Why Humanism?
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.”
—Octavia E. Butler, “Parable of the Sower”
We live in troubled times, with high cultural anxiety, and some ask why Humanists are so concerned about political life today. Some say we are just atheists with a liberal agenda. I point out that atheism speaks to what I don’t believe and Humanism speaks to what I do believe in, value and hope to practice. Modern humanism grew out of a movement in the last century of people who wanted to integrate all the knowledge available at the time into a whole worldview, a “weltanschauung”. It answers Socrates’ two great questions: What is true and how shall I live my life?
I am concerned that more people are rejecting religion today but are not replacing it with a vital life stance. I have seen too many who found one great truth, that God doesn’t exist, and stopped their search there. I have seen those who lack a unifying center in their lives fall into a “nihilistic disenchantment.” This is one of my primary concerns for our culture, indeed for all civilization, as we become more secular. There is too much toxic individualism today and not enough civic engagement.
Maybe you are wondering, “What can I believe in if I don’t believe in God?” Another way to pose the question is, “What can I count on, but also what breathes power, meaning, energy and wholeness into my life?”
Why Humanism? Because we want to devote our lives to profound ideals. We want to answer the fundamental questions of existence. We are looking for passionate life commitments beyond our own needs. We are looking for ideals born of conscious reflection in the glaring light of knowledge. As the progressive educator John Dewey wrote, “We are looking for those ideals and ends so inclusive that they unify the self.” We desire a “North Star” to guide us.
Humanism is an evolving tradition. It reflects what we can best believe and what we can best value. Humanism is a comprehensive worldview that speaks to everything we encounter. It is an evolving life stance that holds that this world is all there is and enough. It’s enough to gain truth and meaning, tell us about our origins and fill us with awe and wonder. Humanism shows us what is in the world and how best to live our lives.
Out of this philosophy of life, we affirm many positions that oppose the white Christian Nationalism that has taken over our government, which seeks to destroy democracy in favor of an oligarchic fascism dominated by rich, powerful interests.
Humanism asks us to search for and commit ourselves to our highest ideals, our noblest sentiments, our greatest values and what civilization and science say matters most. Choosing our values affects real people with real lives in real ways. The universe may not have transcendent values, but higher values do exist, which make all our lives better because they work. These high values motivate us beyond our own petty circumstances to experience a larger reality.
Our ultimate goal is the betterment and flourishing of human and global welfare and the mitigation of suffering. Why?
Humanist ethics are based on the idea that only we are responsible for our ethics and that we must determine our own ethical lives. Only we are responsible for our ethics because only we have any control. Morality stems from human agency, reason, compassion, social influences, genetic drives and self-interest.
Scholars who have studied why some societies thrive and others don’t point to what is called “cultural capital,” another way of saying civilization. The members of successful societies cultivate mutual trust, human solidarity and peace, as well as all of civilization’s material benefits.
Max Weber, one of the founders of the modern science of sociology, noted that the fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world.” He was concerned that with the loss of religion, people would lose an emotional connection with the world. “And then,” in the words of historian Kenneth Clark, “exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity” would take over.
Civilization can both stultify and edify, so we have to look critically at what comprises a good life and a good society. What may look like a noble culture to some and may be merely a system of power and control to others, so we must always remain skeptical and self-aware of where we are going wrong.
Civilization is fragile. I believe Humanism not only springs from the well of civilization but is also the only thing that can save it at this point in history. Anti-government ideology can descend to a cancerous form of civilization suicide. Kenneth Clark warned us, “It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.”
W. B. Yeats wrote these famous, prophetic lines as a warning:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best of us lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Some have asked why I am such a devoted social activist. It’s because I believe the forces of barbarism are, and have always been, all around us. I also believe it is both our duty and our joy to defend the highest forms of civilization. Today, the tides of barbarism have risen higher than they have been for a long time. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us, “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” Apathy and cynicism are civilization’s soft underbelly. The culture that inspires constant renewal, love, imagination and a devotion to truth is best able to expand and protect civilization.
John Dewey, one of the greatest American Humanists, placed great value on our social selves. He said, “The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by the grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying, and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.”
Humanists choose to live the fullest life in the urgency of now. Eternity is in this moment. There is majesty in being in the world. We long for a vital center to our lives that both grounds us and inspires us, a vision of grander authenticity. All of us long for an evocative whole story and a higher vision that lifts our hearts, pushes us to higher meanings and ennobles our lives. Some may find that the integrated story for the future is already here and now. The here is in the balanced secular life; the now is in the heart and mind, in reason and compassion, in accepting the exhilarating challenge of moving again toward a responsible search for truth and meaning. Now is also a time to commit to our highest values for a better life for all. As Humanists we know, as all wise people throughout the ages have known, that one needs meaning beyond oneself and one’s own immediate happiness to achieve true fulfillment.
The Humanist life stance is based on values, not our beliefs. They encompass open-minded critical thinking, science, justice, freedom, tolerance, democracy, reason, compassion, human rights, all people’s inherent worth and dignity and the importance of human flourishing. These are the values that hold our web of belief together and that are in jeopardy today.
We can’t afford the luxury of just critiquing religion. We must tell our alternative story so anyone contemplating change will know a non-religious worldview can support, inspire and comfort them; that knowledge of science, while tentative, is surely firmer than blind faith; that the exhilaration of focusing on the here and now is more meaningful than otherworldliness; that hope and love are certainly better than hate and divisiveness; that compassion and responsibility can be balanced with self-interest and freedom. The ambiguity inherent in all our value/ethical/political choices need not paralyze us; it makes it even more important that we reflectively consider them.
Humanist ethics derives its power from affirming all people’s inherent worth and dignity. It realizes that, if justice is to be given, only we can give it. If love is to be given, only we have that power in this moment and in this hour. Real suffering exists, and only we can bind the wounds. This world certainly is all and enough—enough to fill us with joy, wonder, hope and awe that is our natural birthright.
Now it is our time. Now is our chance to move society toward reason and the good life. Now is our time to move society out of the dark ages of theocratic and ideological control and toward human fulfillment. We cannot falter in the face of certain hostility or our own inherent ambiguity; neither can we stand idly by hoping for a secular society to automatically shape itself. It is our duty to show that a secular world need not end in nihilism. It is our obligation to demonstrate that we can build communities that embrace a progressive, ethical, Humanist worldview of human and global good.
In our troubled anti-foundational times, I think it’s time once again to look beyond society’s failings, the universe’s inherent meaninglessness, our own needs and our avoidance of grand purposes. Instead, we should once again look toward the heart’s commitments to the best of who we and society can be. Being a Humanist takes passion, courage and commitment. It requires a love of life that can help us rise above our age’s vacuous, cynical malaise and empower us with a vision of what a Humanistic society would look like.
Humanism at its best offers a grander vision of life. It is a devotion to humanity and the biosphere that we are part of. It is our passionate commitment to the best ideals that are supported by what experience, science and civilization have taught us. That vision tells us Humanism is larger than any of us. I believe we have a duty to continue Humanism’s evolving tradition, which has inspired countless individuals to make the world better. At the same time, it motivates us to fill our lives with transcendent purpose, to live a meaningful, exuberant life—a life worth living.
All this is why Humanism is so concerned with the current cultural and political era. The Christo-fascist, oligarchal takeover of much of federal, state and local politics has erased much of the gains we have made on the areas of women’s rights, racism, LGBTQ+, separation of church and state, abortion, economic justice, the environment, war and violence—the list goes on. Humanism is a foundational project, and all our deepest values are being attacked. The barbaric forces are committed, powerful and resistant to change. Our duty is to stand up to these forces destroying civilization. That’s why our voice is crucial.