Jay Forest's Blog

“The lifestance of Humanism — guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience — encourages us to live life well and fully” (Humanist Manifesto III).

“Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives” (IHEU Minimum Statement on Humanism -1996)

Humanism is like a religion, but it is not a religion, because it doesn’t believe in Gods, priests, or holy books. It believes in making this world the best place for humans to flourish in harmony with Nature.

So what is Humanism? You could call it a philosophy of life, a worldview, or a way of life. Paul Kurtz even suggested calling it a Eupraxsophy. But the simplest term is lifestance.

So what is a lifestance? Wiktionary defines it as, “The relation that one has with what he or she accepts as being of ultimate importance, the presuppositions and theory of this, and the commitments and practice of working it out in living.”

Wiktionary’s “Usage notes” becomes insightful here:

The term was intended to be a shared label encompassing both religions and alternatives to religion, without discrimination in favour of either. A life stance differs from a worldview or a belief system in that the term life stance emphasizes a focus on what is of ultimate importance. Life stance differs from eupraxsophy in that the latter typically implies a strictly non-theistic outlook, whereas a life stance can be theistic or non-theistic, supernaturalistic or naturalistic.

Humanism is, of course, is “non-theistic” and “naturalistic.” But it is helpful to have a neutral term for either type of system.

After much consideration, I have decided to adopt the label “lifestance” to my work on Humanism. I will still use the terms philosophy of life, worldview, and other synonyms for clarification’s sake.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. – Anais Nin

I am often amazed at my ability to buy into the illusion of permanence. Yesterday I took a risk. Only time will tell if it was wise or foolish.

What I am interested in is the feeling of insecurity it produced. I definitely like the feeling of security, whether financial or relational.

Even though I know that security is an illusion, the mirage is still there. A steady job, a strong relationship are both illusions. Knowing that does not destroy the illusion.

Maybe part of enlightenment is destroying the illusion of permanence and reliability. Until that time, the best I can do is recognize the illusion.

Recognizing the illusion has the benefit of helping me take risks. Calculated risks, yes, but risks nonetheless.

In order to move forward, you sometimes have to burn bridges. I don’t recommend doing it, but sometimes you have no choice.

I often think of a lyric I once heard, “Lady Luck favors the bold.” I think there is some truth in that, provided we don’t confuse boldness for rashness.

So here I go on the next stage of my life’s adventure.

I don’t think we realize that how tightly expectation and disappointment are tied together.

Our level of disappointment is correlated to the level of expectation. Expect a lot from a person or situation, and when they fail to meet your explanations, you feel very disappointed.

Expect nothing, and when you get nothing, you are not disappointed.

But expecting nothing is not that easy. It is hard going into a relationship without high expectations. It is hard not to have expectations, even if we know we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Maybe a first step is to have more realistic expectations. Realizing that no one is perfect, that no job is without flaws, and that everything new becomes old, maybe we will expect more imperfections, frustrations, and broken devices.

This Epictetus quote is a good one to remember, “People are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.”

Today I want to introduce the idea of open source philosophy.

I will be adapting the basic philosophy of Richard Stallman’s ideas of free software. He is the architect of the GNU General Public License, which in turn inspired the creative commons license, which this website is licensed under.

My innovation is to apply these ideas to philosophy, specifically the idea of a philosophy of life. This is the worldview that guides one’s way of life.

An open source philosophy of life should have the freedom to live the philosophy, the freedom to modify it to your life and current evidence, the freedom to redistribute copies of the philosophy of life, and the freedom to distribute modified versions of the philosophy of life.

It is my belief that Humanism should be seen as an open source philosophy of life. It should be open for modification as new evidence comes in, and it should be customizable to one’s cultural and social context.

I believe that in order for philosophy to be useful it has to be hackable. Everyone should be able to modify it and publish their modification without copyright restriction.

This is why copyleft is so important. It keeps the philosophy of life open to correction and improvement by everyone.

And let’s be honest, everybody has their own twist to whatever religion or philosophy they hold. I just think we need to encourage free sharing so that improvement becomes easier.