Situational-ly Speaking

I love facebook. Have lots of cool conversations with friends and folks on there. One of my friends posed a question. Are there any rules you are willing to break? The very question assumes that ethics are situational. My response was that yeah – of course I break rules all the time. I just have a personal rule that I only break rules if there is a good reason and no harm will come from me breaking that rule. So, yes, I do my best to follow all the traffic laws.

Another person agreed with me but came up with this mini rule list because let’s face it – 10 commandments are just too many. For this individual you can sum up how to be a good person in 4 easy steps.

1) Harm None
2) Pursue Happiness
3) Be excellent to each other and....
4) Party on dude!

He then had to explain that while harm none seems really easy it does have gray areas that in practice need to be thought about. Like, if harming one saves the lives of thousands - is it then ok to harm one? Don’t you just love situational ethics? They force you think. But that isn’t a bad thing.

Unrestrained Exuberance

Like everyone else, I have been watching the Winter Olympics. And like almost everyone, I was mesmerized watching Shaun White in the halfpipe. It wasn’t just that he was amazing. It wasn’t that he might do the double mctwist 1260, which was also amazing. But it wasn’t just his performance that we all liked. It was his exuberance. That young man is excited and happy and goofy. He doesn’t care. He is simply unrestrained in his exuberance. Granted, he kind of has a right to be, he did just win another gold medal doing something he clearly thinks is fun to do.

So what can the rest of us learn from Shaun’s unrestrained exuberance? Well, that it is not only ok to be exuberant, it is actually attractive. Other people like to see people so happy that they can’t contain themselves. So, don’t worry about looking like a dork. Who the heck cares anyway? Being so happy you can’t contain yourself doesn’t happen that often and when it does, why ruin it for yourself by worrying about what other people think. Take your cue from Shaun White. When the mood strikes you, be exuburant.

Pragmatism?

I have been reading Greg Epstein’s new book. Apparently there are several different flavors of atheism. According to him I am a pragmatic atheist, which means that for me whether god(s) exists or not is irrelevant to living an ethical and successful life. I actually told an ethics class at a college that I thought the existence of god was irrelevant a few years back and almost every jaw in the room dropped. Apparently considering gods irrelevant is more shocking then not believing in gods at all. In my defense I was asked to present non-theistic ethics to them so the question of the existence of god was totally relevant to our discussion.

Regardless – I had no idea I was such a pragmatist. I’ve always considered myself an apathetic agnostic, atheist, ignostic apatheist. But what do I know. What is really important to me is not whether gods exist but rather once you have decided for yourself as an individual what you believe or don’t believe about gods, the next question is what is really important. Given what you believe, are you going to approach life with love or with fear and hate? And how does that affect your personal ethics? Your answer to this question, by the way, impacts me and everyone else on the planet. So yeah, color me pragmatic.

And that is why I am a Humanist. Humanism is a very pragmatic approach to living well and being a good person. That is why I titled my book – The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom. It isn’t a philosophy book so much as a book about the pragmatic reasons for being an ethical, compassionate and responsible person. If you want to learn more you can buy an advanced copy here: http://www.cafepress.com/sumogirl.409202605 If this link is no longer good it means I found a publisher and you can find the new link on my website at http://www.sumogirl.com/

An Awesome and Splendid Responsibility

Stephen Fry, British comedian and commentator, came out officially as a Humanist this week. His definition of Humanism is one I think is worth sharing.

According to Stephen, Humanism “is an acceptance of the awesome and splendid responsibility we each have for our own destinies, ethics and morals.” He further states that Humanism is about embracing “the shared glories of humanity's intellectual and spiritual struggle to understand the universe into which we are born with honesty, openness and faith in our own natures.”

Thank you Stephen for reminding us why we should all nail our colors to the mast as Humanists.