The Search for Extraterrestrial
Humanism
1 A basis for speculating on the belief system of an extraterrestrial civilization can be found in Humanistic Texts, which includes writings by religious and secular humanists of different belief systems. Belief systems on Earth give rise to particular types of humanism, with different and conflicting world views. At one extreme is atheistic humanism, at the other is religious humanism. And within these there are various subgroups. As achieving a harmonious understanding among different cultures is so important to achieving the long life necessary for a Galactic civilization, it is worth seeking broad grounds for agreement among all of these groups. This might be reached by means of the process adopted in Humanistic Texts of borrowing from philosophies, religions, and beliefs those ideas that most people can agree on, leaving untouched ideas that are causes for dissension. We might call this process a search for a universal humanism that defines the minimum moral requirements for a philosophy, religion, or belief.
2 During the past century, the possibility of universal humanism has arisen from an increased willingness among competing philosophies, religions, and beliefs to discuss common human values on which they might reach agreement. This has been prompted to a large degree by the unprecedented violence of the Twentieth Century and its assault on civilization. In turn, identification of common values—preserving human equality, dignity, rights and freedoms, for example—defines the nature of universal humanism.
Emergence of Humanism
3 As different cultures have emerged in the world, they have each brought forward a set of humanistic values. The evolution of universality in these values occurs when different cultures interact. In western Europe, humanism came to the fore in the Renaissance with the emergence of the Italian humanists in the Fifteenth Century. This group of scholars (Petrarch, Bruni, Manetti, Valla, for example) rediscovered the literature, philosophy and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome. By translating neglected early works they accelerated the recognition of a realm of secular knowledge from other cultures able to make a contribution to human welfare, distinct from that made by religious knowledge. The Italian humanists were devoted members of the Christian church, as were their successors, the religious humanists of Northern Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Erasmus, More, Vives, for example).
4 The humanistic knowledge being discovered by these renaissance scholars came from different cultural environments, namely those of ancient Greece and Rome (Democritus, Aeschylus, Epicurus, Epictetus). As ancient Greek thought was being written down, similar humanistic knowledge was appearing in China (Confucius, Mencius, Mo Tzu) and India (Buddha, Carvaka, Vardhamana) under yet other cultural systems. It is clear that humanistic thought has co-existed with different cultures, philosophies, and religious systems over many centuries.
5 Early in this 2500-year period (and probably before), alternatives to religious thought emerged that rejected the supernatural but accepted humanistic ideas (Confucius, the Buddha, Mo Tzu, Carvaka, for example). That is, humanistic values are found in both religious and non-religious doctrines. In fact, a person can be a humanist within any religious or non-religious doctrine. Mohandas Gandhi was a Hindu humanist and Martin Luther King was a Christian humanist. And there are Muslim and Jewish humanists, and humanists of various agnostic and atheistic philosophies. Universal humanism is ecumenical, in the sense of being able to exist within many different world views. On the other hand, members of any given philosophy, religion, or belief are not necessarily humanists. The Hindu who murdered Mohandas Gandhi and the Christian who murdered Martin Luther King were not humanists, nor were any of the adherents of various belief systems who murdered and tortured their fellow human beings in the course of the Twentieth Century.
Defining Universal Humanism
6 This brings us back to the earlier point, that universal humanism should encapsulate an area of common agreement between different philosophies, religions, and beliefs, and that it leaves out the areas of dissension between these different systems of thought. This feature puts it in the middle ground between the religious extreme that sees an individual as governed solely by supernatural forces and the scientific extreme that sees an individual as governed solely by material forces. Universal humanism should also be free from those abstract assumptions that characterize individual philosophies, religions and beliefs, such as the prior existence of ideas (or the reverse), the existence of a true and unchanging reality (or the reverse), the innate goodness of human beings (or the reverse), the illusion of space and time (or the reverse), a created finite universe (or the reverse), and so on (or the reverse). Consequently it might be said to have no rational procedure for reaching specific conclusions, because it has no set of general axioms that form the starting point from which to deduce various consequences. Except, perhaps, one humanistic axiom: that it is better to come to a peaceful agreement about matters of behavior than to settle such disputes by violence. Much better.
7 Thus, the only way a search for universal humanism can proceed is for men and women to sit down together, agree to set aside their differences, and attempt to hammer out some common rules of conduct that will enable them to live with one another as human beings. This is what happened in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and produced what can be considered a program for universal humanism, in the form of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Developed under the auspices of the United Nations, this declaration was subsequently adopted by the vast majority of world’s nations, and has general acceptance as a set of aspirations. The declaration does not provide, however, a complete statement of universal humanism, because it does not explicitly set forth guidelines of how to act in a multicultural world. These can be derived from it, however, once one accepts the procedure and assumptions used to develop the statement of rights.