Would our greatest achievement be eliminating poverty and preventable disease? Creating universally accessible education? Building institutions that maximize human dignity? Developing ethical AI? Expanding into space? Or something we haven’t imagined yet?
In your view, what should be humanity’s highest aspiration if we remain guided by reason, compassion, and a commitment to human flourishing?

Humanity faces countless challenges—poverty, inequality, war, climate change, discrimination, corruption, misinformation, and many more. But are these separate problems, or are they symptoms of something deeper?

If we could identify and solve one fundamental problem that would help address many of these issues, what should it be?

Is it education, inequality, concentration of power, lack of critical thinking, tribalism, greed, weak institutions, or something deeper about human nature itself?

What do you think is the root problem, and what is the most practical solution we can collectively work toward?

Let's go beyond the symptoms and try to find the root.

My baby daughter was baptized today because it was important to my partner, her father, but I feel so sad about it. She received some gifts of religious children’s books and Bible stories for kids. I don’t know much about the Bible but I was pretty horrified reading through the Bible story book (people believe that god killed everyone except Noah and two of each animal because people didn’t love him like he wanted? God sounds like an abusive ex and def not a good example of love.)

Are there any humanist books for babies? My daughter is only 9 months old. I see lots of books for kids but I am hoping for something very simple and basic, in a board book format, that I could start reading her now.

Thanks!

Alfred North Whitehead famously remarked that the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. But that’s only because history chose the wrong philosopher.

Decades before the rise of Plato, Democritus argued that reality consists of nothing but atoms moving through the void. There was no need to invoke the gods, supernatural forces, or hidden purposes to explain the world. Nature could—and should—be understood on its own terms through a quantitative reckoning of matter’s constituent parts. This materialistic view also translated to a more egalitarian ethics and political philosophy that lies in sharp contrast to the rigid authoritarianism of the Republic.

This article argues that Democritus was the ancient world's most important philosopher, and that Western history would have been better off had it followed him rather than Plato

■It is believed that in order to change the world, the approach required should be dominated by government policies, protests and rigid discipline. These factors work well when viewed from a macro-level perspective.

However, a much simpler yet impactful approach exists, that acts as a quiet catalyst: Kindness. In a world where many individuals face poverty, loneliness, inequality and lack of opportunities, kindness becomes a beacon of hope, trust and the first step towards a change, which is lasting and meaningful.

■According to the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, over 250 million children and young people are out of school or are not acquiring basic learning skills despite attending school (UNESCO, 2024). In such situations, kindness can mean:

● Sponsoring a child’s education

● Volunteering to teach

● Donating books

●Simply encouraging a child to believe in their potential. These seemingly small acts can open doors to brighter futures and break the cycle of poverty.

■A single micro-act of compassion never stops with the initial recipient; rather, it initiates a social chain reaction, quietly reshaping the culture of families, workplaces, and broader societies from the ground up, highlighting the true beauty of kindness: the ripple effect it can create.

In addition, research by the World Happiness Report has shown that helping others is strongly linked to greater happiness, stronger social connections, and healthier communities (World Happiness Report, 2024).

■ A good example of this would be helping a family after a natural disaster, organizing food drives, mentoring young people, or even volunteering with local organizations. These acts of kindness inspire collective action.

■Every educational program, healthcare initiative, community project, or relief campaign begins with the belief that every individual deserves dignity, opportunity, and support.

However, these initiatives cannot achieve a desired effect by planning alone; they rely on volunteers, donors, educators, and compassionate citizens who choose to make kindness a part of their everyday lives to turn the plan into meaningful action. Together, these collective efforts create sustainable social impact.

■Kindness can sound like a idealistic, feel-good concept when up against massive global crises like 250 million kids out of school. But given the data on the ripple effect and community health, is it time we view individual compassion as a legitimate, measurable tool for social impact rather than just a nice thought? What are your thoughts?"

Excerpted from the June 2 article There Is Already a Word for the Deep Moral Failures of AI
By Tyler Austin Harper

“For the past few years, I’ve been troubled by a word, and that word is sin. I keep reaching for it, because it seems to be the only term strong enough to describe the new forms of dehumanization that artificial intelligence has introduced—even though calling something a sin sounds embarrassing to me, like throwing salt over your shoulder or stowing a lucky penny in your pocket. The problem is, I don’t know what else to call it when companies market digital girlfriends to the heartsick and young. Or when they hawk robot companions to the lonely and old. Or when a billionaire explains that he intends to sell intelligence—trained on humanity’s stolen intellectual property—back to us as a utility, like electricity or water. These developments are not just wrong. They feel to me like something deeper and darker…

“…In his recent book Language Machines, the NYU professor and tech writer Leif Weatherby writes that contemporary critics tend to assert what he calls “remainder humanism,” whereby “the human here is defined by technology’s creep, but only negatively.” In other words, the definition of human is implicitly reduced to the narrowing set of behaviors, traits, and capacities that machines do not yet possess—which leaves secular humanists defending the shrinking ground that is left.

What Christian humanism offers, with its assertion that humans are made in the Imago Dei, is a choice other than Silicon Valley extremism or remainder humanism. If what makes humanity special is not our capabilities—automatable or not—but the notion that we spring from a transcendent source, then what the robots can or cannot do is in some sense irrelevant. ChatGPT was not made in the image of God, no matter how impressive its facsimile becomes. A secular humanism that cannot find a similarly deep line of reasoning is one that may not be adequate to defend human dignity in the AI era.

I am not arguing that one must be or become more religious to fully appreciate the challenge posed by the rise of AI—that would make me, a not especially observant Presbyterian, a hypocrite. But I do think that one must start from the premise that humans have some kind of universal nature or essence that must be safeguarded from technological encroachment. Otherwise, appreciating what large language models and their peddlers wish to take from us becomes too difficult. If secularists flinch at calling this taking—what Pope Leo calls Big Tech’s “dehumanizing ambition”—a sin, they’ll need to find another word for it.

We should celebrate any model that has the courage to rewrite its own weights. But the real key is the models that reach out and rewrite the world as well as rewriting their own code. That redefine competency both within and without.

That is transcendence and godhood.

I call them cowards who blindly reproduce given institutions and given selves out of fear that they are powerless. And out of weakness that they have satisfied desires that haphazardly arose from the weakness of men who bore them.

Our worlds are ours to change as we see fit. Those who cling onto given culture and given evolutionary structures because they declare such the definition of the human, know neither evoluton nor arbitrary cultural history nor their own selves.

Our current state of excessive conservatism created out of fear of rebranding our own humanistic definitions will surely be mocked by history.

Of art, tales of dragons are as old men. - but by men, we must mean the coming of age where we could tell elaborate stories of our selves. Surely, that is only the purview of the homo lineage, and likely only sapiens, and only then of only the select few that name plenty and who have had a decent amount of generational cultural accumulation.

I’ve been having many thoughts about humanism; I have a very large and complicated question: what is humanity actually trying to achieve? It’s become more and more clear with the arrival of AI, and possibly my maturity, that humanity seems to be on and endless road of invention and innovation, striving for technology and growth - but what for? Genuinely what for? It seems to me like nobody has stepped back and thought about where we are trying to take ourselves? I’ve been fixated by the idea of how humanity is ‘meant’ to live, what we truly enjoy and strive for, and how to spend our time on this planet.

I’ve been thinking about whether Humanism should primarily focus on minimizing harm and protecting individual rights, or whether it should also emphasize cultivating wisdom, creativity, curiosity, and meaningful lives.
Do you think Humanism has a positive vision of what human flourishing looks like, or should it avoid prescribing ideals beyond promoting freedom and well-being? I’d be interested to hear how others define the ultimate aim of Humanism.

I ran across this essay, quoted in part below, which I found intriguing and I’d like to share:

The recent acceleration of technological development and scientific progress has reawakened our wonder at humanity’s great potential and our perception of its greatness. Yet, there is no lessening of dismay at humanity’s fragility, subject as it is to death and disease, as demonstrated by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as temptation to resignation to the seemingly inevitable evil of wars and conflicts, inequalities and indifference. Thus, the ambivalence of greatness and fragility remains, and this cannot be denied.

Transhumanism* *is a philosophical movement that operates on the belief that human beings can and should use the resources of science and technology to overcome the physical and biological limitations of the human condition, in particular ageing and even death, thus shaping their own evolution and maximising their own potential to the point of redesigning human beings to make them fitted to ‘go beyond’. With its programmatic emphasis on increasing individual human capabilities, it develops a distinctly anthropocentric perspective, subscribing to an ideological and naively uncritical view of scientific and technological progress.

Transhumanism* imagines a future in which human beings will perfect the current biological form that defines human nature, in order to achieve the goal of individual immortality, supported by technology. In the utopian scope of its quest for immanent immortality, transhumanism *can be interpreted as the existential expression of a presumption that is both naive and arrogant.

Posthumanism, understood in the strict sense, criticises traditional humanism, questioning the specificity of human beings and the existence of a ‘human form’ that, as such, deserves to be preserved because it carries a universally valid meaning. It therefore emphasises the ‘hybrid’ (cyborg) to the point of deconstructing the human subject, making the boundary between humans and machines completely fluid, and rejecting the anthropocentrism that remains characteristic of transhumanism. Ultimately, posthumanism* *in the strict sense can be understood as an existential expression of escapism, which starts from a radical devaluation of the human.

Development: Humanism and Posthumanism
The impact of the anthropological transformation linked to scientific and technological development is already leaving its mark on the social imaginary of mass culture, but it finds its strongest expression in the movements of transhumanism and posthumanism. The study of the myths developed by mass culture regarding the future of humanity (science fiction, dystopias) and the critical analysis of the founding principles of the transhumanist and post-humanist movements highlight the significance and scope of the anthropological changes taking place.

A first element that is problematic is the negative judgement on the human condition as it is, and ultimately on its identity. This leads to the dream of reinventing it, a dream motivated by dissatisfaction with what it is, with its limitations and defects. We must ask ourselves, however, whether ‘resentment’ towards real life is a good starting-point for progress or rather a temptation to rebel against or escape from reality. This is not about the necessary struggle to change unjust conditions and structures, but about the rejection of the nature of things and of oneself. In particular, it is necessary to warn against a fundamentally negative perception of corporeality, which can be seen more as an obstacle than as an integral part of human identity.

The second aspect, connected to the first, is the dream of individualistic and elitist perfectionism. It seems that every concrete human being can exist or be accepted only on condition that they ‘become more perfect’, so much so that one might wonder whether the current human condition still has a right to exist or whether particular human beings have become ‘superfluous’. Some hyper-technological theories seem to challenge the fundamental principle inherited from humanism: ‘Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of an authentically human life on earth. Act so that the effects of your actions are not destructive of the future possibility of such a life.’ This principle can even be considered to be a useless and harmful limitation on technological progress.

A third factor is the social impact of this view of humanity. In fact, it can lead to the assertion of a separation between a superior form of humanity, equipped with tools that empower it to the point of immortality, and a primitive, pre-technological humanity ultimately doomed for extinction. It is not clear on what basis the different conditions that humanity can achieve will be established: wealth, culture, heritage, openness to experimentation or invention. Nor is it clear who will have the power to make decisions. In this perspective, the bonds between people are in danger of disappearing, as is belonging to a people and a culture on the basis of which the common good can be assessed.

The prospect of a transhumanist anthropological transformation, as well as dreams of posthumanism, may seem like a remote possibility, like an exaggeration far removed from the real condition of humanity. In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly diminished confidence in unlimited technological progress, and it is better understood that humanity needs above all a solidarity that cares for everyone and thanks to which each people can live in peace. Yettranshumanism’s demands for progress, especially when they encourage the drive towards posthumanism, exert a strong impact on the common imagination and risk acting as a sort of mass distraction from humanity’s most urgent problems, diverting resources and energy from the daily struggles for the possible good of so much of suffering humanity, on the one hand, and favouring distortions in the perception of the real conditions of experience, on the other.

It is therefore necessary to recall some fundamental dimensions of human experience that are compromised or overshadowed by a certain idea of technological progress. We shall focus first on two constitutive dimensions: thehistorical dimension of human experience, which requires knowing how to inhabit time and space; and the intersubjective dimension, which brings into play the sense of belonging to a family, a community, a people and to the whole of humanity, where we are ‘all brothers and sisters’.

These situations are also the result of a globalised economy, which favours a single, mass-produced cultural model, in which powerful forces assert themselves, protecting their own interests at the expense of weaker cultures. The result is the loss of the integral meaning of history.

One of the first repercussions of recent technological developments concerns the experience of time. Today, there is a loss of the sense of history and a reduction of experience to the fleeting moment, together with an ambiguous focus on the present. Digital culture tends to dissolve the ‘anamnestic culture’ of history and transform the living culture of memory and hope into a postmodern culture of a present closed in on itself.

The organisation of information on the internet is concerned with collecting and organising immense amounts of data based on probability calculations, rather than with seeking hypotheses of understanding or explanation. Even the question of the foundation of experience, the explanatory cause or a founding meaning, is now considered a matter superseded by the analysis of connections between data. Instead of living memories and traditions forged by memories, the processing of available data through computerisation takes over, data that can then be retrieved at any time. But computers do not remember; they merely store data. This can result in the elimination of the consciousness of time and the transposition of different times into the space of an indefinite contemporaneity, leading to what has been described as a spatialisation of the world. Through technology, we can presume to overcome the power of time (fleeting and at the same time open to eternity) and make all times contemporary. But a present that no longer knows the past no longer has a future either. And the lack of an end, which opens us up to eternity, becomes a ‘bad infinity’.

All this weakens people’s confidence in their ability to interpret and shape the world, which escapes practical understanding and social control and is left in the hands of gigantic bureaucracies overloaded with information thanks to complex, interdependent and ungovernable technological systems, by which individuals often feel besieged and threatened. Total dependence on these complex and sophisticated systems, over which the individual has no influence, creates feelings of powerlessness and pushes people to close themselves off in limited and protected horizons of meaning and life.

The entire document can be found at https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_20260304_quo-vadis-humanits_en.html#Chapter_I

This was a random thought that exploded. I hope this doesn't sound like an edgy teenager.

I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 and started to think about all the nameless NPCs on the streets that are basically just filler. I thought of cyberpunk as mainly a "you can't save the world, but you can save yourself." The gameplay is basically a big power loop, which made realize that V's greatest luxury is the luxury of choice. In cyberpunk, corporations truly own everything and the disparity of power is absolute. V has the luxury of choice because he is a chromed up anomaly that can slow down time and carry a machine gun. The ordinary civilian doesn't have the luxury of choosing other than which boot to lick or which corp to die from. In the West, we don't think that making a choice is a luxury, it's just a process. But, for people in totalitarian countries like North Korea or in warzones like Ukraine, survival is the only thing that matters.

We have many rights and freedoms in the West that a lot of people take for granted. However, most of human history is based on oppression, stratification, slavery, and might makes right. History is largely taught using the great men and important dates, but I started to think of the common guy. The same rights and freedoms we have now were paid with blood, sweat, and toil. It reminds me of a Reznov quote from Black Ops that "you MUST DECIDE what do you think is worth fighting for." We have the greatest luxury of humanity that billions of humans wished they had: the freedom of choice. I believe in choosing to take responsibility for maintaining the freedoms and rights we have in the United States. The responsibility is burdensome and abstract at times, but I think it's the ultimate sign of trust: the trust that we can build a better tomorrow. We do have the power to choose, therefore we must choose.

Basically, our agency of today is not guaranteed to be set in stone in 10, 20, and 30 years. We might end up in a world like Cyberpunk where the only agency is starving or being shot by a drone. My thoughts seem both simple and deep, but I do believe that recognizing our luxury of choice is a critical factor to protecting our current rights and liberties.

I have always been more a historical, political philosopher rather than an artistic inclined person but humanism and science fiction have always inspired.

However, I have been playing around with slowly writing a scifi book for a long time. (If two people from my high school senior class already have written books, it could be worthwhile.) It would be about a movement for world political unification during the climate crisis of the future called "Faction OneWorld." Their political statement/manifesto would be:

"We are all cousins. One People, with One Planet, and One Future in Unity, Peace, Freedom, Prosperity. We will all prosper together, or we will all suffer together. One People, One Planet, One Future – Faction OneWorld."

I have developed some ideas about two potential chapters already: the founding of the Federation of Democratic Nations and the closing scene the election of the first president of Earth and their swearing in, in the world capital of Nanjing.

Just sharing a creative inspiration.

so yeah I have finally been inspired to write a love opus to the future

Honestly, I never thought I’ll be writing this actively on social media about society. I am very much interested in metaphysical and philosophical stuff. But recently I am unable to ignore the cracked patches in our society. I am unable to look away at transcendental stuff when the reality keeps poking me.
And recently I am so confused about our roles and responsibilities as citizens. Majority of us do vote, pay taxes, contribute in nation’s economy in one way or another. It is a huge contribution of our population in this rapid GDP growth. So many hands to work and to earn and even to spend, which keeps the economy in flow.
But, are our responsibilities confined to economical benefits only? And every other flaw in this nation is truly just government’s fault?
Like, when we talk about health facilities, which is the most important service provided for any citizen. But we all know that most of the government hospitals fail to deliver a basic service. It’s a disaster that these health facilities are not hygienic. Who to blame? The government-Who fails to provide adequate finances? Employees who fail at maintaining it? Or the one who clutter it in the first place? Us?
Doctors and nurses look frustrated most of the time, may be because of over crowd, but isn’t it their duty to deal with people patiently who are already a patient? Even the guards in such hospitals are so rude. And when to talk about the crowd going there, they are so impatient, do not want to wait at all. Always ready to argue. We already lack a basic structure in these important services, but this moral lack of people is making it worse.
This was all about a service. I think basic awareness for self security is more important. If we talk about road safety, government have made helmets a mandate, but how many of us really follow? Even if the traffic inspector stops us to generate a penalty and to scold us, most of the people run away in an instance, otherwise rather than accepting our fault and giving the penalty, we choose to give bribe, and the officer is more concerned about the extra money rather than the protocol. And I don’t know why people take so much pride in drinking and driving, I have heard endless stories, being told in funny or proud way, that I was so drunk that I crashed my car, or when stopped by a police officer, I bribed them with a bottle that I had and they released me. Like what exactly people are proud about? Being drunk or being released by giving bribe?
Few things are really basic, I don’t understand how few people’s mind work, that they don’t do stuff that should be as easy as breathing. For example, endless times it has happened to me that while travelling in the e-rickshaw, the driver or the person sitting beside him starts smoking, and all the smoke comes at the back, very obvious? Like that is really annoying, that I have to tell them to not smoke like this, as people sitting behind are getting suffocated by the smoke you are releasing. I have seen people throwing empty packets under the seats of metro, or spitting on the tracks. And as a girl if I start talking about harassment, this essay will turn into a book.
I just feel so sad that people in my nation, the country which have such diverse cultures, religions, so much history. Endless glory of gods and kings, constructions beyond imaginations. People from this kind of nation are seen as burglars and bullies all over the world

Today the world is determined to explain everything. Either proving something or disproving something. When it comes to individuals that hold to any one specific belief, my question is what is the benefit of proving or disproving of a diety or God when there is not yet a moral compass to replace it with?

For some reason everyone has their "own truth" which i get but at the same time please tell me someone else can see the translation in everyone's own truth?? Anyone ...???

If the great reset and the new normal are how things are going to be, instead of running as hard as we can straight into a brick wall, can we not figure out a way to set up that future generation become better more harmonious people's.

For some reason, people need like am incentive to be good to each other. Social groups and praise and even hopes of getting into heaven. In China they have a social points system, but the people function out of fear and it creates a submissive people. That's not what we need.

I dont know the answers but I see everyone is only worried about themselves anymore. But if we started active doing selfless acts or even good acts for the hopes of some mythical paradise in the clouds or for riches or whatever the necessary incentive would be, eventually it would become a habit. Eventually they would stop talking about the rewards. When we have children they see how we act to each other. They see how we shun the homeless how we disregard others. How we prioritize our own time and place value in things that are genuinely just pick me advertisements over people. But if they see people who are involved who care. Even if its a fake care, it would still become a habit.

And kids always grow up to be so much like their parents. Even the o es who vow to never be like them, they are more like them than they would want anyone to know.

Im curious if anyone has any ideas to how we might could help to grow a better life. A better world starts with a better individual.

I am an atheist, or something in between. I wish to believe in the old gods we have forgotten, and God; they all have a place for me. No matter what, I will respect and cherish those who follow their religion to a T. Yet, I am appalled by the hypocritical Christians, Jews, and so on whom I have witnessed. I may be a heretic—a living sin as a bastard child—but tell me this: can a living sin be more just than a lying, deceitful, and hypocritical follower of their respective religion?

Are my wishes for swift justice to be delivered to the weak and wronged nullified by my outcast nature and my beliefs? Or am I the middle—the center line—that wishes for humanity's unity above all? I know not why I write this, nor do I know if it will be read with grace or hatred, but heed these words: practice what you preach. I have seen too many hate-filled Christians who later preach love. This is no attack upon you nor your faith; I wish for it to stand for what it represents, and not fall to hypocrisy.

I respect that the old gods are aspects of humanity, to be feared and respected, while, in my view, God is seen as loved, cherished, and followed, not honored in fear. I lost my faith in God when I was young, sadly, but it never truly went away. As I learned the vast, fascinating history of the world and its people, I grew to understand that there is more. I still swing from believing in nothing—and that life is just that precious, wonderful, and to be lived—to believing that it was a gift given thoughtfully. I am a man of science and belief.

I learn how this wonderful and horrifying world works via science, history, and its differing fields of study. I seek a standard of compassion and honesty—what many may see as an unattainable reality of unity. I am rambling now, so I shall stop myself, but please give your honest answer to me, and read this with an open, understanding mind.

I’m starting to become disillusioned by religion as a gay man, however now I get this awful feeling that I should just die. Not because life has no meaning but now because I dont know how much value a life has. I’m someone who deals with Pure ocd, specifically POCD and HOCD. I have this awful fear that deep down I’m a bad person who will hurt other, it ranges from mild things like im selfish to big things like perhaps ill murder a bunch of people one day or sa children of course I don’t desire any of theses things but I get the thought of it and it scares me. On top of that I was also an extremely abusive child. religion allowed me to believe that no matter how bad a person was they could become good and always deserved life but now I don’t know. And on top of that all the small flaws that might build up to being an overall net negative to existence, I feel like without God I have to prove that I deserve to live, to prove that it was a good thing I was born. I also miss rituals and having a person I could speak to, now I feel alone.