I think the only philosophy that makes any sense is to treat individuals as individuals. Once a movement starts demanding party members to tow the line you get lemmings. While some good ideas like equality, end to slavery, sexism, homophobia, all need a collective effort, ultimately in all those cases you still have a collection of individuals.

In all cases there is always the potential for a movement, political, religious, or social, to gain a monopoly of power. We see this time after time in human history. An existing power abuses the rest of that society, they get tired of it, start a movement, overthrow the abusers only to gain a monopoly themselves.

Which is why a label is not a good definition for an individual. It can only describe one aspect of an individual. I am an atheist, but that does not mean I speak for all atheists on all issues all the time.

Labels will always exist, the only thing our species can practically do to reduce the conflict and find overlap is to make the human condition the priority and not the label.

Of course it's always the same scenario. Just the ruler changes but the people are always dominated. The true is that we cannot follow those movements that you have written about because it's against using your own rational processes and denying your own criteria. In this way, humanism could be used to control us as well as the rest of politic ideas.

I think you're right but my point is that the human condition always seems to tend to do bad things rather than good ones. We can focus on the human nature instead of the "humanism" as a label as you wrote but if there's no good god and there's only evil people it seems that those that would like to do things better have a big challenge.

Considering that according to Stephen Pinker violence has considerably declined from Biblical times to the present, when assessed per capita, I think we are actually doing pretty well, especially in the more humanistically oriented societies.

So sure, humanism has a far better track record than superstitious belief systems. We cannot afford to slip back into the horrors of God-driven societies.

If you aren't happy with a philosophy, choose another one. Or make up your own.

Humanity has the power in our grasp to solve our problems. The biggest obstacle at present is the resistence to using science and scientific methods. People take religious and political views based on fear, anger and jelousy. We're all afraid of getting the "selfish" or 'immoral' label so we have to continually put on the act of not being self interested. Self interest does not mean cooperation is not possible.

Of course. It's a big challenge too if we consider that you must follow your own philosophy no matter your detractors. No matter if you die alone with it.

I recommend stoicism...

I haven't read the thread yet but I want to comment.  This is an issue that I've pondered for many hours over the years.  I don't like that once you affix a set of principles as to how you should live it inevitably ends up that the person can be seen as a hypocrite.  I have met many a humanist who were jerks to me, or jerks to someone else.  I have seen humanists embrace dishonesty to promote their agenda.  I just always seem to spot some sort of hypocrisy in someone who uses the word humanist.  Even the head of the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy Greg Epstein turned out to be quite slimy.  He acted completely for self and trashed most of the atheist movement to try and reach the top.  

I suppose if some people need to tell themselves to be good people in order to be good people then they can use the label.  I just don't get it or need it. 

ok... now on to read the thread....

I haven't had the chance to meet a militant humanist yet. I wrote the word "humanism" thinking about a commitment to help other people and to change the bad things in our world based on the idea that no god or gods will do it so. It's a pity to read that there are a lot of humanists-atheists out there taking advantage of these ideas to reach the top for themselves. Nevertheless this always happens everywhere.

I think in "humanism" according to the works of Abraham Maslow. He considered that we the human beings have a great positive potential to improve ourselves as well as to make a better world. But apparently Maslow's theories and the reality are divorced. So I thought in two paths: to be a commited humanist -and not a hypocrite- or just to think about myself and ignore that the rest is suffering.

We evolved a reward process so we feel good when we behave in socially beneficial ways. Just as we evolved reward processes for food, sex, sleep, etc... We're 100% about pleasure and avoiding pain. Science tells us that our reward centers are activated when we believe we are acting in altruistic way(unless one is a sociopath). So the question is given this, how is one behavior selfish and other altruistic. Isn't it all just too feel good. Shouldn't it just be cooperation vs. non-cooperation, not unselfish vs. selfish?

OK. But if we apply science to solving our common problems, then I think the starting point must be that behaviors are ego-centric and hedonistic, we have no free will for anything else. Then decide how we can cooperate. Charity, unselfishness and altruism are not solving our deeply rooted problems like poverty and war. In fact, charity often makes problems worse by creating all kinds of moral hazards and often being a scam. The only answer to reducing human misery and increasing pleasure is the application of objective science and technology.

What humans always do is believe what we want to believe. So we believe we are helping when we're harming. A theist can believe he helps people just by praying for them. A socialist believes he helps the poor just by supporting higher taxes on the rich. So called humanists delude themselves that they care just by adopting their philosophy. But their is no science or reason in all of these. It's just the drug of making yourself feel you are good and moral(aka oxytocin).

Science can now measure levels of pain and pleasure. It is possible to apply science to solve human our problems. So shouldn't a humanistic philosophy be an adherence to logic, reason and science rather than political dogma or just the warm feelings of so-called unselfishness?

Make your own rules and you never lose.

WOW! LOL. ETC.

Thats the Ten Commandments you're referring to pal.

Cain kills Abel. Murder rate per capita? Gimme a break.

WTF has a the Cain/Abel thing got to do with reality? Do you actually consider that a real story??? You meant it as a joke, right?

And we are including rape, torture and assault and other non-fatal abuse, and slavery, none of which are covered by that half-baked set of rules.

"Covetting" your neighbours' possessions is not a crime, nor are thought crimes like imagining sex with a woman you are not married to. They are harming anyone so not relevant to my comment.

And not demanding worship of any God seems to be a positive for a society.

And women are no longer considered part of a man's property.

Theft and 'bearing false witness' are the only other items we still pretty much agree with, but they are not inherently violent, and not wrong in all circumstances.

So apart from murder, the only reference to personal violence in the TC, they are irrelevant to what Pinker is talking about.

The further we get away from that crap, the better things are.

The reason we have empathy and altruism is because we find them pleasant. We find approval of others pleasant and disapproval unpleasant. The exception is sociopaths. Science can now see that they aren't getting any pleasure out of empathy or altruism as non-sociopaths do.

But if we have no free will, we can not focus on anything but pleasure and pain. There are many different sources of pleasure, and we follow complex strategies. It sounds like you've adopted this "you cannot live with perfection" as a strategy to avoid pain.

If you pursue intellectual or altruistic causes, you're still pursuing your own pleasure, right? If you willingly endure suffering it's just for long term net gain, right?

I think science is on the verge of being able to hack into our pleasure and pain centers and it would be possible to experience nothing but ecstasy. May not be good for survival, but with technology anything is possible.

So your strategy is to minimize suffering and help others when you can. Sounds pretty egocentric and hedonistic to me.

I think science has shown we can only be ego-centric hedonists without free will. So life is no longer a question of philosophy but of game strategy to increase one's pleasure.

Philosopy exists for the same reason religion does: because shit happens. You've seen the shit list:

http://www.bytebrothers.org/shitlist.htm

I'm not really sure what is the proper definition of humanism. A lot the people that call themselves humanist adopt these wacky far left political ideas about let's punish economic success and make a welfare state with tons of free stuff for doing nothing, then all our problems will go away. Their non-scientific approach to things just causes massive human suffering.

I'm for using science and reason to create societies that maximize pleasure and eliminate suffering. I think you should 'pay attention' more to neuroscience, game theory, behavioral studies. Philosophy is mostly dead, just embrace being an ego-centric hedonist without any real morals. Everything else is just a big act of self-delusion.

What do you think about this as a 'personal philosophy':

http://www.hedweb.com/

 Ok. So all of our cooperative behaviors are conditioned by hedonism because we look only for pleasure and avoid pain. This is inevitable since free will doesn't exist. We're on the same page on these points. 

To help others to get a self-satisfaction, even is selfish, isn't so bad like take advantage of others. A practic example is when you cheat your girlfriend or when you have a relationship just thingking about pleasure for yourself without thinking about the other person's feelings. 

I personally think that even though science can help us to overcome suffering it's necessary to have a philosophy, a persona one. You can learn from the famous philosopher's but you can construct the yours. 

I checked a bit the link you posted and yes, you can look for your self-satisfaction. But I got a question what about if I would really like to get pleasure by killing people? Can't nobody stop me since I must look for my own satisfaction? And what about those people who look for pleasure through pain? Or that's just another option?