Humanistic Values of Post-Religious People

HUMANISTIC IDEALS, CONSIDERATIONS, AND FIRST PRINCIPLES

THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF DIVERSITY IN UNITY

We not only recognize, but we celebrate, each and every one of our human differences and the uniquenesses of each individual's expression, pursuit, and interest that makes each and every one of us valuable and worthwhile, while simultaneously celebrating the common bond of our biological humanity and biospheric destiny that reaches beyond all superficial differences to recognize our common biophile unity, interdependence, and mutual respect.

The Universal Law of all spiritual humanism and wisdom is the Law of Diversity in Unity, which beckons us to find consensus and unity in all things necessary, liberty and freedom in all things variable, and universal benevolence and goodwill toward all things wonderful, including the wonder of, in, and through ourselves and each other. No person (or organism), for any reason, especially those reasons accorded to "accidents of birth," such as ethnicity, gender, traditions, histories, sex, demography, custom, and sexual orientation, shall be limited, circumscribed, compromised, included or excluded, or evaluated in any manner on such incidentals of accidental irrelevance, lest their vile biogtry, prejudice, and arrogance exclude and contaminate them from their shared common humanity.


FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Freedom of expression, provided it neither harms nor injures another, should not be impeded by any person, group, or association.


TENETS OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE (Epistemology)

1. All people by nature desire to know.
2. Knowledge is the capacity to demonstrate by the senses and reason what we claim to know is necessarily incapable of being otherwise (refuted).
3. Our main concern should be the search for the truth (or falsity) and to describe and explain objective facts by competent methodical rules
4. All knowledge is the growth, development, and improvement of previous and existent knowledge advanced upon becoming known (e.g., an “evolutionary” epistemology).
5. Claims of fact that cannot, in principle, be falsified, cannot in fact be verified, and cannot be known, only opined.
6. All that is not known necessarily is mere opinion or belief.
7. All knowledge, even the very best knowledge, is at best provisional and objective, but not remotely relativist.

ESPOUSAL OF NOBLE VALUES (Axiology)

1. Personal Excellence is the correctness of deliberation about human choices, in which the most valuable choice “lies in the Mean relative to us, this being determined by reason in a way that in which any individual of practical reason determines it.” (See, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Confucius’ Doctrine of the Mean, etc.)
2. The four cardinal Virtues of Justice, Courage, Prudence, & Temperance do indeed maximize human flourishing, by choosing to Act according to the Mean (virtue) while avoiding the Extremes (excess and deficiency), in accord with of Personal Excellence of practical reason.
3. The way of life (ethos) prized by Classical Greeks is concerned with the moderation of our emotions and actions, by the intermediate Mean (i.e., virtue) between their excesses and deficiencies (vice). This “homeostasis” permeates all that is excellent.
4. Humans value excellence first, utility second, and pleasure third. Survival values utility first, pleasure second, and excellence third. Human misfits (e.g., tyrants) value utility first, their perfection second, and pleasure in other’s humiliation a tie-breaker for them.
5. The human animal achieves value through the naturally-endowed repertoire of emotions that confer “judgments of value” in ordinary and extraordinary life by giving it meaning, significance, and vitality, deliberated through reason.
6. The three principally known Value Systems of Humans are: (1) Hedonism, (2) Pragmatism, (3) and Eudaimonism, which may be concomitant or exclusive. Pragmatism incorporates utilitarianism. In vernacular: (1) Pleasure over Pain, (2) Usefulness over Not, (3) Excellence, not Excess/Deficit.
7. Liberalism is the value in which both Individuals and Society as equally valuable in pursuit of their respective interests, where each and both are in symphonic harmony, neither dominating or “conducting” the other.
8. Complementarity, the Tao, Balance, Homeostasis, Moderation, the Mean, all speak to the classical values of equanimity, equipoise, and and harmony within and among humanity.


NORMS OF HUMAN ACTION & CONDUCT (Praxeology)

1. Pursue the most pleasant and avoid the most painful (The Hedonist Axiom).
2. We deliberate about the means to the ends, not justify the means by the ends (The Instrumental Axiom).
3. The sole universal moral imperative is: Do No Harm or Injury. (The Moral Axiom)
4. The three objects of human choice (and of human avoidance) are: the (i) noble, (ii) advantageous, and the (iii) pleasant, while the contraries are (I) base, (ii) injurious, and (iii) painful. (The Noble Axiom)
5. Benevolence, also known as human altruism, benefits everyone, and begins with the “analogous emotion” of empathy, which even other animals possess, but humans try to suppress. (The Altruism Axiom)
6. The Principle of Non-Contradiction also denies that Good is Bad or Bad is Good. (The Logical Axiom)


THE ANATHEMAS (False Doctrines & Dogma)

1. Superstition
2. Perfectionism
3. Slavery
4. Tyranny
5. Unreasonable Coercion


PRINCIPLE OF LIBERALISM (Enlightenment)

All text requires context, all focus requires relief, all foreground requires a background, and all categories of thought require freedom of thought. Human freedom is the core of liberalism – the responsible freedom and respect of oneself and others. All else is illiberal. Freedom is among the highest values of utmost worth, as are autonomy, equality, justice, truth, benevolence, integrity, minority rights and majority self-governance, ownership of oneself and one’s produce, promotion of peace, tolerance, diversity, spontaneity, choice, freedom of movement, self-determination, autonomy, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and freedom of association, each and all within the limits of infringement of others’ values of the same.

Fear eviscerates the principles of liberalism.