Why Do We Still Need Humanism?

 

Atheism is basically more or less just about saying that you don’t adhere to a world-view that includes the idea of god, but humanism is a bit more, as it is also about having a world-view of one’s own. I really do believe that it is not enough for a person just to oppose something as an atheist basically does. Atheism is not an ideology in itself, but just form of opposition to a unbelievably strong and dominating old form of ideology, which is in fact so strong that just opposing it seems for many to be form a basis for an ideology in itself.

However, I really think that people could and should have higher goals in their life. I think that humans and human societies can still evolve when we put our minds and some real effort into it. We have done it in the past many times, why not in the future? To reach a goal one has to have one in the first place. A goal cannot be anything that we already have, so we must set our goals in a such a way that they will improve the current situation.

The basic ideas of humanism have already permeated our society and have changed it tremendously for the better and have as such clearly shown their worth. At the core of humanism is the idea of human dignity, idea of value of every human and that has been already largely accepted in western societies, but not for example in Islamic countries, where people can still be stoned just to set an example.

I think humanism grows from the belief that humanity can save itself only by believing in itself and in the possibility to improve human condition. Humanism grows from the fact that humanity’s good and redeeming qualities will in the end always override the bad ones. This has happened in the past for tens of thousands of years and it has made possible the survival of human race so far. I fear that a big difference between religious people and humanists is that the deeply religious people are all too often pessimists at the core. They seem to fear that bad qualities of human species will win in the end. Humanists on the other hand just could be optimists, who generally think the good will prevail, because being good benefits the person and the whole society more.

Of course in humanism there is a lot of idealism, but that is quite allowed, as humanism is not a scientific fact or even a scientific theory, but just an ideology, as are for example humanistic basic beliefs of social justice, equality and freedom of thought also. I believe that human societies have evolved to become better places to live because people have had ideas like humanism on how things can be improved.

Humanism has already clearly shown to be a very central engine for that improvement. It is at all not just wishful thinking to say that spreading of humanistic ideas has improved the lot of very many humans. The spread of humanistic principles has already put on end on many kinds cruel and inhuman forms of criminal punishments, liberated millions of slaves and improved the lot of countless number of women, disabled and old people, as the societies have taken more and more responsibility for well-being of all the members of society in all the countries where humanistic ideas have had chance to guide their development.

However, humanistic core ideas have become so embedded in many other ideologies that we can hardly see their existence. The western social democracy has been a main force in changing the western societies into more human and humanistic direction, but it is hard to say what has been the effect of the socialist ideas or the humanistic ideas that the democratic socialist movements adopted very early on. Also many Christian movements adopted the central ideas of the humanistic movement in the 1800′s. During the last century they were in fact adopted by most of the mainstream political movements in the western world even in the more liberal parts of the right-wing parties. One must however exclude the extreme right, which still rather universally opposes very many practical implementations of humanistic basic ideas.

I must stress that humanism does not need to be “true” in a scientific sense at all to be of good value and a thing that benefits mankind. It can well be just a part of the necessary toolkit we need to make our societies better, even if we can quite clearly see the benefits the rise of humanistic ideas have given to humanity. It can well be just a very good estimate, even if the results of applying humanist ideas on societies during the last millennium have clearly shown its beneficial effects. We very soon enter the realm of faith when we consider matters concerning the practical organization of the society. Even if there can be good proof that certain things or ideas are beneficial for the society, as there is always other ideas that can benefit the society in some other ways.

One must still choose the things that one thinks that are important and have faith in some values and ideas, the likes of social justice, political liberty and equality. Humanists generally differ from religionists in that they do not think that they are carriers of the Only and Final Truth, but they just have a good enough estimate of a good enough truth. So good in fact that humanistic ideas are in fact widely used as a guideline in matters concerning the composition and structure of our society, even if this is not at all acknowledged every time.

Our survival as a species has surely been caused by a composition of all human traits and abilities; one cannot say that violence or the loving nurture have got us here, as all the things humans have in common have participated in the process. However, I do mean that love, understanding, care and compassion have not gone nowhere even on the darkest of hours of humanity, when mankind had been trampled under the hooves of horses of the bloody conquerors. Times have eventually always changed for the better and civil societies have risen to take place of the empires built up by the violent and bloody conquerors.

I do not even suggest that this quest for betterment would be an inevitable quality of humans as a species, but I would suggest that it is a learned thing, that has been spreading around humanity for just a few thousand years. The practical superiority of peaceful and humanistic societies has just been more and more widely understood. More and more societies have developed into a level where a need for stable and sound environment has overtaken the greed that drove men to bloody conquests and empire building in bad old times.

http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2009/09/16/why-do-we-need-a-higher-purpose-in-life-6974504/