When Crisis Hits: A Humanist Way of Coping

 Today, my husband was in a bad car accident.

Thanks to modern vehicles and sheer luck, he’s okay. The man who hit him is okay too. There are injuries, but nothing life-threatening. We are fortunate—and I don’t use that word lightly.

This can happen to anyone. No one is immune.

A few months ago I went out to lunch with a new friend. Within two weeks of meeting her, her husband became gravely ill. For the past two months, she’s been shuttling him from doctor to doctor, trying to solve a terrifying mystery. He can’t breathe properly, but it’s not his heart. It’s not his lungs. No one knows why.

And while the crisis drags on, life doesn’t pause.

Work still needs to be done. Food still needs to be bought. Bills still need to be paid. The mundane mechanics of life keep grinding forward, even when everything feels fragile.

When my husband called me from the accident scene, I went into what I call “what’s next mode.”

What needs to be done right now?
What information needs to be gathered?
Who needs to be called?
What needs to happen tomorrow?

Doctor visits. Insurance claims. Lawyers. Logistics.

I didn’t panic. I didn’t freeze. I did what needed to be done. I took care of my husband. Then I cooked dinner. I folded laundry.

And then I started shaking.

Because once the immediate needs were met, reality caught up with me.

He could have died today.
The other man could have died today.

We aren’t guaranteed anything.

How Humanism Helps Me Cope

As a Humanist, I find that confronting this reality—honestly and without softening it—actually helps me cope.

We aren’t special.
Bad things happen.
They happen to everyone, eventually.

I waste zero time on “Why me?”
I already know the answer.

Because this is what being human means.

Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we don’t. That’s not punishment or destiny—it’s reality. And because that’s my starting point, I can accept what’s happening faster than if I believed there was a larger meaning to decode or a cosmic explanation I was owed.

I think this is one of the quiet strengths of Humanism.

Because we don’t believe we are protected or chosen, we accept reality sooner. And acceptance frees up energy—not for denial or bargaining, but for action.

Action Doesn’t Mean Emotional Absence

This doesn’t mean Humanists don’t feel deeply. We do.

I’m feeling it now—in the shaking, in the delayed adrenaline, in the sudden awareness of how close today came to going very differently.

But Humanism biases us toward reality-based action.

What can I do right now to make this situation a little bit better?

That question matters. It’s grounding. It gives us traction when everything feels unstable.

Action doesn’t erase grief or fear—but it keeps us moving through it instead of being consumed by it.

It’s Okay to Be Human

Crisis exposes something important: there is no “right” way to respond.

Sometimes the most human response is efficiency.
Sometimes it’s numbness.
Sometimes it’s tears that come hours—or days—later.

All of that is normal.

Humanism doesn’t ask us to transcend our humanity. It asks us to work with it.

To face reality as it is.
To care for one another because no one else is coming to save us.
To make things a little better where we can.

Humanistic Leadership in Crisis Situations

This same approach applies in workplace crises. Layoffs, public failures, harassment investigations, sudden leadership changes—these moments trigger fear and uncertainty just as powerfully as personal emergencies. Good leaders don’t dismiss emotions, but they don’t drown in them either. They make space for people to be human and help teams focus on what can be done next. What problems are solvable right now? What support is needed? What clarity can be provided? Reality-based leadership in crisis isn’t cold—it’s compassionate, stabilizing, and deeply human.

The Only Guarantee We Have

Every day we have with the people we love is a gift.

Not because it’s divinely granted.
Not because it’s deserved.
But because it’s temporary.

Knowing that doesn’t make life bleak for me—it makes it precious.

Today reminded me how thin the line is between “ordinary” and “everything changed.” And tomorrow, like today, will still require groceries, emails, and laundry.

But it will also require something else:

Presence. Gratitude. And the courage to keep acting in a world that offers no guarantees.

That, to me, is the Humanist response to crisis.

Learn More:

If you want to learn more - My first book and course can help.  I explore how to live humanistically, even when things are difficult or horrifying.

Book: The Humanist Approach to Happiness - https://humanistlearning.com/the-humanist-approach-to-happiness-book/

Course: Living Made Simpler - https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/

I don't sugar coat things. Life is often hard.  But that doesn't mean it's not also awesome.  There is a duality to life's experiences. Or rather a triality.  Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's horrible and sometimes it is just ok.  If you let me, I can teach you how to cope in a way that will help you - make life, the good and the bad and the meh - simpler. 

Theory vs. Reality

 Humanism is a realistic philosophy. Sure - thinking about ethics often involves theoretical situations. But it's not unusual for something to work in theory and fail in reality.

Case in point. Do businesses need to be regulated? In theory, it's in the best interest of businesses to deal fairly with their customers. A self enlightened take on this is that we don't need to regulate businesses because businesses can self regulate. If they fail to self regulate, they will eventually go out of business.  It's a great theory. 

Compare Theory to Reality

The problem? Not everyone is enlightened.  Some people are actually criminals who don't mind harming their customers if it means making an extra buck. we can argue that this is counter productive all we want, but all our hang wringing about theory isn't going to change the reality that some people choose to be crooks.

Reality Requires Rules

The question then becomes, what should we do, if anything, about the crooks? We, the people, have come up with rules that say - if someone steals from you, or kills you or harms you, they can be held liable for the damage they do.  Some of these rules are criminal codes. Some are civil rules. All are designed to deal with the exceptions to our theoretical rule.  Sure, most people will deal fairly with others, but - for those that don't - here is how we protect people.

Do we really need rules?

Yes actually, we do. Here is why. Sure, if someone is ripping off their customers, eventually customers won't use them. But there are other problems criminals cause. The damage done might not just be monetary. It might be deadly. People sell tainted alcohol in places without regulations to ensure safe alcohol. Recently, an ice cream maker in Florida killed a customer in Illinois with tainted ice cream. Those customers can't just go elsewhere. They are dead. And if our solution is - well some people need to die in order for everyone - ethical business people and criminals included - need to be free to do whatever they want, even if what they want is to rip off people and kill them, then I think most people - in reality will disagree with that conclusion.  

If we can stop people from dying by instituting regulations and inspections, then we should. This doesn't just help make it so criminals can't operate, it also helps ensure that well meaning business people don't miss something. If you ever read the inspection reports for your local restaurants, you may never want to eat there again.  Cleanliness is super hard and customers need to know that purchasing a product or service is - basically safe. 

Trust is Everything

 If customers can't tell who is a criminal and who isn't, or they have no way of knowing whether the food they are going to pay to eat is safe or not, they start to lose trust in the entire economy. It only takes one idiot to kill them. Don't know if that ice cream is tainted and might kill you? Don't eat ice cream. 

What regulations do is help ensure that good business operate in a way that is profitable and helps ensure that anyone with ill intent can't operate at all because the trouble and expense of complying with the rules makes it hard or impossible to cut corners, then customers can purchase meat and dairy and whatever, with reasonable assurances that they won't die.

Holding People Accountable

The other things rules and laws do is that if someone does cause harm, we have the ability to hold them responsible because the regulations and laws make certain things illegal.   If there is no law that says you can't sell diesel fuel as a drink, then if someone does and kills a bunch of people, what they did  - was legal.  Terrorists, would have a field day. 

Theory vs. Reality

In theory, we should be able to trust everyone to behave in their and therefore our best interest. In reality, not everyone will. Some people harm others intentionally. And because we live in the real world and not the imagined world, we have a system of laws.  The challenge is to ensure max freedom while still ensuring the relative safety of the products we consume. 

Why Humanism and Libertarianism aren't really compatible.

While both Humanism and Libertarianism are reason based, Humanism is reality based. It's not just a rejection of supernaturalism. It's a rejection of non-reality based approaches to problem solving. What really happens. What really causes that to happen. What really works to solve that real problem we really have.

Worrying about how ALL regulations restrict freedom while ignoring the very real harms absolute freedom causes is to me, as a Humanism, living in a fantasy world and ignoring the real one.  I can agree with the theory that ideally, yes, everyone should be free. Where I diverge is in the belief that all humans will act out of enlightened self interest.  There is no evidence this is true. In fact there is plenty of evidence it's not true.

Does that mean we should give in to pessimism and regulate everything? Of course not. I think why libertarians struggle with Humanism so much is that Humanism is about balancing our rights and our responsibilities.  It balances our individual freedom with the needs of the community we are in.

It's not either or - it's both and. It's both individual rights AND community responsibility. Why? Because we humans aren't ideal creatures. We are messy and impulsive. Some of us - criminally inclined.

Any ethical theory that doesn't account for our lived reality is flawed.

Leadership and Science: Is there a connection?

 I gave a talk on humanistic leadership to a group of teachers a few months ago and one of them asked me, why I mentioned science and critical thinking so often in the context of humanistic leadership.  The answer is simple, you can't do good, if you don't know what is true or false. 

Being a leader is hard. It's not simply about managing people. It's about inspiring people to do their best.  And to be their best, people need good information. 

Most people think about humanistic leadership as being about ethics, and it absolutely is. But it's not enough to want to do good. To actually do good in the world, you have to come up with good reality base solutions to the very real problems you and your team face. 

And to do that, you need science. A good leader must be scientifically literate. If they are not, they are not a good leader. And yes, I'm being blunt. But it's true. 

We humans, are by and large, really lousy thinkers. We take short cuts in our thinking and we don't always reality test our thoughts and ideas.  A good leader will reality test their ideas. Why? Because the only thing worse than being wrong, is continuing to be wrong and causing suffering and death as a result.

I am writing this in late November, from the United States of America during the Covid 19 pandemic. The only thing that will get us out of this, is science. The places where the leadership is denying science, are dealing with high numbers of deaths. We are talking hundreds of thousands of people dying because some leaders are rejecting the science.

Not every decision a leader makes is life or death, but if you aren't prepared to make those decisions using the best information you can get, you should not be a position of authority.  You shouldn't be allowed to manage anything let alone, lead.

Leading people off a cliff to their deaths, is not good leadership.

But I digress. A good leader, uses science for the big and mundane decisions because knowing what is true and what is false is critical to effective problem solving. If you don't know what is really causing your problem and what will really work to fix it, you will waste time, energy and money not fixing your problem. That isn't good leadership.

Want to be a good leader, become a good critical thinker and dedicate yourself to reality based decision making. 

https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/

Accepting Reality

Reality: the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.

Another way to think of reality is that it is objectively true as opposed to subjectively true.

Objectively true means that it can be tested to be true. Subjective truth is something you think is true, but that may not be true for other people.

When people talk about “their” truth, they are talking about subjective truth.  Subjective truths are very powerful things.  But objective truths are even more powerful because they don’t go away when people stop believing in them.

Objective truth matters because reality matters.  We cannot solve our problems effectively unless we accept the reality of our problems.

I write about this a lot because it turns out that accepting reality is something we humans don’t like to do when reality sucks.  Life is hard. People die and are hurt and there are things that happen that can’t be undone. It is comforting to think that we can just magically make all these bad things go away.

But that’s not how reality works. Reality doesn’t go away just because we have decided to ignore it. We ignore reality at our own risk.

 To solve our problems, we must be brave enough to accept the reality of our problems so that we can tackle them. Realistically.  The more realistic we are about our problems and about solving our problems the more effective we are at actually, solving them.

To learn more about how to engage in reality based decision making – consider taking this course.

Meditation

Meditation and Accepting Reality

I was asking fans what subjects they want me to address and Ramesh Gupta MD asked me to expand on the subject of accepting reality AND, to talk about humanist meditation practices.

It might seem odd to combine the topics of meditation and acceptance of reality, but to me, as a Humanist, they are connected.

My focus as a Humanist is to live life fully and to do that, I need to do a good job of solving my problems. To do that, I need to have a good grasp of reality.  To have a good grasp of reality, I use critical thinking skills to help me figure out what is true and what is false.

It turns out that figuring out what is true and what is false is difficult. Our brains are big gooshy masses of chemical reactions that somehow create consciousness. Our brains take short cuts and have biases that make thinking rationally really difficult. We have to make an effort to think critically and rationally.

Which is why I find meditation such a useful too. Meditation is brain practice. It’s about practicing focusing your attention.  This practice can be rather calming for the brain.  I find my brain really enjoys it.

Being able to focus my attention when problem solving is helpful to problem solving. Being able to have a calm mind when I am trying to problem solve, is priceless. Calm focused thinking is clear thinking and clear thinking allows for better critical thinking.

If you want to learn more about Humanist meditation – take this course.
Want to learn more about critical thinking – take my reality based decision making course.
Want an all in one course that combines philosophy and critical thinking – take living made simpler.

What is the motivation to treat others fairly?

Treating others well is not an inconvenience, it’s a strategy for success.

The business world can sometimes be brutal.  As the saying goes, it’s a dog eat dog world. Except dogs are pack animals and collaborate and work together. Humans are too.  In fact, if we go totally solo, we tend to not fare to well.  Not only do we need social interactions to thrive, it turns out that surviving alone is hard.

Human societies are collaborative societies. Some people gather and grow food. Some people build houses. Some people write and play music. Some people make and serve food. Some people provide health care to the rest of us. The point is, even if you think you are an island, you probably aren’t.

I write a lot about accepting reality as a strategy for successful planning. Treating people fairly and well is another strategy for success.

In order to succeed at whatever it is you want to do, you probably need other people to help you. Treating those other people fairly will help them want to help you when the going gets tough, and it will get tough.

We have all, at some point, worked with and for people who viewed ethical behavior as an inconvenience. None of us liked it. In fact, people leave jobs all the time to get away from co-workers and bosses that don’t treat them well.

A leader is only as good as their team. Good people don’t like to work for mean selfish people and they certainly won’t go out of their way to solve a problem for a mean person.

Treating people unfairly will drive good people away from you and make your life harder.  Don’t do this to yourself.  If you aren’t naturally compassionate and caring and you don’t really care about fairness, be fair to the people around you anyway. It really will make your life easier.

If you want good people who will support you in your endeavors, treat them fairly. This goes for the people in your personal life and in your professional life.  This isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a strategy for success and happiness.

To learn more – take my living made simpler course which discusses how to better integrate your ethics into your decision making.

Or – if you are more business minded, take – the 7 Sins of Staff Management which will help you understand things NOT to do when working with staff.

Reality

Reality isn’t always pleasant. But we don’t solve our problems by pretending they don’t exist.

Accepting reality will help you be a better leader.  A leader who sticks their head in the sand isn’t a leader. They are a coward that is too afraid to lead.

Good leaders accept reality, even when it is unpleasant. The don’t flinch from their responsibilities, they just get on with the job of fixing the problems whatever they are.

Resist the temptation to ignore reality or to plan for the best case scenario.  Plan for the worse case and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out to be easier to deal with then you thought.

I am currently running numbers for a property rental business. Sure, I could run optimistic numbers, but I would be lying to myself. Instead, I run real numbers. What is it I have right now. How much is it really going to cost me to do whatever it is I need to do.  A good cost benefit analysis is based in reality. Anything else is a flight of fantasy and won’t lead to good problem solving.

I used to be in franchise sales and I helped a lot of people create their business plans. Almost all of them were overly optimistic about income and overly optimistic about expenses. My advice was always - halve your income, double your expenses. Do you still want to do this?  That is reality based decision making.

To learn more about reality based decision making – check out this course.