mid atlantic - 08 November 2011 09:14 PM

I agree for the most part, but mentioning Phillipe Rushton is not going to convince many liberal humanists.

True, most left-liberals have a reactionary identity. So it doesn’t matter what we say, they will react emotionally and then spout something than passes for “reason” as an afterthought. Much of the comments here… you just have to roll your eyes and think than humanism is going to live as long as other pollyannic utopian delusions. Not that I’m giving up though…

Professor Jonathan Haidt:

... the central problem of the Enlightenment. When you push the rationalist view to its extreme, pretty much all you have left to go on is pleasure and pain, or happiness, or some variant of utilitarianism. I think conservatives are right, there are certain things that are better off veiled. There are certain things better off not being exposed to the light. Now, to the scientist, that’s a terrible thing to say and I’m not saying that science should necessarily stop. But I think if we respect and even revere our founders, if we have things that bind us together and make us proud of who we are and what our nation is, we’re much better off than if we do all the careful historical research and then advertise the fact that our Founding Fathers all have warts and moral lapses.

In a sense, my view is that to be the ultimate utilitarian, in order to design a society that is ultimately best for people, you have to take a very broad view of the tremendous needs that people have for community, for reverence, for respect and for moral orientation. A narrow-minded utilitarianism strips down the universe, reduces people to mere consumers and makes this broader sense of satisfaction impossible.

“the tremendous needs that people have for community”: this is what Lind is saying is threatend by pro-diversity humanism.

xntubes - 09 November 2011 04:06 PM

True, most left-liberals have a reactionary identity.

Ad hominem.  (And apparent projection.)

So it doesn’t matter what we say, they will react emotionally and then spout something than passes for “reason” as an afterthought.

Justification in advance for why your arguments are not likely to convince anyone who doesn’t already share your ideology.

Much of the comments here… you just have to roll your eyes and think than humanism is going to live as long as other pollyannic utopian delusions.

On-going straw man.

If you truly want to refute humanism, you need to engage it in its strongest form.  That requires taking the ideological blinders off (inherent in your labeling things you don’t like as “left-leaning”).  So far you have only constructed straw men or quoted people who have created straw men of humanism.

For example, I am a humanist and I am not a utilitarian.  Nor do I believe in a one-world government.  Nor do I believe that capitalism is bad, per se.  Basically humanism boils down to this: place value in the here-and-now, not the hereafter.  How can that possibly have a political bias to it?

xntubes - 09 November 2011 04:06 PM

mid atlantic - 08 November 2011 09:14 PM

I agree for the most part, but mentioning Phillipe Rushton is not going to convince many liberal humanists.

True, most left-liberals have a reactionary identity. So it doesn’t matter what we say, they will react emotionally and then spout something than passes for “reason” as an afterthought. Much of the comments here… you just have to roll your eyes and think than humanism is going to live as long as other pollyannic utopian delusions. Not that I’m giving up though…

Professor Jonathan Haidt:

... the central problem of the Enlightenment. When you push the rationalist view to its extreme, pretty much all you have left to go on is pleasure and pain, or happiness, or some variant of utilitarianism. I think conservatives are right, there are certain things that are better off veiled. There are certain things better off not being exposed to the light. Now, to the scientist, that’s a terrible thing to say and I’m not saying that science should necessarily stop. But I think if we respect and even revere our founders, if we have things that bind us together and make us proud of who we are and what our nation is, we’re much better off than if we do all the careful historical research and then advertise the fact that our Founding Fathers all have warts and moral lapses.

In a sense, my view is that to be the ultimate utilitarian, in order to design a society that is ultimately best for people, you have to take a very broad view of the tremendous needs that people have for community, for reverence, for respect and for moral orientation. A narrow-minded utilitarianism strips down the universe, reduces people to mere consumers and makes this broader sense of satisfaction impossible.

“the tremendous needs that people have for community”: this is what Lind is saying is threatend by pro-diversity humanism.

  It seems like most people have a reactionary identity,not only left liberals.

...cosmopolitan utilitarianism, the conviction that human beings, if liberated from superstition by science, would behave less like selfish, scheming social apes and more like self-sacrificing social insects, giving their all for the good of the 7 billion members of the global human hive.

A false dichotomy. And what of interdependence and win-win partnerships?