This business about the inherent worth and dignity of every human being is kicking society in the teeth. Look at this contretemps about a high school senior who’s all burnt up about not getting into some college or another.
People go on and on about the entitlement generation, but no one really gets at the root of it all. It used to be that in order to get your ticket punched for adulthood and the autonomy and independence it conferred, you had to demonstrate that you could function reliably and responsibly without any autonomy and independence. Young adults had to take the weight of the world - the soldiering, the gruntwork, the heavy lifting - onto their shoulders and not expect a damn thing. Only then were they considered mature or responsible or worth respect - once they’d shown they could get along without it.
What made that possible was the tacit social understanding that people are worthless until they do. Not out of the good of their hearts or on any ideals, but because they are damn well told to. Today, in contrast, we give young people humanity and respect and expect them to carry on as if they deserve it. How can they? They never earned it.
We are not all worthy of dignity or respect. We prove we are by doing without it.
There’s an enormous difference between being recognized as a mature, responsible adult, and simply being accorded basic rights and dignities as a human being.
The problem we’re having today comes from young people being accorded dignity and rights they haven’t had to work for. Character, basically, is allowing life to shove you around and not shoving back, and young people aren’t learning this.
Anyway, getting back to your original question. I think anti-humanism is a poor choice for what you’re talking about. Humanism is supposedly the philosophy that puts the needs of human above the needs of God or something other greater cause.
A student thinking he’s entitled isn’t really an example of this. His “philosophy” isn’t based on the needs of mankind - he’s just looking out for himself. So I think the point you’re arguing for is anti-individualism: the philosophy of putting the needs of society ahead of the needs of the individual.
Little Nemo gets it in one. Humanism means that we have universities and publishers, and people can ask people for dates. Individual freedom doesn’t guarantee that you will be accepted, published, or dated; in fact, it guarantees that the opposite will happen, now and again. Universities are free to insist on academic standards; publishers are free to reject material they find unsuitable; and that pretty woman is entirely free to tell me to go to blazes, Jack, I’d rather date an orangutan.
An enforceable mandate denying these freedoms would be anti-humanist. The OP is blaming the policeman for the fact that there are prisons.
Society is doing pretty damn well with humanism. Our levels of civil, political and human rights have never been higher and will continue to get better. Our levels of education and scientific achievement are the best we’ve ever had, and will continue to get better. The people who fight for their civil rights or who fight for a better future wouldn’t do it if they sincerely believed they weren’t worth a better life. People who are convinced they don’t deserve better, or who can’t fathom a better life are the ones who wallow generation to generation in ignorance and oppression.
If you have issues with your own self worth, you shouldn’t drag other people down with you to a mentality that worth, dignity and value are earned, not something you are entitled to. You should work on your own issues instead.
Besides, I think growing up is something you do in stages. It isn’t a ‘once you hit 18 you are an adult’ like we used to do it. People reach adulthood in stages between the ages of 14-35 if you ask me. During that period you have different challenges, different levels of responsibility and autonomy, different skills to learn. And people do learn them sooner or later. Either the easy way or the hard way. No amount of criticism about how generation 1 is better than generation 2 is going to protect people from the damage that making bad decisions over and over does. people learn from mistakes.
[QUOTE=Wesley Clark]
I think growing up is something you do in stages. It isn’t a ‘once you hit 18 you are an adult’ like we used to do it.
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And there are a lot of people out there saying that that is the problem. What do you make of that?
That the “kids these days” faction will never die and will keep inventing reasons.
Honestly, kids do more these days than previous generations ever did. It’s just that, with the advance of technology, they have a lot of extra free time.
I am not a big fan of humanism either as a philosophy even though I usually behave like it. I find the idea that any homo sapien born on this earth is a semi-deity above all other concerns to oddly Old Testament biblical and irrational. Can anyone explain why people shouldn’t be treated like other animals other than their somewhat unique utilities (lots of things have unique abilities as well)? In particular, I don’t understand why that reverence is insisted upon even when individuals cause net harm to everyone and everything exposed to them.
I think he meant ‘sold as pets’.