That is close enough.
Great to point that out.
I think Humanism role is to refine and defend this idea that the highest, most fundamental principle is human welfare, which is a large term to refer to a spectrum:
self-preservation (access to life) → welfare (access to health and psychological/intellectual autonomy) → individual development/fulfillment (hedonism and individualism)
Individualism is just a refinement of psychological/intellectual autonomy.
Hedonism is just a refinement of access to health.
Autonomy and access to health are just refinements of self-preservation.
At each state, science and Reason play a major role:
_You can not have self-preservation, access to health, and hedonism without science.
_You can not have self-preservation, psychological/intellectual autonomy and individualism without Reason.
(Therefore the topic on romanticism → What do humanists think of romanticism?)
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Well, I think of my dear Grandma from East Germany: “Ordnung muss seine!”
She loved it in ‘her’ DDR. Then her husband died and her sons, having escaped to the west early on, (my dad moving on to America end of '55), brought her over to the BRD, and she never stopped pining for her DDR, she didn’t think much of the west or the hippies. Then she got to know me, and loved me, I was my own breath of fresh air and delightful break from her normal mundane routine. Mind you I met her in the mid '70s, when she was in her mid '80s, so she’d seen some ugly time and loved the order in DDR (the Soviet Block), they had housing, food, medical care, times were secure. Or so they thought.
She was tough as nails and gritty, I loved getting to know her and to think her blood ran through me, made me feel proud.
That: “Ordnung muss seine” rings in my memory when I think of her, it’s like it defined all that was wrong with us in the west. I get the feeling Guy might feel right at home with her thinking, in that regard.
Don’t get me wrong, I love law and order and a civil tolerant society and following rational rules.
Though guess that bumps up against something else another smart lady once told me: “be good, but not too good.” Dancing the knife edge of life.
@citizenschallengev4 I think your testimony is very precious.
It reminds me of some videos where old generations in Russia are said to regret the communist time.
If it was that great, why some people, like your father and uncles, had to flee this place?
Well I did point out she was born early 1890s, she had experiences that none of can imagine. My was born '27 dad, with brother a few years younger. Dad got captured by British solders in Italy and sat out the war as a prisoner of war in Egypt. But he was a hot jazz musician, and the Brits had him put together a small big band, made them “trustees” and they played for the officer’s club, great gig, food, some drinks, even got an occasional real cigarette as oppose to the usual prisoner’s ration of “flutes”. (I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen a picture with my young tall lean dad, with his band up on the bandstand.) So it was actually only the younger brother that escaped and my dad was released to BRD.
It’s generational thing. We old people like it things regular and peaceable. If you got any juice in ya, you gotta get away.
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Ok. Well, the younger brother still escaped from East Germany, and might have reasons for that…
Did not make any research on the life of citizens in communist regimes.
I understand that, compared to what your grandmother experienced before, what the DDR proposed was not that bad (expect if you were a dissident. I think there is no controversy about that).
Looking at it, it appears that putting the human welfare as the highest goal is embodied in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Note that the French The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, has the word “property” instead of “happiness”, and the word “security” instead of “life”. So it appears more politically philosophical principles than philosophical principles.
The purpose of any political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.
I recall from the Wikipedia article that there are debates on whether the word “happiness” in the Declaration of Independence refers to “property”. But still, it is the word “happiness” that was used.
So, is taxation stolen money in your opinion?
For that we first need to ask: do we need a nation-state? I think the answer is yes.
Then, the state is responsible for protecting the rights of security, property and life of the citizens. So for that the state needs the taxpayers money.
Some free-market economy theorists like Milton Friedman believe that education should be free, although the people should have more choice in which school they put their children into (see school vouchers).
If I am not mistaken, Hayek believed that some kind of welfare system should exist, since nobody is secure from life accidents.
Listened to one economist who said that Hayek theory was pretty compatible with his center-left social-democratic views.
But taxes and redistribution should not be high to a point where:
- it discourages employers from employing
- employees from searching a job
- entrepreneurs and innovators from starting businesses
Which is the situation we have in France I think, although it may have improved a little bit in recent years.
I am not an anarcho-capitalist. This is because we humans are not ready for that. The traits of exploitation, entitlement and domination-seeking (take them from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory) are still too prominent. Humans are also still not enough autonomous.
But because I believe that health-autonomy is the highest goal, anarcho-capitalism is a goal. But it should come very very progressively (see David Friedman). Maybe it will take hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Sorry for the name-dropping but I like to mark which ideas come from whom.
That’s an asset, nothing to be sorry about.
Do you think we have that much time to figure it out?
If we do not, then we do not, but this is not really the topic here. Was talking about philosophical, ethical values.
If human welfare is the highest value, then of course we should find ways to preserve the environment so that we are not destroyed by it.
Conservatives say that we need people to be “responsible”, to take “responsibility”. This is not an equivalent, especially in that context, of “autonomy”. The stress on “responsibility”, for conservatives, is there to justify, strenghten, deepen and expand traditional hierarchies.
For liberal humanists, I believe, individuals are only “responsible” before the law of their actions. In the civil world, they should be “autonomous”.
The care for other people comes from the ethics that, again, human welfare is the highest good. At the level of society, it translates in utilitarianism: “the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people”.
You care for yourself, for your family, and your fellows. This is in your own personal interest too. Parents who don’t take care of their children, will likely not be taken care of by their children when they will be old (especially in open western societies where people have the choice to do so). People who are nasty with others will likely be treated badly in return one day or the other. Same for the environment, btw.
Interesting.
I’m a tree hugger, I absorbed this Earth and her biosphere, her creatures and her global heat and moisture distribution engine into my philosophy.
I am a filament in Earth’s Evolutionary Pageant.
I don’t have expectations or sense of entitlement to some answer to everything, my answer to everything is gratitude. I could have been anything, but turned out an evolved thinking, learning, introspective and curious creature whom, with the help of science, has been able to grasp history Earth’s and humans with a depth of fact based knowledge unknown of, and possibly never to follow once we finish destroying ourselves. How much more special do I want, an eternity in heaven with a character that wants to be worshipped, gimme a break.
And I don’t mean that as a jingle, it’s integral to who I am and how I view everything around me. Best way to convey the depth is perhaps a metaphor, that the natural world is like another member of my family for me on a personal awareness, emotional, spiritual level.
If you asked me for the Most Fundamental Observation, I would suggest:
The Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide
I’m also a pragmatist and have learned that truly appreciating what that little phrase entails, unlocks all sorts of existential angst and related life’s little conundrums that so many suffer from.
Writing this comment and thinking on it, I’d say the highest most fundamental principle would be quite simple:
MOTHER EARTH
Until one figures out how much they are created by Earth’s processes and dependent on her health, philosophy will continue spinning its wheel (such as #32) and philosophy’s relevance crisis will simply continue increasing. Without waking up to and absorbing the lesson of evolution and us being evolved thinking animals, actors on Earth’s stage till death, as all other creatures that came before - nothing will change within humanity. But Earth sure will, and that will have consequences.
We are very special, but still of Earth! And we need to stop thinking we’re the universe special gift, flown down to Earth for our entertainment, while we ignore our intimate bond to her and her health.
We gotta get out of our incredibly self-absorbed thinking and self-serving actions mindset. What I’ve come to coin Abrahamic Thinking.
Or not.
Lost within our mindscapes, too many are.
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You too are a hippie? Why are there so many hippies on a humanist (= Reason and science) website?
Writing this comment and thinking on it, I’d say the highest most fundamental principle would be quite simple: MOTHER EARTH
Is it incompatible with using a laptop and the internet?
I’m pretty sure all living species believe they are universe special gift, from viruses, to tiger mosquito, to tarantula, to sharks, etc.
I don’t think if you found yourself among lions your life will be worthier than their full stomach.
Believing that nature is a pure, well-intended entity of which members (including humans) lived in peaceful harmony before the advent of the bronze age seems to me chemically-idealistic lyricism.
Please keep rule #5 in mind. You are not the arbitar of definitions
- In the opinion of CFI and for the purposes of this Forum, “humanism” is to be interpreted broadly. Anyone self-identifying as a humanist should be so considered.
Agreed
But I’m not sure why you brought this up. No one posted that they believe nature is a well intended entity
Ok for pointing to this rule #5, but I think this comment (below) is inappropriate and unfair:
First of all, I did not say anybody was not a humanist.
Secondly, humanism = science and Reason is how CFI itself, and most modern humanist associations and scholars define humanism:
"Secular humanism is a nonreligious worldview rooted in science, philosophical naturalism, and humanist ethics. " + “cfi Center For Inquiry. REASON. SCIENCE. SECULAR VALUES.”
So no, I did not act at the arbitar of definitions.
Are we not allowed to talk about how we see humanism?
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That is what evoked me: “Writing this comment and thinking on it, I’d say the highest most fundamental principle would be quite simple: MOTHER EARTH”, "Without waking up to and absorbing the lesson of evolution and us being evolved thinking animals, actors on Earth’s stage till death, as all other creatures that came before - nothing will change within humanity. ", and “And we need to stop thinking we’re the universe special gift, flown down to Earth for our entertainment, while we ignore our intimate bond to her and her health.”
So, you were agreeing with him? I didnt see that before.
You are, but you used “hippie” as if it was derogatory, then compared it to your definition
of humanism.