stringanomaly

Empathy

Two articles about humanity.

We seem to be fundamentally missing a modern philosophy that purports that as humans we should be engaging with human activities. I really want to call this humanism but humanism has been co-opted through the many years to mean something different (apparently some sort of weird conflict with science and religion, most recently). The Ancient Greeks and Chinese have some related concepts, Eudaimonia and Wu wei.

The central idea in my Humanism is that human activities (community, empathy, sleep, movement, relationships, introspection, sickness, health, conflict, spirituality, family, sex, invention, art, etc) and basic physical functions are of central importance to our lives and we should try to live in accordance to those instinctual needs. Relatedly, change and innovation and progress are also integral to our species, but they should not be pursued to the detriment of other qualities. Every human feels when they are living in accordance with our nature. We should embrace that feeling.

(It is ridiculous that there is conflict about the existence of human nature. We have so much in common we lose track of how much and then fixate on the small differences or the extreme statistical outliers. Just look at what every human has been doing for our recorded history; it is all entirely the same! My Humanism, upon cursory review, you will also realize has so much in common with all other life on our planet, as well.)

There is a lot more that can be expounded upon this idea, but absent external interest, there is no need to write an unread treatise.