This is great. Life as journey is 'a dreadful hoax' … Thanks to Blakeley Nixon.
What is Humanism? “Humanism” is a word that has had and continues to have a number of meanings. The focus here is on kind of atheistic world-view espoused by those who organize and campaign under that banner in the UK and abroad. We should acknowledge that there remain other uses of term. In one of the loosest senses of the expression, a “Humanist” is someone whose world-view gives special importance to human concerns, values and dignity. If that is what a Humanist is, then of course most of us qualify as Humanists, including many religious theists. But the fact remains that, around the world, those who organize under the label “Humanism” tend to sign up to a narrower, atheistic view. What does Humanism, understood in this narrower way, involve? The boundaries of the concept remain somewhat vague and ambiguous. However, most of those who organize under the banner of Humanism would accept the following minimal seven-point characterization of their world-view.
Comments
"I am badly oppressed by the gnawing sense of waste."
Watts's remark about heaven at the end of that video is typical of his shallow rhetoric. Not everyone believes that heaven is a reward for living a 'good' life. Christians (at least of the Calvinist persuasion) believe that their place in heaven isn't determined by what they do:
Ephesian 1:4 "For he chose us in him BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD to be holy and blameless in his sight."
For such a Christian, this life is not a means to an end. It has a very clear purpose:
Ephesians 2:10 "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to DO GOOD WORKS, which God PREPARED IN ADVANCE for us to do."
Such Christians are not striving to win a place in heaven, they are doing good works because they care about the Good. It wouldn't surprise me if Christopher Hitchens is in heaven right now (though he would be very surprised). In many respects, he led a more exemplary life than many Christians.
Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."
I don't believe we define our 'self' or our 'life' by the job we do, and I think this is the 'con' that society spins us so that we contribute to that great political machine called the economy, which none of us can live without. And I'm caught up in that as much as anyone else, otherwise I wouldn't even have a roof over my head or be able to feed myself. Yet, there are some brave souls who choose to escape this as demonstrated by Kevin Mcleod's Escape to the Wild programmes.
This is about finding meaning in one's life, which I think is essential, and, I suspect, most people find meaning through having a family and growing children into adults. But I'm only surmising - I don't really know - because I've never done it.
So I find meaning through all the people I meet and the interactions I have whether they be work colleagues or chance meetings, like the one I had just last week with a young woman who had just returned from 20mths in Somalia with her two children, one a teenager and one pre-teen. Over a cup of coffee we discussed her country and its issues and her children, so for a short instance we were part of each other's life and we both feel slightly enhanced by it. That's what we live our lives for and everything else is incidental.
Regards, Paul.
Alan Watts