How to stay positive despite the horrors

A post for freethinkers, Humanists and atheists who are concerned about or dealing with violent oppression for their world view.

This is based on a question I got over at my Bollywood Humanist youtube channel. Queen movie Review: Bollywood/Kangana

Question:

I am a Humanist myself, nice to see your review. Specially incidents of the world now make me feel sad. Recently Saudi Arabia order beheading an Atheist. Similar punishment for Blasphemy was also there in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and other country.  Being a Bengali and Bengal is divided by British into Hindu and Muslim ( West Bengal and Bangladesh now) parts. Hindu Part fall into India and Bangladesh was under Pakistan then they fought for a secular country and make Bangladesh. We Bengali's from both side of the border share same language, culture, book, foods and also writer and bloggers. 18 writer, bloggers, cartoonist, publishers and were killed just because they were Humanist and spreading their message in Bangladesh, by ISIS. Hack to death in streets between 2015 to 2016. In India 3 humanist were killed recently H Farook was killed for posting "No God No God No God" in his Facebook status in Tamil Nadu.

We also see the rise of Right wing like Trump in USA, British, India now right wing leaders like Yogi Adityanath who previously openly used hate and threatening speech to all Muslims are elected in India. There were Hindu terrorist who are killing people for selling or consuming beef ( Cow is considered sacred among many Hindus).

Other secular country like Turkey becoming more of a dictator, arresting Atheist and Human Right activist. Saudi Arabia will be head of UN from 2018 ... I am not feeling good the direction the World and World politics are moving towards. What you thing and how we can promote human rights and harmony when hate and divide in the society is increasing ( as my observation).

My response:

Yes - it's a scary time and the entire freethought community is upset about the killings happening in the Bengal areas.  And yes, religious authoritarianism is on the rise in many places.   The good news is that there is resistance to that everywhere and we just have to keep resisting and finding positive ways to talk about life and be alive.  

I have been wavering between hope and despair for months now, but I keep finding reasons to be hopeful. For instance, Republicans in the US partnered with Dems to pass a budget that rebuffed the worst of what Trump proposed.  I am dividing my time between acts of resistance and acts of creation.  In times of great turmoil - creating beauty is in itself an act of resistance. One of the best lessons on this was the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. People realized that as oppressive as the state was - they operated mostly on fear. People were afraid to resist because of the threat of retaliation. But the artists involved in the Velvet Revolution created box art that could be shared and they decided to act as if the state couldn't find them - which they couldn't - not really. They resisted through art.

One of the reasons I wanted to review movies from a Humanist perspective was to highlight the work artists are doing to promote humanism and human rights even in the midst of societies that are doing their best to suppress dissent.

The other thing that keeps me hopeful is that a futurist/humanist I saw talk years ago said that religious fundamentalism/extremism would peak in 2014.  We are in the peak right now.  If we can resist and maintain positive pressure - we should be able to get through this despite the setbacks.
One way to understand the violent backlash against humanism and humanists is that this is part of the extinction process. Old ways of being never go quietly into the night. They fight back to regain supremacy. If they lose, they fight back harder and harder.  If they were winning, they wouldn’t need to fight. This violence is part of the behavioral extinction process.

On the other hand, there will always be people fearful of change and what it will mean for them and they will always be willing to fight for their truth. So even as society becomes less violent, and it has been getting less violent, there will always be people who agitate for violent change and for that, we have to remain vigilant. Which brings me back to the need to resist beautifully.

This level of violence doesn’t just happen!

It’s October which means its bullying awareness month. As I teach how to get bullies to stop using operant conditioning I wanted to share this story here.

http://www.bradenton.com/news/nation-world/national/article78803547.html#fmp
This article has 2 stories. The first involves a 5-year-old girl who was beaten up in a bathroom by an older girl who has been charged as a juvenile with false imprisonment, aggravated assault and battery. Which is a good thing because that’s exactly what happened. This wasn’t bullying, it was assault and battery.

The other story involves a high school girl who was literally beaten to death in a high school bathroom.  The student who did that was charged with criminally negligent homicide.  Again, appropriate because – this wasn’t just bullying, it was criminal level assault and battery.

What we should all understand is that this level of violence doesn’t just happen. It means they’ve had a festering problem that they haven’t dealt with that made these kids feel like it was acceptable to do this.  Either that, or the offending kids have severe mental health problems that weren’t being addressed!

I often say that if things escalate to violence then the adults failed the kids. We have to start taking bullying behavior seriously. Because it is serious.  It’s habitual behavior meaning – it’s going to happen again. There is usually more than one victim. And it escalates over time and gets worse. You can’t wish it away. If you don’t stop it – it will get worse!

If you don’t know how to get it to stop – learn! Behavioral scientists have known for decades how exactly to get unwanted behavior to stop. It’s time we start teaching that! If you are an educator – you have an even greater responsibility to learn this information.

Get my book: http://amzn.to/2bjXX6H
And take one of my online courses (many of them are free - https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/)

Learn this, share it and pass it on!

The Right to Live Humane Lives

We live in a society that is not compassionate. Maybe we should change that.

We humans have a right to a humane life. Humane is defined as branch of learning intended to civilize people. It’s also defined as having or showing compassion and/or benevolence.

When I say we all have a right to live humane lives, I am stating an ideal. We humans would thrive if we lived in a society that treated us compassionately – or humanely.

Life is hard enough. We have to find food, shelter and clothing and hopefully find a tribe to hang with and protect us from the elements and things that want to eat us or harm us.  Among those that want to harm us should not be our fellow humans.

And yet here we are, in America, enduring our 355th shooting of the year. We humans prey on our fellow humans. We have institutionalized violence against minorities in our country. The death rate arising from this violence is staggering.

And that doesn’t even include the non-death suffering we inflict on each other in the name of fear and profits. We live in a society that isn’t compassionate. Maybe we should change that.

All this death and suffering is avoidable because it is death and suffering we are inflicting on ourselves.  If instead of responding to our fellow humans with fear we could try responding to them with compassion. Maybe there would be fewer accidental shootings that way.

Maybe kids that are being ostracized for being different wouldn’t be. Maybe their classmates would embrace them and their weirdness and maybe one less kid would commit suicide.


I’m not a Pollyanna who thinks compassion can solve all the problems in the world. But I do think we do better when we are compassionate and humane with one another.

We live in a hostile world. We form tribes to help protect us from that hostile world.  Who are we if we don’t use that impulse to protect to actually protect, not just ourselves, but our fellow humans. We have the ability to feed the hungry. We have the ability to house the homeless. We have the ability to provide medical care for those in need. And yet, we don’t.

We live in a society that isn’t compassionate. Maybe we should change that.

Futility of War

Over the summer I took my son to the Armed Forces HistoryMuseum in St Petersburg. It is an excellent museum and worth the vist.

The visit, however, was very emotional for me. It surprised me actually how emotional I become.  In the WWII section, there is a replica of a German outpost. The room is filled with swastikas. I had to explain to my 6 yr old why I started crying and had to leave the room.

Other areas of the museum made me feel really grateful that there were men and women who were willing to put their lives on the line to help other people in need.

I left feeling a strange mixture of pride in humanity and sadness at the futility of all of it.  War is a tragic waste of human lives. There is no other way to describe it. I can’t help wondering how many of the wars humans have waged were absolutely necessary. 

I understand that some of the wars were necessary. After all, brutal dictators cannot be allowed to enslave the world. I realize that pacifism is a noble goal, but in some circumstances, unrealistic.  It is just that, it would be nice if we could end wars and find less violent ways to solve conflicts.

In the meantime, thank goodness that there are men and women willing to do the difficult and dangerous work that is still unfortunately required from time to time. Let’s just hope that humanity progresses past this point eventually.

In the meantime, as I said, for a museum to move me in two completely different directions emotional means that this is one heck of a museum and worth visiting regardless of whether you are a pacifist or not.

Image: "Old Army Jacket" by Maggie Smith http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

What’s Wrong With These People?

I’m rather upset about the extreme negative response some people have had to the gay marriage vote in NY. The anger and violence directed towards gays doesn’t make any sense to me. I get that some people have religious objections to gay marriage, but I don’t understand why anyone would care enough to react with violence. I mean seriously, what does it matter who people want to have sex with? Unless they want to have sex with you, you aren’t even involved.

When I see scenes of violence against gays, and gays receiving death threats, I am forced to ask, what the heck is wrong with these people? Don’t they have anything better to do? Don’t they have a life? Are there really that many people struggling with latent homosexual desires? I just don’t get it.

So to those of you who are so scared of gays that you are lashing out in violence against them: get a life already. Gays are humans. Not some alien race trying to take over our planet. If the idea of homosexuality disgusts you, that’s fine. There’s a rational way to deal with your disgust. Ignore them. They probably don’t want to have sex with you anyway.

Being sober will make you a better person

We all know that, obviously. But have you thought about why? Well, first there is the negative effect that illegal drugs and/or excessive alcohol use have on you as a person. Drug or alcohol addiction makes it harder to solve your problems, not easier. But more important, your drug or alcohol use affects other people. And in the case of illegal drug use, it is often deadly to those other people. Just look at what is happening in Ciudad Juarez to better understand what impact your drug dollars have on other people’s lives. Stop using. For yourself and for the untold millions whose lives are endangered because you can’t seem to stop using.