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Why do you say humanism is about salvation? I don't see it.
Not explicitly in the sense of extensively using salvific terminology ... but humanism is the notion that humanity is improvable and therefore savable, that even if it's two steps forward and one step back, the general trajectory is sustainably upward.
Humanist Manifesto I (1930s) was even explicitly saying that humanism was a "new religious movement".
Humanist Manifesto II tempered the unbridled optimism of #1 in the aftermath of WW2, but was still basically triumphalist in spirit. A famous quote from that document is "No deity will save us; we must save ourselves". There's salvation explicitly stated.
Humanist Manifesto III (2003), aka "Humanism and its Aspirations", is more concise but the final of its major six principles is, "Working to benefit society maximizes personal happiness". This is, I think, a tacit admission that salvation is more at the personal level but even there, depending on what constitutes a "benefit to society", the notion that humans as a species can continuously improve is still present.
All in all I see these manifestos and humanism adapting over time and with experience to the depth and scope of the human condition while trying salvage some hope for the species. Each one gets closer and closer to my own views, but I tend to be the sort that cuts to the chase. Let's just admit that a hundred thousand years from now, humans will still be humans, contradictions and all ... and let each of us try to rise above that, but with realistic expectations.
Not explicitly in the sense of extensively using salvific terminology ... but humanism is the notion that humanity is improvable and therefore savable, that even if it's two steps forward and one step back, the general trajectory is sustainably upward.
Humanist Manifesto I (1930s) was even explicitly saying that humanism was a "new religious movement".
Humanist Manifesto II tempered the unbridled optimism of #1 in the aftermath of WW2, but was still basically triumphalist in spirit. A famous quote from that document is "No deity will save us; we must save ourselves". There's salvation explicitly stated.
Humanist Manifesto III (2003), aka "Humanism and its Aspirations", is more concise but the final of its major six principles is, "Working to benefit society maximizes personal happiness". This is, I think, a tacit admission that salvation is more at the personal level but even there, depending on what constitutes a "benefit to society", the notion that humans as a species can continuously improve is still present.
All in all I see these manifestos and humanism adapting over time and with experience to the depth and scope of the human condition while trying salvage some hope for the species. Each one gets closer and closer to my own views, but I tend to be the sort that cuts to the chase. Let's just admit that a hundred thousand years from now, humans will still be humans, contradictions and all ... and let each of us try to rise above that, but with realistic expectations.
Savable from what? The only expectation I see is that we will continue to evolve via knowledge.
Savable from what? The only expectation I see is that we will continue to evolve via knowledge.
From ourselves, basically. I don't think the species can sustainably improve.
Evolution ... actual species evolution ... is a VERY slow process. This is the only kind of evolution that will truly "improve" the species but it takes hundreds of thousands of years to even begin to notice subtle changes.
Evolution in the sense of one group or tribe having better living conditions, higher levels of happiness / self-actualization, prosperity, peace, compassion, etc is absolutely possible and can happen pretty quickly at times but the dynamic tends to be that after a generation or two of all this ease you have a young generation that takes it for granted, you have wealth concentration/ exploitation and inequities starting to develop, and there are strong tendencies for "evolution" in this sense to unwind, sometimes dramatically, in meta cycles of maybe a century or so. Back and forth.
Personal evolution ... that is where there's the potential for a steady progress throughout one's life.
The way I look at it, humanity has an overall "set point" that tends to hold subgroups and individuals from rising (or sinking) beyond a certain distance from that set point for any length of time. The reason individuals can sustain improvement is because a single human lifespan is short relative to the above-mentioned century-scale meta cycles and it's even possible to swim counter to a downward trend in the surrounding culture / society. But my guess is that if people achieve biological immortality where they had hundreds of years to live, there are limits to how far an individual could progress independent of the limitations and instabilities of subcultures and the species as a whole.
From ourselves, basically. I don't think the species can sustainably improve.
Evolution ... actual species evolution ... is a VERY slow process. This is the only kind of evolution that will truly "improve" the species but it takes hundreds of thousands of years to even begin to notice subtle changes.
Evolution in the sense of one group or tribe having better living conditions, higher levels of happiness / self-actualization, prosperity, peace, compassion, etc is absolutely possible and can happen pretty quickly at times but the dynamic tends to be that after a generation or two of all this ease you have a young generation that takes it for granted, you have wealth concentration/ exploitation and inequities starting to develop, and there are strong tendencies for "evolution" in this sense to unwind, sometimes dramatically, in meta cycles of maybe a century or so. Back and forth.
Personal evolution ... that is where there's the potential for a steady progress throughout one's life.
The way I look at it, humanity has an overall "set point" that tends to hold subgroups and individuals from rising (or sinking) beyond a certain distance from that set point for any length of time. The reason individuals can sustain improvement is because a single human lifespan is short relative to the above-mentioned century-scale meta cycles and it's even possible to swim counter to a downward trend in the surrounding culture / society. But my guess is that if people achieve biological immortality where they had hundreds of years to live, there are limits to how far an individual could progress independent of the limitations and instabilities of subcultures and the species as a whole.
If death didn't exist we'd have to invent it because of the lack of adaptiveness.
Savable from what? The only expectation I see is that we will continue to evolve via knowledge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
From ourselves, basically. I don't think the species can sustainably improve.
I don't think we're going to evolve into anything else, I think we're at an impasse. Because some of us are willing to evolve, most of the rest do not want change or progress, apparently. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't want to turn this into politics but we'll see what the next election brings. DNET.
The human race has so much potential that is muddled up by things like religion. If the small minority of people who feel like I do, atheists mostly, will come out of the closet and speak up then there may be some hope. Otherwise, I agree with Mordant.
If death didn't exist we'd have to invent it because of the lack of adaptiveness.
Did you make that up or are you quoting someone else? I like the lack of adaptiveness thing, oh so true and sad too. We all would like to think we are leaving behind better things for the next generation, and we are. But, is there going to be a next generation?
My call is, "yes". I think the literal extinction of Homo sapiens is unlikely (though not impossible either). However, the survival of our comfortable technology-driven society is FAR more in question. If the thin veneer of technology that sustains us in that collapses ... as now seems likely to me, subject only to technical questions of when and how fast ... then we may go from ~8 billion humans to maybe 0.5 billion, living at more of a 19th century standard or living, if that.
To make an antibiotic or a vaccine or a light bulb or even to do agriculture at scale requires a very sophisticated and interdependent web of actors around the world working in concert. When that is no longer feasible, all bets are off. The pandemic taught us how fragile our supply chains are. The Houthis preventing the safe passage of freight through the Suez Canal has shut down, for instance, Tesla's gigafactory in Berlin for an unknown period of time as the arrival of parts are delayed because of this. Documents just leaked from Germany's internal war gaming / planning process indicates they see plausible scenarios for Russia to attack Lithuania and Poland sometime next year. A world destabilized by wars, wildfires, and an increasing churn of refugees fleeing all the mayhem, could very quickly mean constrained circumstances ... maybe even VERY constrained ... for us here in the US, as well as appalling large-scale humanitarian catastrophes in many places.
Did you make that up or are you quoting someone else? I like the lack of adaptiveness thing, oh so true and sad too. We all would like to think we are leaving behind better things for the next generation, and we are. But, is there going to be a next generation?
Lol...I thought it but I doubt I am the first. Not everyone cares about others.
Edit: looked at up. Voltaire beat me to it.
Last edited by L8Gr8Apost8; 01-21-2024 at 08:32 AM..
I don't think we're going to evolve into anything else, I think we're at an impasse. Because some of us are willing to evolve, most of the rest do not want change or progress, apparently. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't want to turn this into politics but we'll see what the next election brings. DNET.
The human race has so much potential that is muddled up by things like religion. If the small minority of people who feel like I do, atheists mostly, will come out of the closet and speak up then there may be some hope. Otherwise, I agree with Mordant.
I think we are in rapid evolution currently and probably have been for awhile.
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