I have been asked to describe what I am trying to accomplish. To do a meaningful job of that, I will have to go into some detail.
What I am trying to accomplish:
I am trying to pay forward, in gratitude for all that my species has done for me. What follows is how I am attempting to do that.
I am trying to share a set of observations and conclusions, and to share a set of proposals based upon those observations and conclusions. These observations have been by virtue of my own personal history, two main components of that history being my having been a psychiatrist for about five decades and my having had an interest in philosophy/religion since my teens.
The conclusions I am trying to share have to do with my belief that our species is just beginning to undergo a third exponential change, these exponential changes being ones making our species drastically different from all other species and from the way it was before the change had significantly begun. (The first exponential change was the development of an essentially infinite ability to model our beliefs with symbols and the rules of syntax, giving us language; the second exponential change has been the development of the rules of logic and the rules of evidence, ultimately giving us, through highly accurate models of “reality,” science and technology.) I note that because of the conclusions I have come to regarding the third exponential change, including their more specific elaborations, I have acquired rather markedly different beliefs than most people have about some rather basic issues that are of central importance to the fate of our species.
I am trying to share a conclusion that the third exponential change is a change in our ethics (our beliefs as to what we should and should not do, and how those beliefs are legitimated). This change is one from “authoritarian ethics” (my term for an ethical belief system that is ultimately legitimated by showing consistency with the “authoritarian-ethical ultimate ethical principle,” i.e., that “we should do whatever X wants us to do, X being whoever or whatever is most powerful, e.g., parent, leader, group, culture, deity”) to “rational-ethics” (my term for an ethical belief system that is ultimately legitimated by showing consistency with the “rational-ethical ultimate ethical principle,” i.e., that “we should do whatever will promote not only the survival of our species but also as much joy, contentment, and appreciation as possible and as little pain, suffering, disability, and early death as possible, for everyone, now and in the future.”). Because our primary adult way of studying how to be good people (i.e., ethics) has always been our religions (which have always also had other functions, of course), the third exponential change will be a change in Religion, my term for that emerging process within Religion being “Humanianity.”
I am trying to share more specific conclusions regarding some ways in which our species will be living far differently than the way we have always lived so far, with examples in the areas of anger-prevention, child rearing, and belief management, along with some more general and uncertain ideas about government and religion. My metaphoric term for our species at that time is “Homo rationalis,” though the third exponential change is purely a psychosocial change, not a genetic one. This label is used to emphasize the drastic difference between human behavior at that time in the future and human behavior as it has always been so far.
And I am trying to provide a tool that our species can use to make this third exponential change occur a little faster, the tool being the Humanian Belief Manual, a study guide which allows all of us to examine each other’s beliefs more clearly and to see how much agreement there is with regard to each of the beliefs, as our species works on the development of an agreed-upon basic ethical philosophy for our species, i.e., a set of high level ethical principles for all areas of living. (There is a Forum that goes along with the Belief Manual, so that people can actually have dialogue with each other about the differences in their beliefs, or any related issues.) In the Belief Manual, there is an emphasis upon clarity of the language used to model the beliefs, including the use of definitions associated with the proposed beliefs.
And with regard to all of the above, I am trying to reach out to and find people who would actually be interested in these ideas and would want to explore them in greater detail, recognizing that only very, very few people will have such interest currently, because of a pervasive pessimism/cynicism that almost everyone has with regard to things really getting substantially better than they have always been and still are to a great extent. This reaching out is my advocacy for the third exponential change, doing my part to promote it, as well as my effort at obtaining feedback from others with regard to the ideas, in order to identify any flaws in my thinking, so as to improve my advocacy as well as to evaluate the appropriateness of it.
So that is a summary of what I am trying to accomplish. All aspects of the above are explored in great detail at
HUMANIANITY HOME.
