We do many wonderful things, but also many terrible things, and all in between. It has always been that way. So we have great happiness and great tragedy. And we have recently become extremely more capable, now capable of doing much more wonderful things and much more terrible things. It is our now enormous capability for doing terrible things that is even threatening our species' survival to an increasingly ominous extent.
The normal response to this is "Well, that's just the way things are," and if someone really works toward doing something about it, the normal response is to regard that someone as "idealistic." The normal response, then, is to have no motivation to do something about it, but to find a way to hunker down with those one trusts, if any, and to just watch the entertainment.
My abnormal response, however, is to say that even though the odds may possibly be quite low of doing something about it, the odds are not zero, in response to which fact I want to be one of those who tried, and if our species finally does get to a drastically better way of life than we have ever known so far, a time I have called the time of "Homo rationalis," I want to be one of those who had contributed to bringing it about.
But HOW, you ask?
By promoting the emergence of Humanianty, the religion for humanity, "religion" being defined most accurately as "our adult effort to work on a basic ethical philosophy for our species" (whether theistic or atheistic). Humanianity is the movement from authoritarian ethics (obedience to the most powerful) to a new kind of ethics, rational ethics, that has as its ultimate ethical principle (HUEP) that "we should do that which will promote not only the survival of our species but also as much joy, contentment, and appreciation (JCA) as possible and as little pain, suffering, disability, and early death (PSDED) as possible, for everyone, now and in the future." ("Rational ethics" is ethics that is committed to development of beliefs that are consistent with those legitimized by the rules of logic and the rules of evidence.)
Well, okay, you ask, but WHAT would we actually DO differently in working on that basic ethical philosophy?
What we have currently is essentially no basic ethical philosophy for our species. We have multiple opinions. And that has become our expectation, something to just live with. And how do we live with difference of opinion? Being tribal, like our cousin, the chimps, we divide up into us and them. And then we say the postmodern thing, "Well, what is true for you may not be true for me, in which case let's just tolerate each other and think about something else, or in the proper time and place, each of us, in turn, give our little speech and then go have a beer, OR, go to war. Or maybe do something in the middle, and just consider widespread relationship breakdown a normal part of life.
What we CAN do, however, and what we SHOULD do (my little self cries out), is commit ourselves to work always toward agreement, by attempting increasing depth of understanding of why the difference of opinion (or belief) is present, and then solving that problem such that agreement is arrived at, BUT ALWAYS with the valuing of the challenging of any belief in order to detect any possible remaining flaws in thinking.
Well, this second approach is of course awful (most of you will say). When we have difference of opinion, then we get to fight, and we love fighting, no matter how much PSDED results. In fact we spend enormous amounts of money to watch fighting, and we enjoy doing it all the way from the interpersonal to the international. We value highly the motivational state that produces fighting, namely, anger. We love to hold our fists and guns high. Our believed-in hostility ranges from the arching of an eyebrow to genocide. Recognizing this, we had better just try to be satisfied with the postmodern approach, called "tolerance." Tolerance is boring, but at least it gives us temporary respite from PSDED.
My little self cries out, "NO! We can do BETTER than that. We can improve on our basic chimp nature, now that we have language, and even science and technology, by working cooperatively on a basic ethical philosophy for our species.
Okay, you say, but what are YOU doing that is so different?
My answer is that I have been spending thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on the Humanianity project (with no financial return), that is there for all to see at humanianity.com, where you can participate by studying, and by discussing, and by participating in the creation of that basic ethical philosophy for our species, using the new tool that is provided there for that, which, I believe, is like nothing anywhere else, and is for all the world to use.
If you are willing to spend the time, please critically look for flaws and call them to my attention. It is essential that everything about Humanianity must make sense. It is, and will always be, a work in progress, growing and improving.
Will you join me?
Again, humanianity.com.
For podcast of above:
https://humanianity.com/humanianity/humaudvis.php?_menu=WCDI
