The quotations from citizenchallengev4 “Writing this comment and thinking on it, I’d say the highest most fundamental principle would be quite simple: MOTHER EARTH”, etc. evokes me that he believes that “nature is a well intended entity”.
He indeed did not say “nature is a well intended entity”, but I feel this is what is implied.
I think I motivated with serenity and rational arguments why I believe the hippie culture is not fitted to humanism (even in the broad sense of the term “humanism”). I even opened a discussion/topic for that.
As I said in my introduction, I am here to learn, so I would like to have serious/reasoned discussions. Not here to have arguments. Also, I am relatively young and did not come to humanism for a very long time (5 years), so I would not consider myself entitled to judge who is a humanist or not.
It is not “my” definition of humanism. It is the definition of humanism of this very website, and the definition of the most prominent humanist figures of the contemporary world (Pinker, Dawkins, Paul Kurtz, Lamont, etc.), so my astonishment that many hippies self-identify with this humanist movement defended by an association which created this website is legitimate!
Again, I am not American, maybe the term “hippies” is often derogatory in the US, not so in France (would not like to involve @morgankane01, but maybe he would confirm). In fact, when I wrote “You too are a hippie? Why are there so many hippies on a humanist (= Reason and science) website?” I was more astonished/amused, than anything else. And I warned in my introduction that I worried my background (visited the US (San-Francisco) for only 1 week) could lead to some misunderstandings due to cultural/linguistic discrepancies.
What is wrong with calling the Earth “Mother Earth”? How does it make one a hippie? The term doesn’t come from hippies, it comes from the Native Americans. After all, everything that is in us is also in the Earth and the Universe. We are in fact made up of star stuff, as said by Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I see nothing wrong with calling the Earth “Mother Earth” personally.
Cut him some slack.
I brought up the Hippy stuff. Perhaps there so many here (if there are), because most real hippies, as opposed to the freeloaders, had work ethics and were a tad more thoughtful then the crowd chasing the shiny American Dream, with their faith in Hollywood dreaming & endless growth & their entitlement.
Hippies got a bad wrap by journalist interested in selling sensational stories.
Well, not so much bad wrap, an unbalanced one, since okay, yeah, there were plenty of freeloader hippies - so you see even in that little sub-culture society their was the entire spectrum of human ideals and lesser angels, shall we say.
I hope you’re joking and appreciate that humans have an intellectual level of self-reflection that goes well beyond what any other creature has achieved.
That’s a silly sentence, especially for a philosopher to make.
What it mean?
What does a lion’s full belly or it’s next meal, have to do with my sense of self-worth or the value of my life, even if I happen to be on that lion’s menu?
Non sequitur, it is.
Okay please show me where I implied that nature was peaceful harmony, or “well intended entity” - I can’t even imagine what you mean by that “well intended” and have to wonder how much time you’ve spent in natural setting meditation on evolution and such, and how much time has been confined to cities and rooms and getting from one place to the next.
As for “pure” what are you looking for?
The ultimate purity?
What would that look like?
Though nature does seem pretty pure and no-nonsense as opposed to people with the florid imaginations and so at ease with the lies and deceptions.
I was talking about appreciating nature.
Nature doesn’t operate by intentions!
Nature unfolds according to specific and very consistent rules.
I’ve gone into the desert camping and you’d better not have a la-de-da groovy attitude that nature is loving and will provide, you gotta cover your own butt, or nature will swallow you up the way she does, no malice, just gotta follow her rules, or your egg get cooked.
Nature can be trusted - as opposed to the human mind, which is produced by the human body interacting with itself and the world around it and which is mainly concerned with keep itself alive.
Yeah, but your posts are really long and require research into your terms. Just because I didn’t respond, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion, or that you opinion commports with reality. I don’t care how rational you are, if I say I’m a hippie humanist, don’t tell me I’m wrong.
You can ask me what I think. Try that.
He also said, "“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.”
Get to know the people here first.
If you want to argue with a mod, open a thread in “issue and complaint”. I’m happy for the new members but it’s my (volunteer) job to keep the civility.
If I am not allowed to tell other people they are wrong, even with rational arguments, I do not know what to say.
Sorry.
You are, but not with term “humanism”. I thought that was clear.
I don’t disagree, in fact the statement: "I’d say the highest most fundamental principle would be quite simple: MOTHER EARTH”, had me pause.
Come Lausten, that was a remark.
You know if I’m going to argue with you, I’m going to argue.
I just wanted to remark, chill, I got this covered, I’d feel insulted,
in fact I relish the discussion and the challenge.
I thought that’s what CFI was about.
He hasn’t been rude or baiting, he has been responsive and thoughtful, even if that may sting now and then. We all manage to dish it out sometimes, it’s just what it is.
Having said that, I do agree with your advice at #44 and #45.
I think any member of any species see their own survival (even at the expense of other member of other species) as the most important. This is what I meant.
Could you indicate if this is core to humanism, and if yes, in which way? (the appreciation of nature)
Survival is pretty basic. I don’t think animals need to contemplate that. If our pre hominid ancestors didn’t have that instinct, we wouldn’t be here.
I can’t speak to philosophical formalities.
It’s core to understanding who we humans are.
I’ll let other’s argue about the definition of Humanism, it seems to me another one of those, eye of the beholder things.
That is why I’ve carved out a new label to encompass the understanding I’ve achieved,
I am an Earth Centrist. I relate to the basic Humanist tenets, but as soon I read deeper I find it’s as self-absorbed, as all other isms. That Abrahamic mindset thing.
We are the light house and everything else is our there.
My vision is a much more organic, bottom up evolutionary perspective of life on Earth and our place in it.
Okay the drive to survive and thrive is inbred into all living matter.
But that a far cry from humans and our life long awareness of our inevitable death and all that leds to .
I’m enjoying this thread. As someone who identified as a freak in the late 60’s, I feel no insult with hippie so long as my previously stated definition of freak as a “thinking” hippie is acknowledged. This distinction was important to me then and now. And the freak title as I understand it is a tree-hugger who has reason as their highest priority.
Nevertheless, back to the main topic, I am very much against the concept of a free market as it has been applied historically. Those (e.g., Friedman) Chicago school economists do not account for environmental concerns from their actions, nor do they account for basic decency to the common workers. They also don’t tame their vast power once they become mega rich.
I very much agree with what Orsekes writes in The Big Myth. I have to admit that my perspective is that of a US citizen and I appreciate that those in other parts of the world have very different experiences and terms.
It is acknowledged. I think younger generations were acquainted to this movement from the more intellectual aspects anyway, precisely because it is the one which left tracks. To be acquainted to the less intellectual one, one would need to have been present at the time and place. Of course many have parents who were hippies when they were young, but it is not the same.
In France, it is the term “beatnik” (pronounced with the French pronunciation) which is pejorative (at least IMK). The term “hippie” has, I think, positive connotations, since it refers to an ideal and positive values. Many teenagers and young adults are still full of regrets to have not experienced this “golden period” (especially after having watched the documentary Woodstock, and this kind of things).
I opened a topic about socialism and humanism here.
My family moved to Burlingame, California about halfway down the San Francisco Peninsula (1968), where I graduated high school in '73. Mind you I didn’t find the “revolution” until after high school, during my 3 years living the dream in Yosemite National Park and becoming friends with a few who were there. I was taken along to experience the Grateful Dead’s 2nd to last Wall of Sound concert. Between that and frolicking along Big Creek and the South Fork, and the Wawona’s living history collection of cabins, and living in the great wide open wilds, I became a believer.
Of course, reformulated through my somewhat strait laced working class German/American upbringing, so I’m not any sort of typical version of hippy. Still there was something there worth pursuing. 
Going back to the original question: What is the highest, most fundamental principle?
I suggested it doesn’t get anymore fundamental than Mother Nature, or more specifically “Mother Earth.”
For one, inherent in that is an explicit recognition that we are born out of Earth’s processes, no meta-physical skyhooks needed.
From that comes the realization (on a deep visceral level) that you do have the cumulative lessons of countless thousands of generations flowing through your blood and imbedded in your skeleton. That really does matter, especially the more you learn about your insides - it starts relating to how you deal with your body and health, and even behavior management. Becoming familiar with our “Free Won’t” - but I’ll save that for another post.
Meaning your body is walking around with internal mechanisms, systems, understandings for keeping track of things. System that we still can’t fully conceive of yet, although neurologists and other scientist have been developing tantalizing outlines, and they keep learning more and it just keeps getting more amazing.
A little further reflection reveals that our “Consciousness” is the inside reflection of our bodies communicating with themselves, while dealing with their interior and exterior reality. Something we have in common with all other creatures, only difference being the sophistication of bodily components and senses/brains processing abilities. (See Mark Solms) It’s a continuum.
Furthermore, Consciousness is a complex interaction, not a thing.
We influence our surroundings and our surrounds influence us. In fact, one of the most fundamental understandings in modern biology is that we can not understand a creature, without also understanding the environment it exists within. Chew on that.
Somewhere in all that comes what I believe to be the most fundamental observation regarding our human condition or conundrum or welt-angst, etc.
Appreciating the “Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.”
I challenge anyone to suggest something more fundamental, concise and accurate.
Once we’re that far, it becomes obvious that we are here, embedded in a reality.
All of this is not my imagination, or we couldn’t be communicating with each other in this forum, my imagination certainly isn’t up to conjuring all you people, and trust me, my imagined society would have way the hell different priorities than this reality I find myself navigating.
Once that becomes apparent, it becomes clear that Earth and the cosmos could not have flowed down one specific cascade. Ours is to strive to understand and appreciate, not to think that it’s our job to define reality at all costs.
Or that some power gave us this planet, for us to consume as ravenously as possible.
Another cascading insight from this journey is that “Truth” is a mirage. The best we can hope for is Honesty. To honestly represent what one has experienced and to constructively learn from those experiences.
Okay.
It’s tough. Worse.
Where do we go from here.
Philosophers have lots to say, but most of it doesn’t conform to reality, so doesn’t have any sticky to it.
Consider how easily a flake like Ayn Rand was able to blow away the entire serious philosophical academic community. And flood many of our nation’s leaders and public with a tsunami of self-destructive, if self-serving, kwatsch.
Still the reference to Mother Earth doesn’t relate to hippies, not to U.S. hippies at least.
I think the nature of the human species lies in their will and capacity to develop unlimitedly sophisticated knowledge about reality and develop unlimitedly sophisticated techniques to improve their welfare.
I think boiling down the industrial society framework as “consumption” is a wrongful caricature. In fact, research shows that the more countries tend to develop, the more the citizens tend to care about the environment.
As a point of fact, correct me if I am wrong, but most of the hippies came from the middle class.
So the subjective experience of reality[1] is often superior to the objective observation of reality[2]?
[1] you used the term “appreciation”
[2] related to the mistrust expressed toward:
(a) the philosophy’s ability to grasp reality (cf. “it doesn’t conform to reality”) and
(b) philosophers as credible sources of knowledge (cf. “blow away the entire serious philosophical academic community”)
I’d like to help by referring you to a few links:
The first two are to a related CFI site:
This one is from American Humanists Association:
I prefer the humanist manifesto II, but III is good too:
And as you can see, there are many definitions of humanism:
I prefer this definition:
Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.
– American Humanist Association