I hear people scoff at humanism, speaking with a curled lip and a sneer like a low-growling dog. I don’t understand that. To be human is to be special; to be a good human is to be divine, about as divine as we will ever achieve. Christians (and I am one) who rail at humanism are missing the point of their message that God created man in his image. Surely if I am the image of God that doesn’t mean he is old, tired, with aching feet and legs, a bad heart, bad teeth, and bad eyes. I like the simple phrase that “God is love.” As I show empathy, concern, and love for others, that is as god-like as I can be and that is the height of being human. I encourage Christians to not complicate the message of Jesus. He said, “ I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
In the heyday of the Moral Majority, humanism became a boogeyman for all things degenerate. I opine that it was a mask for contempt for secularism and liberalism more broadly. The argument of fundamentalists was that humanists allegedly replace God with man, and therefore commit the worst form of idolatry. But this is a deliberate distortion of humanism. No humanist I know makes this claim. Rather, humanism is a statement of aspiration, and if anything, recognizes how far we need to go to realize our potential and the best that is in us.
I'm torn. While I couldn't agree with you more about valuing face-to-face human interaction with friends and family, I have to admit I'm addicted to my smart phone - for games, for quick fact-finding, for news and less so for communication. I like to think I'm getting the best of both worlds. I suspect that on that score I'm fooling myself.
Everyone is different, and we need to come to a conclusion about what we value more and most. Many choices in life boil down to a utilitarian calculus: Does the pleasure and fulfillment I accrue from this activity outweigh the satisfaction I receive from doing something else or doing neither? I suspect that each of us is challenged with such decisions for ourselves.
I have a friend who only communicates with me via text. I like her (she was a former co-worker), but I find the text-only contact rather limiting and not fully satisfying. I must, however, acknowledge that her life is far busier than mine, so perhaps texting provides her with a more convenient vehicle for staying in touch. Since I do value her friendship, I will admit that the technological advantages of the "smart" phone do, in this case, outweigh the perils - but just barely.
A few thoughts, Jan. Texting has its place and its uses. I text as well. But I have come to the view that the intent and content of our communications relate to the medium we employ to convey them. Texting is great to convey brief messages, e.g. "ETA," "I am running late," "I forgot to walk the dog, can you please do it?" I see such messaging as transactional, and not a vehicle to develop soulful, deep-reaching, friendships. Better than nothing, but we need to ask what we want out of our relations. To carry this further, I would not send out an announcement of the painful death of a loved one on Twitter, however efficient. The medium doesn't reflect or respect the emotions or gravity of the moment. A phone call would be much more respectful. I still send out "thank you" notes, written by hand (with a fountain pen, no less!) to people who have expressed a kindness. It carries a personalism an email doesn't. The latter feels too officious."The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan said. But, as noted, in the hierarchy of human relations, face-to-face engagement sits at the top of the totem pole for me. Wishing you well.
My belief is our digital lives occupy more of our waking hours than we care to acknowledge and those hours have pulled us deeper into market values, market dynamics and influence than ever before. When it’s about the monetization of clicks, it’s not about what gives our lives meaning, or the rich fulfillment of non-market values. The digitalization of our lives is more insidious and pernicious than industrialization because it’s more seductive, numbing and isolating than factories ever hoped to be. That said, I read this article on my phone and I am responding with the use of my thumbs. Dear Friends, Caveat Emptor. Hold tightly to what is dear; our distractions are many.
Beautifully said. Clicking, in my view as well, is not a vehicle toward personal fulfillment. Don't inscribe on my tombstone "He lived to click." With regard to using your cell phone to send this comment, as K. Marx said, "There are contradictions." The synthesis, I believe, is to be found in not allowing ourselves to be seduced, ensnared, or bewitched, all steps along the way toward ceding our autonomy and humanity. "Things are in the saddle and they ride mankind," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. For the time being, I will straighten my spine and sit tall in the saddle.
As much as I, too, have fled from the dogma of organized religion and have found the relative freedom of humanism to be exhilarating, there is one aspect of dogma that I have recently come to appreciate.
I live in a neighborhood that is shared with many members of the Orthodox Jewish faith. Through that proximity, I have observed a real sense of community as families and friends gather in groups -- away from their temple's -- on Sabbath. The imperative to eschew work (and technology) results in adult conversation and good, old-fashioned play among children. It is utterly refreshing, and has great appeal.
If only it did not require subserviance to so much other dogma to participate.
I have recently read that Gen. Z youth have begun to rebel against the prevalence of technology in their lives by embracing "dumb" phones. They are learning to "cut the cord" and are favoring direct, verbal communication over the virtual with all of its insidious distractions.
If this is true, I find real signs of hope in it. I say this as I type it with my thumbs on my "smart" phone...
This is a lovely and meaningful observation, Orion. There is wisdom in the idea of the Sabbath. In my human rights classes, when reviewing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I like to point out to my students Article 24, which vouchsafes the fundamental right to "...periodic holidays with pay." Some have claimed that this right is relatively trivial, forgetting that in labor struggles people gave their lives fighting for the right not to be chronically chained to their work in order to survive. I think this right hearkens back to the Hebrew Sabbath and the critical idea that a person's humanity extends more broadly and more deeply than his or her identity exclusively as a worker churning out profits for the boss. The strength of the Sabbath for observant Jews is that it is a divine command, reinforced by the power of the community. But, in this harried world, I think we would all be better off if, perhaps in cooperation with others, created our own "Sabbath" - to put work aside, enjoy family and friends, and celebrate our humanity.
For me, humanism is not so much captured in principles as it is expressive of an orientation, and a feeling for life and for expressions that convey that which is distinctively human. I am sure we would have much to discuss.
I hear people scoff at humanism, speaking with a curled lip and a sneer like a low-growling dog. I don’t understand that. To be human is to be special; to be a good human is to be divine, about as divine as we will ever achieve. Christians (and I am one) who rail at humanism are missing the point of their message that God created man in his image. Surely if I am the image of God that doesn’t mean he is old, tired, with aching feet and legs, a bad heart, bad teeth, and bad eyes. I like the simple phrase that “God is love.” As I show empathy, concern, and love for others, that is as god-like as I can be and that is the height of being human. I encourage Christians to not complicate the message of Jesus. He said, “ I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
In the heyday of the Moral Majority, humanism became a boogeyman for all things degenerate. I opine that it was a mask for contempt for secularism and liberalism more broadly. The argument of fundamentalists was that humanists allegedly replace God with man, and therefore commit the worst form of idolatry. But this is a deliberate distortion of humanism. No humanist I know makes this claim. Rather, humanism is a statement of aspiration, and if anything, recognizes how far we need to go to realize our potential and the best that is in us.
I'm torn. While I couldn't agree with you more about valuing face-to-face human interaction with friends and family, I have to admit I'm addicted to my smart phone - for games, for quick fact-finding, for news and less so for communication. I like to think I'm getting the best of both worlds. I suspect that on that score I'm fooling myself.
Everyone is different, and we need to come to a conclusion about what we value more and most. Many choices in life boil down to a utilitarian calculus: Does the pleasure and fulfillment I accrue from this activity outweigh the satisfaction I receive from doing something else or doing neither? I suspect that each of us is challenged with such decisions for ourselves.
I have a friend who only communicates with me via text. I like her (she was a former co-worker), but I find the text-only contact rather limiting and not fully satisfying. I must, however, acknowledge that her life is far busier than mine, so perhaps texting provides her with a more convenient vehicle for staying in touch. Since I do value her friendship, I will admit that the technological advantages of the "smart" phone do, in this case, outweigh the perils - but just barely.
A few thoughts, Jan. Texting has its place and its uses. I text as well. But I have come to the view that the intent and content of our communications relate to the medium we employ to convey them. Texting is great to convey brief messages, e.g. "ETA," "I am running late," "I forgot to walk the dog, can you please do it?" I see such messaging as transactional, and not a vehicle to develop soulful, deep-reaching, friendships. Better than nothing, but we need to ask what we want out of our relations. To carry this further, I would not send out an announcement of the painful death of a loved one on Twitter, however efficient. The medium doesn't reflect or respect the emotions or gravity of the moment. A phone call would be much more respectful. I still send out "thank you" notes, written by hand (with a fountain pen, no less!) to people who have expressed a kindness. It carries a personalism an email doesn't. The latter feels too officious."The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan said. But, as noted, in the hierarchy of human relations, face-to-face engagement sits at the top of the totem pole for me. Wishing you well.
My belief is our digital lives occupy more of our waking hours than we care to acknowledge and those hours have pulled us deeper into market values, market dynamics and influence than ever before. When it’s about the monetization of clicks, it’s not about what gives our lives meaning, or the rich fulfillment of non-market values. The digitalization of our lives is more insidious and pernicious than industrialization because it’s more seductive, numbing and isolating than factories ever hoped to be. That said, I read this article on my phone and I am responding with the use of my thumbs. Dear Friends, Caveat Emptor. Hold tightly to what is dear; our distractions are many.
Beautifully said. Clicking, in my view as well, is not a vehicle toward personal fulfillment. Don't inscribe on my tombstone "He lived to click." With regard to using your cell phone to send this comment, as K. Marx said, "There are contradictions." The synthesis, I believe, is to be found in not allowing ourselves to be seduced, ensnared, or bewitched, all steps along the way toward ceding our autonomy and humanity. "Things are in the saddle and they ride mankind," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. For the time being, I will straighten my spine and sit tall in the saddle.
As much as I, too, have fled from the dogma of organized religion and have found the relative freedom of humanism to be exhilarating, there is one aspect of dogma that I have recently come to appreciate.
I live in a neighborhood that is shared with many members of the Orthodox Jewish faith. Through that proximity, I have observed a real sense of community as families and friends gather in groups -- away from their temple's -- on Sabbath. The imperative to eschew work (and technology) results in adult conversation and good, old-fashioned play among children. It is utterly refreshing, and has great appeal.
If only it did not require subserviance to so much other dogma to participate.
I have recently read that Gen. Z youth have begun to rebel against the prevalence of technology in their lives by embracing "dumb" phones. They are learning to "cut the cord" and are favoring direct, verbal communication over the virtual with all of its insidious distractions.
If this is true, I find real signs of hope in it. I say this as I type it with my thumbs on my "smart" phone...
This is a lovely and meaningful observation, Orion. There is wisdom in the idea of the Sabbath. In my human rights classes, when reviewing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I like to point out to my students Article 24, which vouchsafes the fundamental right to "...periodic holidays with pay." Some have claimed that this right is relatively trivial, forgetting that in labor struggles people gave their lives fighting for the right not to be chronically chained to their work in order to survive. I think this right hearkens back to the Hebrew Sabbath and the critical idea that a person's humanity extends more broadly and more deeply than his or her identity exclusively as a worker churning out profits for the boss. The strength of the Sabbath for observant Jews is that it is a divine command, reinforced by the power of the community. But, in this harried world, I think we would all be better off if, perhaps in cooperation with others, created our own "Sabbath" - to put work aside, enjoy family and friends, and celebrate our humanity.
I wish we were nearer each other, I would welcome a discussion on humanism.
For me, humanism is not so much captured in principles as it is expressive of an orientation, and a feeling for life and for expressions that convey that which is distinctively human. I am sure we would have much to discuss.