Happiness Through Humanism: February 2012

Subjective vs. Objective Knowledge

The world is in color, not black and white
Image: Worakit Sirijinda / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There is a man on twitter asking me questions. He seems to like my answers, but he also keeps trying to fit my answers into an absolute either/or framework. As a result, his attempts to summarize my views keep missing the mark.

The basic question he seems to be asking is whether there is absolute objective truth or whether truth is, instead, subjective. He seems to want me to be firmly for one or the other. The reality is that I acknowledge and am comfortable with the existence of both types of truth. This isn’t an either/or dichotomy for me. It’s more a matter of how you integrate objective and subjective truths.

Why does this nuance matter? Well, it matters because the world is not black and white. The world is made up of full spectrum color. Attempts to categorize the world in an either/or (black/white) sort of way will almost always lead to an incomplete understanding about the world and about other people, just as it is hindering this man’s ability to grasp what my opinion on these matters truly is.

Because I cannot possibly answer his questions in the 140 character format that twitter allows, let me try to clarify my views here.

I believe in the existence of objective reality. As far as I am able, it behooves me to base my opinions, as much as possible, on that objective reality. The problem is that human brains are incredibly imprecise so, however, sure I might be about what constitutes objective reality; I need to be humble enough to recognize that I could very well turn out to be wrong about what the objective reality/truth really is.

It is also clear to me that much of what I believe is subjective, meaning, it is simply what I believe and no, I don’t always have a very good objective reason to believe these things. It’s just a gut feeling I have. I happen to think my subjective truths, like rape is bad, and my love for my husband and son is good are sufficient unto themselves.

The problem for me isn’t a matter of which knowledge is better. The problem is how do I best integrate my subjective truths with objective reality. And am I willing to adjust my subjective knowledge when objective truths contradict them? My success in life is largely determined by how accurately my subjective beliefs reflect objective reality. I think the best any of us can do is to be humble enough to admit that our beliefs are largely subjective and that they do need to be adjusted from time to time. And no, that isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of flexibility and a willingness to adapt to reality instead of trying to force reality into your preconceived ideas of how things should work.

As I told my new twitter friend. All rules have exceptions, including this one.

Chill People

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I teach a course at a lifelong learning institute. To translate that into young speak, it means I teach classes for old people. The director of the program sent out an email today to all instructors today asking us to remind our students otherwise known as the elderly people who take our classes to be more careful in the hallways.

Apparently, a group of 'students' were waiting for a bus to take them on a field trip, and yes, it is cool to be old and have the time for these programs. Anyway, when the bus arrived the students rushed on and a few people got injured in the rush. My first thought was really. I would think that by the time we retire it should have sunk in that mad dash rushes to get a good seat on the bus wasn't actually all that cool because, duh, people can get hurt. Apparently I was wrong. Some people go to their graves not understanding this basic rule, which does require patience and compassion.

The director pointed out that this wasn't an isolated incident either. Students have been known to crowd around classroom doors waiting for the other class to finish and they aren't always polite enough to allow the other students to leave before rushing in to get their seats and this isn't very nice because so many of the students use canes and walkers and someone could get hurt.

I was surprised to hear this because my students were always so nice and I never saw any of this sort of rude behavior from any of them. Perhaps it's because we spent so much time talking about compassion, responsibility and patience in our class. Regardless, if you find yourself in a similar situation, remind everyone to chill out. There are plenty of seats for everyone and if one old cranky person just has to have a specific seat, give it to them. There are plenty of others.

Know Your Limits

Image: Phaitoon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I am getting ready to publish a 6 week humanist life skills course. It will cover issues like ethics, responsibility, compassion and critical thinking. I have been teaching this course for a while now and on the last day of my most recent class, one of my students asked about how humanists felt about humility. I answered that humanists think being humble as an important part of our practice as humanists. After all, we can never be sure we are right, even with the best of information and we would rather find out we are wrong that continue on in a delusion that we were right.

This got me thinking though, part of what I like about my class is that every unit of the class builds upon the last. We spend an hour on ethics only to conclude that as strong as humanists ethics are, they are limited by our ability to think well. So the next week we spend an hour talking about the hows and whys of critical thinking, only to realize that it doesn’t matter how well we think, we are always going to be a, to a certain extent, not completely right so we need to temper our thinking with compassion to ensure that we are humble in our conclusions. Then we spend an hour talking about compassion only to realize that as important as compassion is, you will get yourself into trouble if you don’t temper your compassion with responsibility.

All the major aspects of the Humanist philosophy, in and of themselves, are not sufficient on their own to help you lead a happy and fulfilling life. All are limited in their usefulness. To be effective, we need to accept our limits and find ways to shore up the limitations in our ethical system and our critical thinking methods and to make sure our compassion is wielded responsibility and that we don’t allow our responsibilities to overwhelm us. In other words, ethics, compassion, reason and responsibility work best when used together because they shore up the limitations in each of the individual elements.

The beauty of Humanism is precisely that it encourages to be realistic and therefore humble. We don’t pretend to know any great truths. We are just trying to do the best we can given the inherent limits places on us by our knowledge and our nature.

So the next time you are beating yourself up for not being perfect. Take solace in the fact that knowing and accepting your limitations is actually a good thing.

Advice for Life

Be the best most ethical person you can be. Living a happy and fulfilling life means living intentionally. So choose to be the best person you can be and then commit to being that person.

Be compassionate with everyone you meet, even the jerks. The more you can replace frustration and anger with compassion, the happier you are going to be and the more you will be able to respond to the challenges of life in the way you know you should, with grace and poise.