What are your specialities?

[Eric the Green]

(09-26-2019, 06:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Humanism, and not populism, is the rightful objective. Humanism encompasses the whole of humanity (Alle Menschen werden Brüder), and populism can easily put the focus on one nation. To be sure, an oppressed nation has the right to seek independence. A populist ideology that serves only one nationality with a narrowed definition can easily become racist; I translate German volkisch as racist. Hitler was a populist and not a humanist, which makes all the difference in the world.

A group such as the KKK (which is now indistinguishable from Nazis, as there are now Klan groups that have adopted Nazi symbols and rhetoric -- or shared symbols and rhetoric) is clearly populist to the extent that it elevates white Christians. But there are white non-Christians (atheists, agnostics, and Jews, largely), non-white Christians, and non-white non-Christians, and plenty of people ambiguous about race religion if not both.

If by populism I mean elevating the common man against extant elites, then I am a populist. But the people that I seek to elevate include people who look much unlike me and who have very different religious traditions. To the extent that I have German origin, but in full rejection of Nazi ideology (if I am to have any decency at all I must reject Nazism on principle) I see Ashkenazi Jews as obvious brethren for shared aspects of culture to which I can easily relate*. Yiddish originated as German... and by slaughtering the Yiddish-speaking and German-speaking Jews the Nazis killed people whom they should have recognized as Germans.  

Humanism is obviously incompatible with fascism, always an inhuman or anti-human ideology. Socialism? By rejecting liberty the Communists abandoned a tenet of humanism. Ba'athism, ISIS, and al-Qaeda? Fascism in Islamic garb.

As a humanist I can see much wrong in America -- anti-intellectualism and structural inequality. We are beyond the age of grave scarcity in which the personal solution to economic need is to meet a scarcity; if anything, the big profits now made largely result from creating and exploiting scarcity through monopoly and cartels or from crony capitalism. Much of our new wealth seems to come from creative activity instead of making stuff. (OK, we still need expendable items such as food and fuel, but those are not so pricey as is rent).

I see what is wrong with America, and it is wrong not only for white males in their sixties. It is wrong for practically all of us. An economic order that treats workers as expendable tools is obsolete in a time without scarcity other than through monopolization and economic concentration and the bureaucratic elites (paid very well for treating others badly). This Crisis will solve our problems or intensify those that we now have. I know what a bad end could look like without military apocalypse: a new America with a quasi-aristocratic order but a Soviet-style nomenklatura that becomes an aristocracy in all but name that offers bare survival for others with vague promises of pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die for those who comply with the desires of the Master Class and a brutal demise with worldly damnation to Hell for any sign of dissent or failure to produce on behalf of the Master Class.

*OK, Jewish culture is brainy, and maybe that is more important to me. I am intellect and little else, which is what one should expect of someone with Asperger's syndrome.

I'm not quite with you there. Populism is not national. That is nationalism and maybe xenophobia, whereas populism solely means power to the people, anywhere and everywhere. It is indeed elevating the common man against extant elites. Xenophobic demagogues are not populists. Populism includes everyone, including the elites, because we are all part of the population. But it means that the rich and powerful should have limits on their control, which should be widely distributed. Organization is needed for society to work. But populism insists that the leaders be responsible to those they are leading, and that anyone can rise to be a leader if they have the needed skills to lead.

The mixup today in the use of the word populism, as I have explained, is the appeal of demagogues today (and there are many today in the Trump/Putin mold) to the basest emotions of the people, to make them scapegoat groups other than their own for their own problems. To call "populism" merely an appeal to the basest instincts of certain non-elite elements among the people, implies that these people do not have the capacity to support their own interests and those of society. I consider abuse of that term in that way as an insult to the people. Appealing to "the people" can, at least in theory, be made to "the better angels of their nature" and to their highest ideals, as well as to their base fears and prejudices.

Humanism is good as far as it goes, to the extent that it values humans and respects the rights and value of humans. It is limited, however, to the extent that these rights and values are not also extended to non-humans, or if humans are seen as the highest beings. No, there are higher beings, whether that be God, angels, ancestors, or the society and planet as a whole rather than just individuals. There are the beings in what we call Nature, the animals, plants and the mineral world, and these have rights too. So, I am not a humanist, because humans are not the end and measure of all things.

But to the extent that "humanism" impels us to seek justice, freedom, creativity and rights for all humans, regardless of race, color, religion or class, etc., , and liberation from limiting and oppressive religious, scientific, political, or economic authority, then I'm all for these expressions of "humanism."