Humanist Thought of the Week

The cost of being callous

As more research is done on Humanistic Business Management practices, we are finding out more and more about the value of compassion.

According to a study at Stanford, callousness comes at a cost.

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Don’t Explain

I ran across a quote from Epictetus the other day.

“Don’t explain your philosophy, embody it.”

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Which comes first?

Is courage more important to ethical development? Or is compassion? Or perhaps critical thinking? The answer: None of the above. They are all equally important.

As a Humanist parent, I hope my child will grow into an ethically courageous adult.

I know that compassion is important to my son’s growing sense of moral courage.

I also know that in order to be courageous he needs to be able to think for himself.

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The 3 C’s of Humanism

The idea behind this is not to provide a perfect definition of Humanism, but rather to help Humanists consider a different aspect of the philosophy in a new way.

Humanism is a deceptively simple philosophies.

Yet, it is really hard to describe well because once you start getting into the details, there is all the nuance and balance that is required to do it well.

Regardless, here is yet another attempt by me to describe and define Humanism in a simple way that is nothing but simple.

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Good Enough

Why Humanists are ok with the fact that we have no absolute basis on which to judge morality.

Humanist ethics are situational.

Meaning that we have no absolute basis for our morality. What we consider moral or immoral is determined by the situation itself and our feelings of compassion.

This is obviously a rather subjective way of determining what is right and what is wrong.

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