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	<title>Humanism - NOSHA</title>
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	<description>New Orleans Secular Humanist Association</description>
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	<item>
		<title>Is American Humanism a Failed Project?</title>
		<link>https://nosha.info/is-american-humanism-a-failed-project/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marty Bankson]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 14 Mar 2021 20:09:53 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion in Decline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Secularism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Susan Jacoby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Donahue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Billy Graham]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freethinkers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Great Awakening]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tent Revival]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://nosha.info/?p=3843</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[&#160; &#160; Probably no better quote can be found about fundamentalist religion’s theological stance towards intellectualism, the need for reason, the progressive nature of human knowledge, the inevitable rise of specialization and expertise in a complex world, and the institutions that promote and sustain them, and the folly of superstition and dogma, than this from Bill Donahue writing for the radically theocratic Catholic League: “Susan Jacoby.... is not ready for the asylum, but she is ready to find a home [...]]]></description>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Probably no better quote can be found about fundamentalist religion’s theological stance towards intellectualism, the need for reason, the progressive nature of human knowledge, the inevitable rise of specialization and expertise in a complex world, and the institutions that promote and sustain them, and the folly of superstition and dogma, than this from Bill Donahue writing for the radically theocratic Catholic League: “Susan Jacoby.... is not ready for the asylum, but she is ready to find a home in the asylum’s first cousin—the academy. Indeed, there are few colleges or universities that wouldn’t be proud to hire her. And that is because she entertains a radical secular world-view, one in total harmony with the elites on campus.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></p>
<div id="attachment_3845" style="width: 196px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3845" class="wp-image-3845 size-full" src="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Jacoby.jpeg" alt="" width="186" height="279"><p id="caption-attachment-3845" class="wp-caption-text">Susan Jacoby</p></div>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ms. Jacoby is a historian, journalist, astute cultural and sociological analyst, and leading figure in the secular movement in the United States today. Donahue was reviewing her first major book publication </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (Metropolitan, 2004) </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">and wrote the aforementioned quote in reference to Jacoby’s observation of the Bush presidency’s continued assault on the the First Amendment’s separation clause: “It is no secret that the Bush administration is engaged in the most radical assault on the separation of church and state in American history.” Mr. Bush, we remember, wasn’t able to keep very much secret, especially a remarkable lack of interest in history and his persistent abasement of the English language.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Four years later, Jacoby would publish what would be a more focused recent history detailing the&nbsp; trend in the cultural and psychological make-up of the American population, and her conclusions were not optimistic. The events of the past four years should inspire anyone interested in the origins of the strain of mass insanity racing through the American citizenry as fast as COVID-19 to check out </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Age of American Unreason </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Pantheon, 2008). She introduces the book with a tribute to Richard Hofstadter’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Anti-Intellectualism in American Life </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">as a work that “provides the foundation for insights that may lie decades or centuries in the future. She explores the thesis that the most recent version of American anti-intellectualism “can&nbsp; best be understood as a complex of symptoms with multiple causes, and ...over time possesses the potential to turn a treatable, livable condition into a morbid disease affecting the entire body politic..” She&nbsp; narrows the vectors of anti-intellectualism to the two she considers as foundational: mass media, and secondly—in an indirect rebuke to Donahue’s nonsense–the recent resurgence of fundamentalist religion.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the chapter “The New Old-Time Religion”, Ms. Jacoby recounts a time within the past 75 years that, for a vast majority of the American public, religion seemed to assume its logical place as a guide for living and a way of looking at life’s big questions that accommodate such direction: its place as a private belief and understanding, and not as a force in legislating its tenants as&nbsp; matters of public policy in a secular government. After the sensational Scopes “Monkey Trial”, fundamentalist political meddling seemed to go into hibernation. But we learned that hibernation is a time to rest, refresh, and re-group. As early as the mid-1950s we witnessed the beginning of its return to the public sphere with large revivals, now televised on America’s new favorite pastime, the television execs apparently inspired by the popularity of The Greater Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade, a literal old-time tent revival in 1949 in the heart of LA that drew over 350,000 in eight weeks. <img decoding="async" class=" wp-image-3844 aligncenter" src="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/tent.jpeg" alt="" width="355" height="236">“As we now know, the conclusion that American fundamentalists were a dying breed was a misjudgment of historic (dare one call it biblical?) proportions. The growth of fundamentalist denominations at the expense of mainstream and liberal Protestantism, which began in the fifties, accelerated throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties and gave birth to the Christian right.”</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Borrowing the name from previous religious revivals in the country, one could think of the current spiritual fervor as a “Third” Great Awakening, after the first in the mid-18th century and the second in the early 19th, as a “cyclical manifestation” and “course-correction in an unsettled society. But today’s revival is more troubling for a couple of&nbsp; reasons, a double-edge sword swung by archangel St. Michael that promises to make the current trend an indefatigable and cunning foe in the culture wars. The first is what she calls the “disjunction of the fundamentalist faith and the sum of human knowledge.” Today we simply know much more about how the world works than we did in recent centuries past, and we have it all accessible at our fingertips for those able or interested in discovering it. Failing public education–and private, in a different way–are certainly to blame. But this choice between learning or fantasizing about the world may be involved a feedback loop with the second edge of that sword. That problem was never&nbsp; more obvious than in the last presidential cycle: “the political engagement of modern fundamentalists on the side of</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> one party</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and their belief that it is both a </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">right and religious duty to institutionalize their moral values</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">(italics mine).&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>___________________________________________________</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;I’ve left out of this one-chapter snapshot of Jacoby’s magnum opus&nbsp; examples making her points, and some of those examples could easily be updated with fresher ones. And thumbnail peeks into other chapters titled “Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars,” “Junk Thought,” “The Culture of Distraction,” and “Public Life: Defining Dumbness Downward” have been left as possible motivations for the reader; but all suggest the cause for Jacoby’s admission of the book’s pessimistic outlook. She concludes that in America’s new age of unreason, the inescapable theme of our time is the erosion of memory and knowledge. She does not conclude without at least suggesting&nbsp; several conditions that could offer some hope out of a modern day Dark Age, all primarily concerning recapturing the those two eroding qualities that separates humans from real progress. It should go without saying that Bill Donahue and his Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim counterparts are not a part of the solution and therefore a part of the problem.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Reporting for&nbsp;<em>The Humanist Advocate</em></p>
<p>Marty Bankson</p>
<p>March 3, 2021</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Beyond Humanism (Or Not)</title>
		<link>https://nosha.info/beyond-humanism-or-not/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marty Bankson]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2020 01:59:13 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[animal rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nonoes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philosophy Now]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanism]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://nosha.info/?p=3729</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[The following post borrows its title from the magazine article that is its subject. The sub-headings are also similar.&#160; &#160; The three inevitabilities of life: taxes, death, and criticism. We know not much good can be said of death, but there are some benefits from paying taxes, and often criticism can be a rich learning experience.&#160; Not the obsessive, masochistic self-criticism of oneself, or the systemic mandatory progress reports or write-ups of the organization, or social shaming and bullying on [...]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="dslc-theme-content"><div id="dslc-theme-content-inner"><blockquote><p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The following post borrows its title from the magazine article that is its subject. The sub-headings are also similar.&nbsp;</span></em></p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The three inevitabilities of life: taxes, death, and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">criticism. </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">We know not much good can be said of death, but there are some benefits from paying taxes, and often criticism can be a rich learning experience.&nbsp; Not the obsessive, masochistic self-criticism of oneself, or the systemic mandatory progress reports or write-ups of the organization, or social shaming and bullying on the internet, but from a refreshing and thoughtful evaluation one can find room to rewire within her own person for the better.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Freethinkers, atheists, humanists have received their share of criticism, often recycled, seldom novel, so we should usually be prepared to respond to it. Examples: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Atheism is just another religion. Why are you mad at God? There can be no morals without a supreme lawgiver. How did something come from nothing?&nbsp;</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gotcha. No problem. So how about something new?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Look no further than the May issue of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Philosophy Now</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a for-the-masses print and online journal of philosophical concepts and their application to the current state of world thought and events. British philosophy instructor Robert Griffiths offers up a few shortcomings of the foundations and ethical framework of humanism (a term more specifically applied as</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> secular</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> humanism in the United States) as he sees it. He breaks down the problems and resultant outcomes&nbsp; of contemporary humanist&nbsp; teachings and&nbsp; activity as he sees it in three major flaws or inconsistencies. The first listed here begins with the problem and follows with its unintended consequence of disinterest.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Humanism is based on classical 18th century concepts says Griffiths: the Enlightenment, post-Middle Ages skepticism, the recognition of the individual and the concept of specific rights and freedoms among other humans, new and revolutionary approaches to p</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">hilosophy and the potential of the human&nbsp;</span><img decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-3730 alignright" style="font-size: 0.95em;" src="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-181x300.jpg" alt="" width="181" height="300" srcset="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-181x300.jpg 181w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-619x1024.jpg 619w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-768x1271.jpg 768w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-928x1536.jpg 928w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-1237x2048.jpg 1237w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/encyclo-scaled.jpg 1547w" sizes="(max-width: 181px) 100vw, 181px" /><span style="font-weight: 400;">species through reason and scientific exploration. Humanism holds as a foundational precept the folly of religion, expressed possibly best by Baron D’Holbach, David Hume, and others of the enlightened age. The problem as Griffiths sees it is that&nbsp; a sizable segment of today’s younger generation agrees with the conclusions of this centuries-old thought , but are simply not concerned about it. God or no god, no big deal. They have no problem with the idea of atheism, but have moved on from it, certainly won’t spend time reading about it.&nbsp; </span><i style="font-size: 0.95em;">Apatheists </i><span style="font-weight: 400;">the philosopher calls them. Humanist spokespersons on the other hand feel the need to emphasize religion, to emphasize their identity&nbsp; as atheists and/or anti-religious. Humanists need gods to argue against; millennials and younger have just forgotten them. This is the unintended ineffectiveness: organizational humanism is not expanding at the same rate as the number of non theists and “nones” increases. Griffiths observes that relegating the idea to the mental trashcan and just forgetting it is probably the truest of all atheisms. Adding to this problem is that philosophers of religion—theologians—are able to cook up more sophisticated arguments in revisiting those centuries-old debates. (He does not mention that dozens of theoretical physicists and cosmologists have countered much of these newer religious apologetics with some very convincing arguments of their own.)</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3732" src="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Ethics-Pixabay-300x175.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="175" srcset="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Ethics-Pixabay-300x175.jpg 300w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Ethics-Pixabay.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ethics</span></em></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ethics might be defined as morality in action. Dictionary.com says “morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and action, or behaviors.” Humanism claims humans have and live by moral code, one which is derived from the species itself, and not handed down in the doctrines of religion. The author expresses the doubt that there is any moral code that is found universally “moral codes are tricky things”, an argument that other thinkers have made before him. But since atheists feel the need to “explain what they should do with their lives, they are at least a little didactic.” This hedging conclusion—that humanists are willing teachers and learners—may be the sole positive statement for humanism found within the essay.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are three major groups within the study of ethics: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">deontology </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">which concerns rules, duties, and obligations;</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> consequentialism</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">—weighing the consequences of an action as opposed to having a predetermined rule (“thou shalt not bear false witness”...but even it prevents harm to an innocent person? And its subset </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">utilitarianism </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">which has to do with maximizing happiness or well-being—the greatest good for the greatest number; and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">virtue ethics </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">which stresses developing a life of good moral character: patience, kindness, compassion, and leading by example. Griffiths uses the obvious utilitarian approach Stephen Pinker writes about in his book </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Enlightenment Now </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;contrasted&nbsp; with humanist Richard Norman’s discomfort with both deontological and utilitarian ethics, leaning toward virtue ethics in his 2012 book </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">On Humanism</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and A. C. Grayling’s “fairly relaxed” attitude about the ethical guidance of humanism in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The God Argument </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(2014) as proof that there is no agreement among humanists themselves about what an ethical code would look like other than some overly-generalized platitudes.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Non-Humans</span></em></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At a time when there is a widening appreciation of the ultimate importance of the biosphere and life of all varieties and on the planet itself, humanism’s overriding&nbsp; focus is on</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> human beings</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Science has shown us that the moral gap between humans and non-humans is not as great as it was once assumed. Humans must recognize the harm they have done over the millenia to other sentient beings, and “humanist humans are exhorted to develop an outlook which leads to appropriate moral behavior towards non-humanity…..which rules out the relaxed liberal attitude to moral outlooks adopted by Norman and Grayling...and humanists of deontological bent who take the view that humans are the primary bearers of moral value.” Humanism needs to look and act the part of “sentientism, according to which all sentient beings have inherent moral value.” Griffiths doesn’t think that humanist ethics can accommodate the idea in Tom Regan’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Case for Animal Rights </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">that non-humans have “inherent value and associated rights independently of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">how this might affect the interests of humans</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (italics mine). Griffiths thinks that “some” humanists are not interested in the moral status of non-human sentient beings or putting more emphasis on responsible stewardship of protecting the environment.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-3731 aligncenter" src="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/animal-planet.png" alt="" width="512" height="287"></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You, like me, may find some truth in some of his points, but in others, not so much. The problem of attracting younger members to humanism is real, but I don’t think a foundation in 18th century philosophy is what turns them away. And not having a unified “humanist ethic” is an unrealistic demand. A mix of all ethical approaches seems to be about as universal as it gets unless one is speaking of fundamentalist religions. More emphasis on our fellow sentient earth dwellers? Sure, we need to work on that, as well as our environmental concerns. But I do believe that&nbsp; the need for action on these issues cannot help but soon be at the top of our concerns.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">None of these problems, other than possibly a southbound growth curve, are fatal flaws for secular humanism. The only inevitability facing humanism is criticism itself.</span></p>
<p>------------------------------------------------</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Read the complete article </span><a href="https://philosophynow.org/issues/138/Beyond_Humanism"><span style="font-weight: 400;">here</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. It could be a good discussion topic for a monthly meeting or just an informal get-together, and expanded to include other works along these lines.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marty Bankson reporting for </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Humanist Advocate</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">June 24, 2020</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<item>
		<title>The Remains to be Seen</title>
		<link>https://nosha.info/the-remains-to-be-seen3648-2/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marty Bankson]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 25 Jan 2020 20:15:41 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Afterlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[City of New Orleans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hard Rock Hotel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Orleans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Observing the Dead]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Secularism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Karl Oe Knausgaard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Martin Hägglund]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Materialism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reincarnation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[salvation]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nosha.info/?p=3648</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Occasionally there is an event or circumstance in New Orleans that can lead our thoughts and imaginations to very interesting and sometimes even large topics or principles about the humanist experience, and how it meshes with the reality of that circumstance. The existence and revelation and consequent public reaction of the visibility of the remains of a construction worker pinned in the collapsed rubble of the Hard Rock Hotel building site at the corner of Canal and Rampart street in [...]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="dslc-theme-content"><div id="dslc-theme-content-inner"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Occasionally there is an event or circumstance in New Orleans that can lead our thoughts and imaginations to very interesting and sometimes even large topics or principles about the humanist experience, and how it meshes with the reality of that circumstance. The existence and revelation and consequent public reaction of the visibility of the remains of a construction worker pinned in the collapsed rubble of the Hard Rock Hotel building site at the corner of Canal and Rampart street in the heart of the city is one of those events.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-3655 aligncenter" style="font-size: 0.95em;" src="http://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_3875-184x300.jpg" alt="" width="184" height="300" srcset="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_3875-184x300.jpg 184w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_3875-627x1024.jpg 627w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_3875-768x1254.jpg 768w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_3875.jpg 828w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 184px) 100vw, 184px" />There are two bodies still entombed in the wreckage, and the fact that the remains of one of them was always visible, although hard to see, was never to my knowledge publicized, and were&nbsp; screened from view with a fluttering tarpaulin when first discovered as the building and cranes were being secured. Recent strong winds partially unfastened the tarp and exposed the legs of the victim, and the news was out. The words in reaction expressed outrage at the very thought that the city could have permitted this to have happened, and was responsible for seeing that this travesty of&nbsp; decency be remedied, and quickly. On Friday, January 24th, a march from the building site to City Hall was organized to draw attention the whole affair and what seemed a lack of urgency by the city in seeing that action is taken on dealing with the wreckage. The widow of the worker is understandably overcome with grief. They know which of the two bodies buried there is this one.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Why though, asks Karl Ove Knausgaard in the first pages of the first volume of his Proust-like 7-volume epic </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">My Strug</span></i><i style="font-size: 0.95em;">gle, </i><span style="font-weight: 400;">given that we are surrounded daily with “objects in the realm of death” —anything and everything that is non-living material in the world, from doorknobs to suitcases to fields, rocks, the sky—why is there such a distaste for seeing a human being caught up it? Why, as Knausgaard graphically exemplifies, is there such haste to remove from public view the body of a small girl “who ends up under the wheel of a bus…..</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Decency? What could be more decent than to allow the girl’s mother and father to see her an hour or two later, lying in the snow at the site of accident , in full view, her crushed head and the rest of her body, her blood-spattered hair and the spotless padded jacket? Visible to the whole world, no secrets, the way she was. But even this one hour in the snow is unthinkable. A town that does not keep its dead out of sight, that leaves people where they died, on highways and byways, in parks and parking lots, is not a town but a hell. (1).</span></p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Knausgaard answers this, surmising that </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">we know what death is,</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> but we “don’t want to face it. Hence, the collective act of repression symb</span><span style="font-size: 0.95em;">olized by the concealment of our dead.”</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Martin Hägglund, author of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">liberally refers to Knausgaard’s materialism, and agrees with this answer. Our human existence is&nbsp; dependent on our bodies, but our bodies are not dependent on us; and the tissues, cells, atoms, and chemical compounds of our material bodies will decompose and take on other forms of earthen material, and are “indifferent to our absence.” There is no transitioning from one life to another, only transformation of matter of our bodies to other forms of matter. This fact, says Hägglund,&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp; &nbsp; Presumably, this is why the dead body is so uncanny and tends to be hidden away. The dead body reminds us that&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">we are not only </span><i style="font-size: 0.95em;">in </i><span style="font-weight: 400;">the world but also </span><i style="font-size: 0.95em;">of </i><span style="font-weight: 400;">the world, made of materials that will degrade and decompose...To see the living body thus reduced to its dead counterpart is to see that nature is indifferent to our interests and desires…(2)</span></p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To offset this apparent&nbsp; nihilistic evaluation of hum</span><span style="font-size: 0.95em;">an fate—and keep one’s sanity— we can adopt a belief in an afterlife, through religious salvation or natural reincarnation of spirit, which&nbsp; is considerably more pleasant and popular than facing the morbid finality of death. But this is a form of escapism, and should be noted for what it is.</span></p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-3654 aligncenter" src="http://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/terrarium-2.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="134"></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even if we accept that the sight of a fresh corpse is nothing macabre or to shun or be repulsed by, and its viewing is an acknowledgement and an appreciation of a person’s last moment in life before being frozen in timeless death, we can't let them lie where they die forever—for obvious reasons.&nbsp; In the case of the stranded, half-crushed body dangling from the Hard Rock site, however, the time for removal must be delayed until it can be safely recovered, in as much wholeness as&nbsp; possible. My humanitarian concern on recovery efforts ends ultimately in the well-being of the living rescuers. Physical law reminds us that you cannot remove a piece from the middle of a house of cards or stack of dominos without causing the rest to crash down for lack of just one supporting piece. The same goes for buildings reduced to heaps of concrete and steel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;At this point, more than three months after the event, that body may well have been the motivation to stir civic-minded locals to question the apparent lack or slow follow up of expediting the cleanup of the site. For the economic leftist, </span><span style="font-size: 0.95em;">it can be used as a lesson about the hazards of speculative real estate development, venture capital, gentrification, and the corrupt insurance game. For those associated with historical preservation in one of North America’s oldest and most novel cities, it may be a call to advocacy for stronger building codes and diligent enforcement. And for the humanist, stirring a new vitality and direction into all of these interests should act as a reinforcement of her secular faith that there can be purpose and meaning in a material world, and exist even in the material remains of one sole former human. For the distraught relatives of the victims, and especially those of the visibly exposed,&nbsp; we can only hope that in time they will come to recognize there can be positive aftereffects in their loved one’s end—that the deaths have brought some new action from the living; hoping also that they will be materially compensated for those material bodies that will never again be seen as they were at the moment of their deaths.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-3652 aligncenter" src="http://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/sheet-dead.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168"></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Reporting for<em style="font-size: 0.95em;">Th</em><em style="font-size: 0.95em;">e Hu</em><em style="font-size: 0.95em;">manist Advocate</em></p>
<p>Marty Bankson</p>
<p>January 26, 2020</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>(1)&nbsp; Knausgaard, Karl Ove. <em>My Struggle&nbsp; Book 1.&nbsp;</em>New York: Archipelago Books, 2012</p>
<p>(2) Hägglund, Martin.&nbsp;<em>This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.&nbsp;</em>New York: Pantheon Books, 2019.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Theocratic Conservatism Tests the Limits of Liberal Republics</title>
		<link>https://nosha.info/theocratic-conservatism-tests-the-limits-of-liberal-republics/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marty Bankson]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Dec 2019 03:55:30 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Christian Identity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian Nationalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Trump]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nosha.info/?p=3597</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[It has been over three years since Donald Trump was elected and Evangelicals can now claim to have the momentum practicing political power since&#160; gaining a foothold in the administration of Ronald Reagan. America is witnessing an unprecedented political turnover in defining the very existence of the union. Despite the unconstitutionality of intertwining religion with politics, evangelical Christians have influenced many social policies the White House administration has passed since 2017.&#160; &#160; Despite not being a constitutionally religious republic, Donald [...]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="dslc-theme-content"><div id="dslc-theme-content-inner"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It has been over three years since Donald Trump was elected and Evangelicals can now claim to have the momentum practicing political power since&nbsp; gaining a foothold in the administration of Ronald Reagan. America is witnessing an unprecedented political turnover in defining the very existence of the union. Despite the unconstitutionality of intertwining religion with politics, evangelical Christians have influenced many social policies the White House administration has passed since 2017.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Despite not being a constitutionally religious republic, Donald Trump and allies have passed series of social policies that show a relation to&nbsp; a strict doctrine from the unpacific version of Judaism and Christianity, from states that passed severe restrictions on abortion—to complete ban in states like Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio; to private healthcare and insurance companies denying basic services and health coverage to same-sex couples. It shouldn’t be shocking to learn that Trump appointed Paula White as the spiritual advisor in the White House. The culture of theological radicalization has been standardized under an administration that has as a powerful platform unlike any of its predecessors. Donald Trump is popularizing the culture of conspiracy theories and an alternative reality platform that is very appealing to his ill-informed conservative white population in many suburban and rural communities.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The practice of fear mongering in U.S. politics became an insult to the position of America itself worldwide. Evangelicalism is working effortlessly in Christianizing the nation at any cost, despite showing an increasing sign of its dysfunctional approach. At what cost does this appear? The answer is clear, the humanist community in the United States has become so weakened that all rational arguments related to secularism and the separation of church and state become dangerous blasphemies, blamed on the force of evil embodied in Satan.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Also strengthening the conservatives, the liberal and left wing based critique has never been unified on a single socio-political platform that could unite their base, unlike the Republicans, who unified under a religiously motivated message—which has become&nbsp; a commandment to vote for “candidate-whomever” their pastors tell them at Sunday’s church service.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;Demotivation is symptomatic&nbsp; of the Democratic base when it comes to political activism. It took the DNC until late 2019 to recognize the religiously unaffiliated, agnostic and atheist Americans as a major component of the fabric of their base, for example. Much of what happens seems to be in hindsight.&nbsp;</span></p>
<blockquote><p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is suffering a God commandment? Are people without healthcare just another expression of God's will? Is humiliation part of the life journey, such that over 500 thousand people in the U.S. cannot get decent shelter?&nbsp;</span></em></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is clear that conservatives with their message are working effortlessly to speed up the coming for the End of Days and the return of the Messiah so that they can get justification for practicing such political tribalism and institutionalized corruption. There is one motto that conservatives follow: “God is not a pacifist”;&nbsp; and from there the justification for the brutal policies that are religiously fueled are rationalized. Is suffering a God commandment? Are people without healthcare just another expression of God's will? Is humiliation part of the life journey, such that over 500 thousand people in the U.S. cannot get decent shelter?&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The moral compass seems to have spun off its axis a long time ago for conservatives when they learned about catastrophes in the history of the violent version of the Christian god they worship. When six migrant children died in ICE detention facilities, Republicans defended ICE and blamed the parents for actively putting their children at risk. Ironically, no one has ever criticized America’s catastrophic foreign policy that supported the overthrow of democratically elected governments in central America— which had long-term left-leaning ideologies—and worked on installing dictatorships that favored America’s interests.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the same argument, prominent televangelist of Texas Robert Jeffress stated in an interview that God commanded us to install a wall at the border to protect the nation from foreign invasions. In an interview for “Fox and Friends” in early 2019 Jeffress said </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The Bible says even Heaven itself is gonna have a wall around it, not everybody is going to be allowed in. So, if walls are immoral, then God is immoral.”</span></i></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The fact that the current theocratic-conservative movement, which has been in the making since before Ronald Reagan took office and appears not to be going away anytime soon, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark&nbsp; to declare the defeat of the liberal movement in the past four decades despite small victories. It’s a trend we have been witnessing in traditionally democratic nations in Europe. Conservatives are aligning the elements of corporate capitalism, religion, and nationalism in one blend that has effectively crippled the United States over the past few decades. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">How? America has been transformed into a corporate haven and an aggressively consumerist market in the world that led to an effective decline of innovation. Also, the power of corporations is superseding that of the government where the former has privatized most&nbsp; basic human rights like education and healthcare. Additionally, the promotion of the identity of the U.S. as a Christian nation energized the appeal of Christian nationalism, which is contradictory to the very foundational principle of the union.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In a political culture of deception and manipulation, constituents have been successfully deceived about their own rights and the potential power they have in selecting transparent lawmakers who truly represent their political values. The current mechanism has led to the loss of the power where people once had control, and to the transitioning the political culture that was once the beacon of hope to the entire world.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Can the process be reversed, or even slowed down? The coming year is setting up to be&nbsp; a watershed for the future of the promise of progress toward freedom and the shared and equal value of citizens of Planet Earth. We should have a better idea no later than 11 months from now.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Fidel Azazi</p>
<p><em>Local and International Viewpoint</em></p>
<p>The Humanist Advocate</p>
<p>December 21, 2019</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-3598" src="http://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/fidel-1-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="197" height="197" srcset="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/fidel-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/fidel-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/fidel-1.jpg 360w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px" /></p>
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		<title>When Charity Falls Short</title>
		<link>https://nosha.info/where-charity-falls-short/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marty Bankson]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 29 Aug 2018 02:37:56 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Charity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[charity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GoFundMe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[philanthropy]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nosha.info/?p=2057</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[In the August&#160;26th edition of the TheHumanist.com, author Brody Armstrong brings up some interesting points about a current topic usually at, or near the top of everyone’s “Most Concerned About” list when pollsters send out its routine queries under that heading: health care. What differentiates Armstrong’s short analysis is the role social media, specifically the way the fundraising-for-profit GoFundMe app and others like it have worked themselves into the conversation about the current healthcare crisis. &#160; “Why GoFundMe Isn’t the [...]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="dslc-theme-content"><div id="dslc-theme-content-inner"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the Aug</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ust&nbsp;</span><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-2058 alignright" style="font-size: 0.95em;" src="http://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CharityGiveDonate-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="262" height="148" srcset="https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CharityGiveDonate-300x169.jpg 300w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CharityGiveDonate-375x210.jpg 375w, https://nosha.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CharityGiveDonate.jpg 728w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px" /><span style="font-weight: 400;">26th edition of the </span><i style="font-size: 0.95em;">TheHumanist.com</i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, author Brody Armstrong brings up some interesting points about a current topic usually at, or near the top of everyone’s “Most Concerned About” list when pollsters send out its routine queries under that heading: health care. What differentiates Armstrong’s short analysis is the role social media, specifically the way the fundraising-for-profit GoFundMe app and others like it have wor</span><span style="font-size: 0.95em;">ked themselves into the conversation about the current healthcare crisis.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="https://thehumanist.com/commentary/unhealthy-why-gofundme-isnt-the-answer-for-an-underinsured-america"><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Why GoFundMe Isn’t the Solution for an Underinsured America”</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> &nbsp;shows how this form of charitable giving to people with serious or even catastrophic injuries or illnesses—while (in some minds) is an ethical requirement aspiring to a positive moral good—has its shortcomings. GoFundMe often boasts of huge goal-busting campaigns, but some cases go without a single dollar donated, and many more close woefully under-supported. From this, Armstrong surmises that the only way to ensure everyone’s medical needs are met is through a national single-payer, Medicare-for-all styled universal coverage. Reliable, steady streams of funding is an inherent problem with all charitable organizations, as well as a host of other problems from administrative to the philosophical. From that, we are led to questions about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">any</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> charitable or philanthropic endeavor. Do they really help in “the big picture” of solving, or at least alleviating their focus issues, or are they just band aid fixes? Are they nothing more psychological salve for feelings of pity or guilt rather than rational decisions to assist made after recognizing a special social ill? Are acts of benevolence defeating their own purpose by fecklessly chasing symptoms rather than investigating and evaluating root causes and dedicating efforts to eradicate them?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Criticism of philanthropy and charitable donations of time and money may seem cynical or misanthropic, especially to humanists of both secular and religious stripe. There are some worthy points to be considered, however. They come from the full spectrum of political philosophy and social theory; from mundane considerations of cost effectiveness and equitable distribution; and yet others from the use of them for personal aggrandizement or ego boosters and power trips. From the political left and Marxist class theory, we get the story that the capitalist power structure has no interest in subsidizing the disadvantaged unless there is a profit to be made somewhere along the line, and private charity is a bogus solution for repairing the inequities in the provision of basic human needs, and fails to recognize the responsibility of the state has in this role. The old fashioned conservative view is that individual and religious and social organizations are the proper way to solve age-old problems (when bootstrapping one’s own way is not possible) and it is not the domain of a limited government. In the large middle (which is predominate in today”s liberal democracies in the West and beyond), the compromise of a public-private effort between these two polar extremes has developed as a mixed policy and has been thriving since nearly the beginning of the Progressive Era in the early part of the Twentieth Century, and became thoroughly entrenched by the last third of the century, wherein government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance, and others were installed <em>at public expense</em> to address what economist I. M. Rubinow called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: "accident, illness, old age, loss of job.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The administration <em>of</em>, and </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">personal influence </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">on</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> charitable organizations has also been the subject of scrutiny by naysayers. “How much is of my money is actually going toward….”(what I thought it was going for, or somewhere else)? And how much is going toward the organization of the charity (and church!) itself, which is running it? This has been such a concern that a cottage industry of watchdog groups like Charity Navigator has been hatched. And what of those who use part of their fortunes to “influence” decisions about how their and others’ contributions are to be dispersed; or how generous contributions to Harvard University, for example, by Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner (White House employee and famous son-in-law) landed the very average student Jared a seat in the freshman class there. Of course, no one said Harvard U. is a charity, but…you get the idea. Or the case where the donor simply (and innocently) gives to</span><span style="font-size: 0.95em;">&nbsp;the cause that interests or concerns her the most, rather than where her generosity has proven to be more urgently needed elsewhere.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">None of these “sore spots” of charity should, or likely will, be taken as disincentives to donating time, money, or material to charities; it is meant to show the bumps and blemishes in the system—and even paradoxes that lie at the foundation of the principle. With a large source of private contributions in decline (the church), as well as unpredictable downturns in the the economy, NOSHA needs to keep and expand its efforts to fill in the gaps in its modest way to the betterment of our fellow humans. But a dire outlook from the reality of today’s economic numbers shows that 40 years of stagnant wages of the middle class, along with the increasing wealth (and concomitant political power) into fewer hands, legislating smaller tax liabilities for themselves results in an eroding tax base and “austerity economics,” where social services will be cut, likely resulting in a return to Rubinow’s nightmare of the merciless Four Horsemen riding roughshod over the dignity of basic human needs; and the modest but heartfelt gifts of private individuals and humanist and benevolent organizations like ours will be but drops in the bucket. Armstrong’s analysis</span><span style="font-size: 0.95em;">&nbsp;of the futility of GoFundMe is correct, but needs to be expanded to apply across the board to the principle of altruistic giving. The well-being of each is the responsibility of all.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Marty Bankson&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>The Humanist Advocate</em></p>
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