are educated and reality based. And don’t ever parrot other people’s opinions without first checking to make sure they have their facts straight!

Nothing ever changes

So… I ran into a girlfriend over the weekend that I haven’t seen in ages. It was nice, though a little awkward. She wants to friend me on facebook. I’m not sure I should do that because, well… as it turns out, she is one of the people I wrote about in my book and not in a flattering way. If she knew I wrote a book, she would want to read it and while I didn’t use any names she would definitely recognize herself and her situation. You see she has problems with basic life management issues. I was hoping when I saw her those issues would be resolved, given that I haven’t seen her in over 5 years. It turns out they aren’t and I was not all that surprised.


Now, why am I telling you this? Two reasons. The first is that if you find yourself attracted to someone who has basic life management issues such as not being able to secure housing, transport, food, or being able to get or hold a job in a normal economy (current conditions do not apply) don’t assume it is a temporary problem. Even poor people are able to find housing and food. So unless you want to end up taking care of a person who can’t be cared for, don’t date a person like this.

The second reason is that if this describes you: YOU NEED TO CHANGE! You can’t look to other people to solve your problems for you. You need to do that for yourself. It is your responsibility and no one else’s. If you are emotionally incapable of coping, seek help. You will be surprised how effective drugs are today. They can help take the edge off so you can focus without nasty numbing side effects. Remember, the Humanist approach to happiness is to take personal responsibility for your life and your happiness.

Learning about Evolution

Learning about Evolution is important. Not only because it is important to be scientifically literate, but also because Evolution is a unifying concept in science. Scientific disciplines with a historical component, such as astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology, cannot be taught without a clear understanding of Evolution. Further, nothing in biology makes sense without the context of Evolution and a clear understanding of Evolutionary biology is critical to our ability to fight diseases. As an added bonus viewing biology through the lens of Evolution is not only intellectually satisfying, it is downright inspiring.

If you want an update on exactly what the current state of science is on evolution, I recommend Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. A friend of mine who teaches high school biology recommended this book to me. It is an excellent book. It is easy to read and really interesting. If you were in school anytime before 2000, this book will help bring you up to date on not only the evidence for evolution, but also what science is capable of now.

If you are on the fence about Evolution or are confused about what Evolution is and why scientists are SOOOOO adamant it be taught, this book will help answer your questions. Your Inner Fish tells the story of how the author found a missing link fossil (fish to amphibian) two years ago. It ranges through a variety of disciplines explaining how each field is tied to the others. The evidence for Evolution is overwhelming. How anyone could deny the evidence after reading this book is beyond me.

Religious Tolerance 101

So, today I responded to a youtube question about why Atheists ridicule people of faith. It is a good question, because let’s face it, everyone believes something different and some of us don’t believe any of it at all. And despite that we still all need to get along.

Religious tolerance isn’t easy. It means accepting people for the good people they are despite the fact they believe something that probably seems absolutely absurd to you. And then they need to reciprocate that acceptance of you despite your differences. It isn’t that hard to do, you just need to be respectful of the fact that very good moral people can believe very different things and that is ok as long as they are good moral people.

If you sincerely like someone you will respect their beliefs regardless of how ridiculous those beliefs seem to you. If you don’t you won’t. It is as simple as that. And I can say from experience, the ONLY times I get snarky about faith is when I am pushed to that point by someone who isn’t respecting my disbelief. If you are nice to me despite the fact I don’t believe as you do, I will be nice to you to. It really is that simple.

Spirituality? For Humanists?

Deepak Chopra wrote an article this past week about how people need to be spiritual to help solve the problems of the world. It has caused a lot of discussion within the Humanist community. Mostly generating a WHAT! Response. And, “gosh – well isn’t that offensive.” For the record, it hurts our feelings when we are excluded like that.

Anyway, Chopra defines spirituality in a very Humanistic way. He defines spirituality as the experience our universality. Something we Humanists are always aware of and embrace and find inspiring. He then goes on to talk about how cultivating that feeling of unity through the experiences of universality and unity consciousness will help us want to work with each other to solve our problems. I couldn’t agree more. Sounds a lot like Humanism to me.

The problem is that he couches everything in religious language and makes this spirituality thing he is talking about all about religion. As if the non-religious can’t experience that. Boy is he wrong. I talked to some Humanists over the weekend about this and we pretty much all agreed. We experience the feeling of being intimately connected to the universe all the time. It is pretty near constant for us and yes – it does feel great. We just don’t call that experience spirituality. We’re not even sure what that word really means. But in trying to come up with an equivalent secular term to describe the Humanist experience of connectedness and at oneness with the universe, all we could come up with was the word. “Humanism.”

You don’t need some supernatural spirituality mumbo jumbo to help you feel connected to the universe and to your fellow humans. You just need to acknowledge that as humans we are intimately connected to the universe and to others. And yes, it feels great and yes, it does motivate you to help work with others to solve our problems because yes, we do have more in common then we normally realize. But is that spirituality? No. Just Humanism.

My podcast this week was on the subject of interconnectedness. Listen to it here