Humanism - translated into 10 languages

 The American Humanist Association Center for Education has translated the 10 Humanist Commitments into 10 different languages.

If you want to learn more about Humanism or to help educate people about Humanism - "The Center for Education offers our 10 Commitments individual memes and “wheel” art free to use and share. The file types on this page are all high-resolution JPGs suitable for digital and print. To access the high-resolution version, right-click the image to download."

https://americanhumanistcenterforeducation.org/?page_id=19369

The languages this resource is available in includes:

English | Spanish | French | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Japanese | Korean | Russian | Bulgarian | Urdu

I'm told I give really good advice.

Whether you are dealing with a difficult situation at work, or you want to reconcile with an estranged family member.  I can help you think more clearly and therefore more effectively about your problems so that you can solve them in a way you are going to feel really good about.

How do I do it? Applied humanist philosophy. Actively invoking your ethics as you decide what to do about any given situations, tends to yield good results. Seriously it does.

First, taking the time to think, interrupts your instinctual response so that you can choose your response.

Second, thinking about what a good response would be - first requires you to do some thinking about what a good or ideal outcome is.  Notice, this involves the word - good - which involves moral judgement.

Third, once you know what it is you ideally would like to have happen, you can be strategic about how you go about accomplishing that.  I spend a lot of time talking to people who have an outcome in mind and are doing the exact opposite thing to what they should be doing to get what they want.  It's crazy to me.  Take some time to think about the consequences of your actions so that you can have some idea of whether want you want to do will work or not.

Finally, I help give permission to people to strive to be a good person. It's really ok.  Your struggles are normal. Life is hard. Choosing to embody your values doesn't guarantee success, but spending some time  engaging in critical thinking and challenging your assumptions helps.

One way to think of Humanism is that it is the applied study of what it means to be a good human being.  Think of what a good person would do - and then do that.

The compliment to Humanist morality is critical thinking.  We humanists do both.  Compassion tell us what a good outcome is. Critical thinking helps us create a strategy to actually accomplish it.

Finally - the last component is responsibility. We know what the right thing to do it. We have a plan on how to accomplish it. But none of that matters if we don't take action.

Reason and compassion in action. That is what Humanism is. And it really does make life easier.

If you want to learn more about how to actually apply the humanist philosophy in your daily life- I have an online course to help: https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/

What are the shortcomings of Humanism?

There are 2 things about the philosophy people have difficulty with. And these are things most Humanists consider essential.

The first is that it is a secular philosophy. The second is that ours is a situational ethic.

Lots of people believe in supernatural things. Humanists, reject supernaturalism as an ineffective unproven field of inquiry. If something happens, you can prove it happens. There is no need to appeal to supernaturalism. People who like thinking in supernatural terms, don’t like this aspect of the philosophy.

But for Humanists, the rejection of supernaturalism and our focus on all things secular, is critical to the practice of our philosophy. We are mostly concerned with solving our real problems here and now. Appeals to supernaturalism don’t help us with that. In fact, in many cases, they make solving the problem impossible. Our focus on secular matters and rejection of supernatural - is pragmatic.

The other area people have problems with is that we approach ethics situational-ly. Our value system is based on compassion. Our goal is to do the most good and the least harm - in any given situation. There are no hard and fast rules. Our ethics requires active thinking, critical thinking and a willingness to make difficult decisions.

There are many people who prefer absolute ethics - where you have a rule that is always applied, but we humanists view that as an unrealistic ideal. In the real world, our values compete with each other. For instance, it’s not ok to kill someone. But what if killing that person would save thousands of lives? There is a great quote in the Hindi movie Faana. I’m going to paraphrase. Morality isn’t about choosing between good or evil. It’s about choosing between the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils. Every situation is different and we are called on to make difficult decisions where the “right” solution that will do the most good and least harm - isn’t clear. Humanists view situation ethics as essential precisely because we understand we live in the real world - where what is “good” isn’t always clear and because - we are willing to do the hard work of thinking through those problems to come to a “good” solution and because we accept the responsibility to do this - is ours.

Ask a Humanist: Is there objective truth or morality?

Yes – I believe there is such a thing as an objective truth. No – I don’t believe in the existence of an objective morality.

Things are true if they accord with fact and/or reality. Meaning, things are objectively true if they can be proven to be true using the tools of science.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”  Amen for that. So yes, as a Humanist I recognize that there are objective truths that can be known and it is helpful for us to know what is true.

The reason it is helpful for us to know what is true and what isn’t is because – what is true impacts our moral judgements.

The 2nd part of this question is – is there an objective morality. To me, as a Humanist, the answer is no. Ultimately – in the grand scheme of things and on the scale of the universe – NONE of our actions really matter. We are all going to end up dead and eventually have our atoms destroyed and reborn in a stellar explosion. 

As Rick in Casablanca points out, “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.”

Some people view this – rejection of objective morality as license to do anything you want. It isn’t. It’s just an acknowledgement of the absurd reality we find ourselves in. On the one hand – morality matters greatly to us in the here and now because of the impact our actions have on us in the here and now. And … they don’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

Blaise Pascal once wrote, “A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.”  This is especially true of morality.

We can both understand that our actions don’t ultimately matter and understand that they matter greatly right now.  Understanding that both are true is to be enlightened. It helps you to think and act morally while not being uptight about morality.

Why, given the ultimately futility of all moral activity, does it matter to be moral. The answer is because it impacts your life and the life of others right now.  All lives end at some point. The challenge is – how to live life well and fully. The answer, according to every major religion and philosopher is to live a life of compassion geared towards helping others. Why? Why not.  You are only alive for a short people of time. Why not act in a way that makes your life better and the lives of others better? It sure beats the alternative.

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To learn more – get my book – The Humanist Approach to Happiness – or take my life skills course – Living Made Simpler. 

What does it mean to be ethical?

To be ethical is to be moral. And that’s a loaded term.

Morality is about values. What we think is good or bad. It’s judgements we make about ourselves and about others. Generally – if something is good for us – we think it’s good and if it’s bad for us – we think it’s bad.

People with more developed sense of values will extend their concern for benefit or harm to other people. Most often family members or members of our tribe. Humans are tribal animals. The way this works is – if it is good for our tribe, it is good. If it is bad for our tribe it is bad.

This is why people who may be very ethical to members of their peer group don’t see the problem with being unethical to people deemed to be outsiders.  This seems hypocritical and it is. If something done to you is bad but the same thing done to someone else is ok – the thing being done isn’t inherently bad, you are just judging it to be so based on how you personally are impacted. Hence, the accusation of hypocrisy.

But what is really happening when people think and behave this way is that their sense of ethics and morality is not fully developed. They limit their moral reasoning to themselves or their tribe, however that is defined (politically, racially, religiously, etc).

What makes Humanism so important is that it is a reminder that we need to extend our circle of compassion and concern to everyone.  Humanism is an explicit rejection of tribalism.  If it hurts me, then it probably hurts other people and even if I don’t know those people, it’s still wrong.  Instead of being ethical in a hypocritical way, we strive to be more consistent in our application of ethics equally to everyone.  I say strive because our instinctual tribal impulses make that hard to do.

Regardless, if you find yourself reveling in the hardship of others (the other tribe, or political group or whatever), please stop. Remind yourself they are human too and that you should apply the same compassion to them as you do to yourself. To me, that is what it means to be ethical.

If you want to learn more get my book: The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom  This book will help you better understand how and why to integrate your ethics more fully into your everyday decision making.

If you are looking for professional or personal development programs that will help you actualize these principles in your daily life – consider taking these 2 courses:
https://humanistlearning.com/socratic-jujitsu/

https://humanistlearning.com/generationaldivide/

Both of these courses will help you rethink how you approach conflict with other people.  Or – if you want a more indepth course of study about applied Humanism – take my course; Living Made Simpler http://humanistlearning.info/livingmadesimpler1/

Moral First Draft

Where do our morals come from?

This is a question I get a lot. It’s one of those, if you don’t believe in God, where do you think morals come from questions.  The answer, for a naturalist like a Humanist, is that we evolved to have morals.  They aren’t magical things. There are, in fact, common human morals that are pretty consistent across cultures.

Jonathan Haidt – an evolutionary psychologist, and others, have posited a moral foundations theory, which basically states that we evolved to have morals. More specifically, they posit that there are several innate psychological systems that form the foundation of intuitive ethics. The variations of morals we see around the world are attempts by humans to create cultures that support these innate intuitive ethics we all seem to share by virtue of being born human.

You can read more about this theory at:  http://moralfoundations.org/ And/or get the book: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathon Haidt.

The innate psychological systems they claim form the basis of our morality are:

• Care/Harm
• Fairness/Cheating
• Liberty/oppression
• Loyalty/betrayal
• Authority/subversion
• Sanctity/degradation

When I read through this list – I agree – but I do think our sense of compassion seems to underlie quite a bit about this.  Compassion for self mostly. After all, when you look at this list, it’s clear why we as individuals would care. If someone causes us harm by cheating, oppressing, betrayal, subversion etc, we are harmed.  And, if we are cared for through the fairness of others, given autonomy etc, we are helped, for the most part.

It’s compassion for others combined with rational thinking that allows us to understand that others have similar responses to ours and that we can benefit when we help others. Which is why when people think rationally but don’t add in compassion, their morality seems so askew to the rest of us.

Humanism, it’s not just about critical thinking. It’s also about a compassion based ethic. For ourselves and for others.

It’s not about what others do

Why focusing on your own morality is more important that focusing on the behavior of others.

As you may know, I have a thing about shopping carts. I believe it is moral to return them for a variety of reasons. It helps keep parking lots clear of carts, reduces damage to other people’s cars, it makes the job of the cart jockey’s easier and it’s just a nice thing to do. Plus, I could use the extra exercise, even if it is just walking 2 spots over to return a cart.

The other day I was very excited to see a guy at a market pick up a cart from the lot that wasn’t put away and take it with him to the store, thus making one less cart left in the wrong spot in the lot.  I felt like giving him a high five of solidarity.  I didn’t. I thought it might be a bit weird, so I just put mine back in the cart return and headed home.

Of course, he could have asked me for my cart, because sometimes people do that, but I realized it was actually better that he took the one that had been left out. If he had taken mine, the other would still have been left out and would have been a hazard. With him and me together, that was two carts put away properly instead of one.

Here is the thing though; he did not know that I am the sort of person who returns my cart. For all he knew, I was going to leave my cart out too.  He took that cart without expectation that anyone would notice or care. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do, even though it might have been undone immediately by the next person.

To me, this speaks to the heart why I choose to be a Humanist. It’s not about what others choose to do. It is about what I choose to do, regardless of what others do.  And this for me is what makes Humanism so powerful. Yes, it’s about morality, but it’s actually more about how I choose morality for myself. Not to be a self-righteous jerk dictating how others should behave. But because this is who I want to be for me.

The Simplicity of Morality

Why shopping carts are objects worthy of moral contemplation.

I feel like I am creating a movement based on shopping cart morality. I hate false dichotomies, but it does seem like there are two types of people in the world. Those who put their shopping carts back and those who don’t. Obviously that’s a false dichotomy because there are also those of us who put them back sometimes and not others.

Anyway – I have written about shopping cart morality before – here: http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2012/04/shopping-cart-morality.html

One of my followers, Andy had this to say about my theories on shopping cart morality:

“I not only return my cart, but other people's. I never really thought of it as a moral activity, just not being self-centered and lazy. But I suppose when you get down to it, not acting as though you're doing the world a favor by existing and everyone should cater to your whims is probably a moral stance. Or at the least the result of a stream of ethical thoughts.”

I agree – don’t be a dick – which is another post – enjoy. http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2011/04/dont-be-dick.html