#the /imagine the beauty of secular world where no one is burned on stake/ self

[vorbarrsultana]

i’m so intrigued by the idea of nickistat during the french revolution and the way they may tackle it in the show

[cactusowl]

I am a secular humanist.

Most people, used to seeing secular humanism set in opposition to religion, focus on that first word: "secular". It's true: I don't believe in gods. But that word isn't the important one.

The important word is the second one: "humanist". There have been humanists of many religions; I am one who happens to have none. What we all have in common is a belief that a better world for we humans is possible -- but, if we want it, we have to build it. Humanism is the belief that we are not doomed to a miserable existence or to be the playthings of Providence, but that through our intellect and benevolence and optimism we can forge a brighter future for us all. I hold this philosophy as close to my heart as any Christian holds the cross.

Two thousand years ago, the Greeks used the dream of flight as a symbol of human hubris, in the myth of Icarus -- the boy who dreamed of flying ever higher, and in doing so was put in his place for his ambition and found only death. But, even as they told tales painting human agency as folly, the Greeks were part of the long story of human development. They built ships, traded goods, told stories, grew in wisdom, and pioneered the idea that consensus, intellectual debate, and the collective will, not autocracy and greed, could steer their society toward prosperity and success. Their democracy wasn't perfect, but its results speak for themselves.

Five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of flying, and refused to accept "It's not the place of humans to dream of the sky!" as an obstacle. After studying the anatomy of birds, he drew designs for flying machines, machines which would have worked were they paired with a lightweight power source.

One hundred years ago, two American brothers found that power source in the internal combustion engine and invented the airplane.

At about the same time, a Russian -- using the Muslim invention of algebra, the German language of calculus, and the English discovery of mechanics -- proved that we could go to the Moon with a rocket, first invented by the Chinese.

Twenty years after, an American figured out how to actually build such rockets.

Fifty years after that, we put three humans on top of a giant firecracker, designed and built by thousands of men and women, and they carried the hopes and aspirations of billions of people with them as they put bootprints on the Moon. This machine, conceived as the ultimate weapon of war, was transformed into the ultimate expression of human achievement by intellect, willpower, effort, and community.

We can board an airplane bound for the other side of the world -- to see those we love, to meet people different from us, or just to experience our world as one community -- for a few weeks' pay, two scant millennia after the Greeks told stories about the ultimate folly of flight. We can do this because humans refused to accept "no" for an answer, and when left uncowed by falsehood and fear respond to challenges with shouts of "Excelsior!"

We live longer than ever before. We have exterminated dread diseases and are winning the war against many others. We have the insights of the world's scholars at our fingertips. The majority of us live in comfort and safety that the ancients could barely imagine.

We are not satisfied. Even as the Wright Brothers were building their airplane, Tsiolkovsky was dreaming of the moon.

We want to correct the errors of the past. We now realize that burning coal and oil change our climate, that human biology produces a wider range of healthy sexualities and genders than previously thought, that people of all races and in all places are fundamentally the same. We want a better future, one where humans have less impact on nature, one where more of us have material comfort and prosperity, one where we live in an ever more caring, compassionate, and beautiful society.

To achieve these things we need our minds, our sense of community, and sustained effort. These are, after all, the things that evolution has given us that make us human: we are intelligent, we are social, and we endure.

***

I disagree with Donald Trump's policy proposals: His suggestions, such as they are, for how to govern our country are not a good idea.

This is, of course, part of democracy. Vigorous debate between people with different proposals is healthy.

Disagreement with his ideas is not why I reject Trumpism utterly. I reject Trumpism because it entails a rejection of human intellect, a rejection of community, and the embrace of pessimism -- ultimately, the complete rejection of and antithesis to humanism.

Trump's campaign has, over and over again, disparaged intellectualism as a virtue. He has rejected the careful conclusions of scientists regarding the Earth's climate for political gain. He has disparaged the value of thoughtfulness and education, and the value of art and the artists who create it. He has embraced falsehood as a means of persuasion, and cultivated a following among the credulous not by logical persuasion but by tribalistic dog-whistles. The most basic tenet of scientific discourse is that you He has welcomed those who seek to turn back the clock on arguably the greatest medical advance of the last century, collective immunity through vaccination. He has abandoned intellectual discourse so utterly that many of his statements, ultimately, are word salad devoid of meaning.

He has welcomed only the narrowest circle of folk into his tribe, and rejected the fundamental humanity and equal dignity of those outside it. People who love differently, believe differently, have different bodies, look different, or live elsewhere are not welcome in Trumpdom. In his world, Americans are no longer free to buy things from China, trade that has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Our southern neighbors, whose culture has enriched our own and whose labor has enriched our people, are now verminous invaders to be barricaded away. Desperately suffering Syrians, fleeing war and devastation, are to be feared, rather than to be welcomed as neighbors in need. Women seeking even the most basic of human rights, agency over their own bodies, have no place in Trump's world. In his quest to unify his tribe around some mythical idea of masculine prowess, he has demeaned kindness as weakness and charity as debasement. He even seeks to demolish the American people's ability to use its government as a steward of the communal trust; in Trump's world, we can no longer use our government as a vehicle to provide for the common welfare.

In order to unify his followers behind his banner, he has drummed up fear of everything outside their movement, convincing them that their nation is failing and that only he can save them. He has rejected hope for rhetoric about "American carnage" and pointed to the signs of economic change -- change that has lifted a billion Asians out of poverty -- as "tombstones". Rather than a call to think clearly, come together, and work hard in order to forge a better future, he has called for ... what? For people to be paralyzed by fear, to reject the ability of the human mind and human effort to improve our world, and to embrace the false belief that only by destroying the progress we've made so far in improving our lot can we reclaim some lost "greatness". Contrived fear is a powerful motivator to those not skeptical of it, and has been harnessed by self-serving would-be leaders again and again to serve their own rise to power and feed their narcissism.

We do not live in a Trumpian world. We live longer, healthier lives than our ancestors. Fewer of us suffer violence, more of us know more about our world, and more of us have the freedom to choose our own paths in life than ever before. Billions of people around the globe have been lifted out of abject poverty by international trade, by the ability -- facilitated by the humble shipping container -- to see our distant neighbors' livelihood as interwoven with our own prosperity. The errors of the past -- racism, sexism, the past ambitions of conquerors, and bad stewardship of nature -- still haunt us, but are we not human? Are we not the same species that in a few short centuries beat back disease, charted the dance of nature, mastered our world, and learned the secrets of the furthest stars? We can overcome these challenges and others, so long as we are not too cowed to stand tall and face them. Our previous president recognized this. Even if his vision was not always clear, even if he couldn't achieve it all, he understood: in 2009 he told the Iranians, "History will remember you for what you can build, not what you can destroy." He was speaking to Iran, but his statement is true for us all.

I can respect and work with people whose ideas for progress differ from my own. But I will oppose, in any way necessary, a movement which seeks to arrest the march of humanity toward a better world and to stymie the promise of the human intellect and spirit. Too much is at stake; the future, absent the interference of a narcissist who has by cynical means found himself in a position of power, has too much promise to let him ruin it.

Trumpism is anathema to humanism. His movement is trying to thwart everything that we are trying to build.

Another American humanist and scholar of ethics said, a few decades ago, that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." He spoke of community and morality, but his words ring true across the scope of human progress: in the end, we have always overcome, because that is what humans do. But the arc of the moral universe doesn't bend that way because of cosmic fiat or ethical inevitability, though. It bends that way because people stand up to people like Trump and say "This shall not stand!"