General goals, sure, but there’s plenty of difference. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs actually shows this pretty well (though I don’t think it’s totally accurate). Physiological needs, sure, generally the same, though of course people with certain conditions may need more (diabetics, for example) That’s the basic stuff we actually need. Safety needs, and we’re already into differences. Do you fear death daily? Because there are people who do. Do you feel you need a weapon in order to walk outside safely? Perhaps a burglar alarm? Do you have any particular phobias? Belonging needs - how many friends do you need to have? Are you particularly clingy with partners? Do you need to see your family and friends often, or can you go without them for some time? And so forth.
Sure, people generally get happiness though the same generaly goals. But their routes and methods are wildly different. While happiness may mean the similar things to similar people, it’s still very much individually defined.
I feel pretty confident in saying people are happier nowadays (overall, anyway). People have less to fear (again, overall). We have more chances to self-actualise. On a purely practical side, there’s more of us and we live longer - more room to fit happiness in, even if you think people’s levels of happiness haven’t changed.
And in the spirit of the OP, i’d add that even though there may be no gods, that doesn’t mean we brush aside people’s sense of religious or spiritual fulfilment and say they don’t exist. They, too, add to the overall amount of happiness, even if those people are wrong.
Perfecting the world. (To steal from a religious tradition, in this case Judaism: Tikkun Olam. But the concept is wholly secularly compatable.)
A secular humanist does not necessarily deny God. A secular humanist just does not require God to motivate actions aimed at perfecting the world. (S)he accepts ehtical standards as axiomatic truths without the need for God. They are, as they say, “self-evident.”
Reward in the afterlife? Unneeded. You do it because it is right. Period. A just life lived in pursuit of making the world a better place and in pursuit of understanding the universe is its own reward. End of story.
Does a secular humanist always succeed in moving the world towards perfection? Of course not. No more than a religious fundamentalist has succeeded in “creating on Earth the Kingdom of Heaven.” But as for the fundamentalist it is the destination that informs the journey.
No, it’s not at all like that. Whether our natural resources are infinite or not is sort of irrelevant when they are all marketized.
It’s not unlikely: it’s pretty much the history of technological advancement so far. For instance, none of us should be alive today if the doomsayers of the past were to be believed: we were all going to starve to death because the world didn’t have enough arable land. But then someone found a way to triple the crop output of many major food crops and here we are. 40 years ago, college students were told that things like aluminum and copper would be incredibly scarce within a few decades and it would be a big disaster of a resource crunch. Instead, if anything, they are cheaper and more available today. Of course, if they ever did get scarce, they’d get more expensive… and people would respond and react to that and get on fine without them anyway.
I disagree. It seems like, in fact, a fairly reasonable assumption. In fact, I have every expectation that long before we are be able to cut back our carbon emissions enough to make more than a small dent in the human contribution to global warming someone will develop a means to counterbalance the trend directly. We just aren’t going to get around worrying about it right now because we’re busy with other more important things. We’ll get to it when it becomes more of a pressing issue.
I’d bet good money on that, if I had any.
Anyone that becomes particularly motivated to work on solving the problem, or who finds it lucrative enough to worry about.
Perhaps, but you’re probably not an economist, which would be the much more relevant field for guaging how human beings will respond to market pressures or major resource needs.
Well, I do admire your optimism, Apos. I wish I could share in it, but I can’t. And here’s why:
Honestly, speaking as someone who has been working as an environmental scientist since the late '80’s, I can’t stress enough that the time when our environmental problems became a pressing issue has long passed.
It might not be too late if we were doing more for the environment that we rely on to provide our most basic needs, but that’s not happening. And I think that’s because our governments seem to be more interested in economics than anything else.
Our shortsightedness, our belief in the panacea of science/technology, our greed, our fear/denial (inability to truly consider and comprehend the super scary outcomes of our actions), our arrogance… these will be our downfall.
I would suggest that is because it sounds like you don’t really do any sort of legitimate cost benefit analysis. All you seem to be considering are bad things happening to the environment now and the future consequences of that, without looking at the good things we get in return and the future consequences of THAT.
As a result, you get a ridiculously flawed picture of what is worth doing and when and how.
As I said, people like you decades ago were forseeing doom just like you are now. Difference is that they were different dooms… and none of them actually came to be true or anywhere near true: technology made them obsolete almost immediately. Global Warming is a pretty good example: it’s going to take a century or two before it has any truly nasty impacts on human life. But I bet someone comes up with a way to counteract it far more dramatically than we can cause it within just the next decade.
Economics encompasses just about everything when it comes to decision-making, so I don’t see that as a bad thing. Your assumption is simply that the decision making with regards to simply ignoring more environmental crises is irrational and shortsighted: that it doesn’t take into account all the dangers you see. I’m arguing that, in fact, that assumption is probably wrong: it’s not shortsighted or irrational. It does take into account those dangers… and still judges them to mostly unimportant at the moment… rationally.
Since we are born ,live and die, we have to do our best to make heaven on earth. America is still a very selfish country. Until we realize that we are all together and we must make the country better for all we are doomed. There is a plus that people get from helping. We all know it when we do it. As a nation we do not . The only time we focus an being American is when we have a war or a crisis like a hurricane destroying property. Me first helps no one. Our religions seem to recognize the fundamental truth that we are all brothers. Our country should be judged by how we treat the least of us. However our news and TV stress the privileged. That is where we are being judged . I weep for us. Our values are being strip mined for profit. Everything is for sale.
My latest problem with religion is it has been politicized and sold . I want them to go back to serving the weak not justifying the wealthy. When we base our actions on the old religious values we will become a better place.
nitpick I sort of resent the fact that secular and atheist have become interchangeable, when the entire point of secularism was so that multiple religions could live together with each other and even those who lack religion. I believe in God and an after-life, but also secularism.
This is an important point, and I think many posters here are missing the intent of the original question.
Religious organizations not only provide a framework for personal satisfaction, they also (with a few exceptions like Buddhism) offer a plan/goal/mission for humanity as a group. To be clear, this is more than merely a mutually-acceptable social code–a set of rules we abide by because we want to enjoy the advantages of living in a group. It is a set justification for that code, an underlying purpose that allows one to interpret unexpected events, and an ultimate mission that allows a person to see that there is a point to existence outside of personal satisfaction.
A person can argue that “secularism” does not provide this and (more strongly) that it shouldn’t provide this. That’s OK, but given the prevalence of religion it appears to be something that people want, and so if secularism doesn’t provide it, its proponents who use secularism as a substitute for religion might want to argue why an “ultimate purpose for humanity” is really unnecessary. Mswas has a point; though I would venture to say all atheists are probably secularists, secularism does not contradict religious belief, and its clear some secularists are getting something from religion that their philosophy cannot seem to provide.
A person could also argue that science in general and economics in particular fill this gap. I single out economics because its been cited in this thread and one of its roles is to rationally analyze social interaction, something that religions generally do by creating a divinely-inspired rulebook. I’m not sure, however, that they’re equivalent: Rulebooks tend to be proscriptive, whereas economics seems to work best as a descripitive mechanism. Ditto general science; it may be able to explain the how of nature, but is somewhat poorer at the why. I’m not saying this is a legitimate interpretation of the failings of Science, but I can say the case for allowing them to fill this need in humanity–a justifiable purpose for our future as a sentient group–has not been proven.
There is a way to be consistently happy. It doesn’t lie in the direction of money. The way to happiness is to help others, as long as you do that you will be happy. Guaranteed.
Um, helping others is just like every other activity on the planet: sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s bad. I gotten nothing but shit before for helping people.
I think it varies from person to person. In some parts of our society sacrificing our selves for others is seen as the only noble action. IMHO the reality is that if we see people as having equal value we can also see that we are primarily responsible for ourselves, and we truly can benefit others by taking good care of ourselves. As with many things it’s about balance. If someones gift is enterprise then they benefit the society they live in by having a vision, building a business and employing others. They may get wealthy by doing this and it’s up to them to decide what to do with this wealth. Look at companies like Ben and Jerry’s who made a concerted and fairly successful effort to establish a socially responsible company that not only made yummy ice cream but treated their employees fairly and give part of their profits to good causes. {the peace bar}
When my kids were growing up and we had some issues we coined a phrase that I think holds some basic truth.
Sometimes you gotta love somebody enough to kick them in the ass.
Programs like AA talk about making people deal with the consequences of their actions as being the best thing you can do for them.
So, helping others is a good thing but it can take some different forms, and I, me, myself, am deserving of some positive attention as well.
Yes, that was actually my point, a rebuttal of lekatt’s “The way to happiness is to help others, as long as you do that you will be happy. Guaranteed.” People don’t always appreciate help, and sometimes they’ll hate you for it. I’ve gotten all kinds of shit just for helping people, including a boot in the bean bag. It’s just like his ‘love conquers all’ garbage. Just meaningless platitude sprayed around in the hopes it’ll hit something.
What if we could acheive a place, on this planet, that we could live in absolute comfort and forever—if we chose to. What if everyone born had the choice to live forever or to cease living.
Is there a chance that we could achieve a “forever” life if all cultures got together with their accumulative knowledge and worked toward that goal? Do you think we as mankind, in fact and in time, could triumph over death—if we wanted to?