The Good Life

Thanks to everyone who posted last week on my question of "What does it mean to be a human being?" or "What is a human being."
Before I get too in depth in this article, if you will look to the right of the page, you'll see a "Digg" button. If you enjoy this article, please click on the Digg button. Digg is a website that links to frequently visited websites, so say for instance I get 200 Diggs, that may put me on their website, which will build my reader base and allow me to reach a larger audience. It's also a cool way to see what other people are reading these days, check out their website: http://digg.com/


Now, I received some very interesting and differing opinions on what it means to be a human, such as:

Being a human means...
Having a specific genetic makeup
Being able to become something more than you are
Possessing Free Will
Being moral beings
Being a product of our biological and social environments

All of those are very credible definitions of what it means to be a human. So, the definition we have to work with is human beings have a specific genetic makeup, possess the ability to become more than they are, have free will, possess a knowledge of right and wrong, and are products of their environments. That's a pretty solid definition! So, let's work with that.

My next question is this: How do we evaluate our lives as humans? By what standard do we measure living "the good life?" Based upon the genetic definition above would you say that being a "good" human means having the perfect genetic make-up, for example, being the ideal height, having perfect vision, not being bald, etc.?

But, now that I think of it, before we can pose this question, we must first answer the question of "What does it mean for something to be good or bad?" Is there such a thing as good or bad? Some philosophers will argue that there is no objective good or bad, basically good is what you like and bad is what you don't like.

So, this week's question is "Is there such a thing as Good and Bad, and if so what does it mean for something to be Good or Bad."

Plato had an interesting view of Good and Bad based upon his belief in the realm of the forms. Basically, Plato believed that there was a perfect world outside of ours, where everything that exists in this world has an ideal version of it in that perfect world. For example, we have chairs in our world, but in the world of the forms there is a perfect chair. And something was judged as good or bad depending on how much it correlated to its version in the world of the forms. This belief is also commonly used using God as the ideal. In this view, God is the perfect standard, the things we do that are closest to God are considered good and the things we do against God's nature are considered bad or sin.
Another philosophical school, the utilitarians, argue that good is quantifiable in the greatest utility for the greatest number. Here's an example: Let's say you have five people dying in a hospital: one needs a kidney, one needs a heart, one needs a lung, etc. Then a semi-healthy guy comes in for a check-up. In the utilitarian view, the "good" thing to do would be to carve up the healthy guy and give his healthy organs to the five other people. So, you have five healthy people vs. one. The greatest utility for the greatest number.
Perhaps the most famous ideal of the good is the "Golden Rule." Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The philosopher Immanuel Kant called this the Categorical Imperative. Which basically said "People are never to be used as a means to an end, but should be viewed as an end unto themselves."

So, there are a lot of views on this subject. What do you think?

Reason for Hope this week: Check out this website:
http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

Check out this poem by Mother Theresa titled "Anyway"

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

The Beginning

Welcome everyone to The New Humanist blog. Apparently, it's not as "new" as I thought, as there are a couple of other websites out there titled "The New Humanist," but technically speaking since they've been around longer than me, this is still "The NEW Humanist."
The genesis of this idea came from this slide show:

http://www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.wmv

If you haven't seen it, check it out before proceeding.

The slideshow is concerned with how fast our world is changing and what life could look like in the 21st century. There was one particular section concerned with technology and how by 2020, there will be one computer that will surpass the entire human race in brain power that costs...1,000.00 dollars!

That started me thinking, do we really understand the path we're going down? Will having those sophisticated computers make human beings obsolete? Do we control technology or does technology control us? And, perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to be a human being in this age of insane technology?

A friend of mine commented that we're living in an age dominated by technicians and if you think about it he's right. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and several Information Technology companies are dominating the US, and soon, the World economies. The point he raised is that there doesn't seem to be any philosophy or moral context for these technicians to follow. Just because we can do something, does that mean we should do that thing? Think about some of the issues that this century is going bring to light; cloning, genetic enhancement, Artificial Intelligence. All these things and other things we can't even conceive of will become possible in this century. How do we decide if these things should be pursued or not.

Well, those are the issues I'd like to debate and discuss in this blog. And I'm really counting on you all to participate in this dialogue and to bring others into the discussion. To hopefully develop and discuss a philosophy that can help us to make those decisions. Each week, I'll present a new topic to guide us through these decisions.

Secondly, I'd like to take this blog to celebrate some of the positive things that human beings are capable of; we often hear of all the negative things out there but it's rare to hear about all the good that happens, which as you will see far outweighs the bad. If you hear or see a story that shows the positive side of humanity, please share it.

Finally, a third theme that will be running through this blog is the idea of technology and how we as humans can positively interact with technology vs. being dominated by it. And let me say up front that I'm not against technology, as I write this blog from my awesome MacBook Pro. I'm just interested to see if technology has really made our lives better. That is, once we figure out what living a good life means.

So, this week's philosophical topic is: What does it mean to be a human being?

Philosophers and theologians have been debating this question for milennia. Aristotle used something called "The Function Argument," to describe what he thought constitued a human being. He posited that things are defined by what they distinctly do, for example, the Eye is defined as something that sees. Using this logic, Aristotle went on to say that the distinguishing factor for the human race is something that is rational or thinks. So, for Aristotle, what it meant to be a human being was to be a rational being. And I can certainly buy that, but it seems somewhat deficient. Isn't there more to being a human than just something that thinks? Don't we also feel emotions, have aspirations, build systems to support those aspirations, and a myriad of other things?

So, that's the question for this week: What does it mean to you to be a member of the human race?

On the positive note: this past Tuesday was National Sportmanship Day, I was watching Sportscenter and ran across this nice video clip demonstrating good sportsmanship. Check out the ESPN on NSD link in the bottom right hand corner.

http://www.internationalsport.com/nsd/index.cfm#

Have a great week and I look forward to hearing from you.