Real World Connection 3: Humanism

Humanism is the idea that humans are awesome, and can pretty much do anything.

I think the Aperture Science fan page on Facebook has some quotes that really give an impression of human exceptionalism:

"How can you say that the 'sky is the limit?' The sky is most certainly NOT the limit. We've been to the sky. We've been PAST the sky. There are footprints on The Moon. Soon, we will have put footprints on more than just The Moon."

"The future of humanity is not on Earth. We've been here for the past 200,000 years. It about time we stop thinking about the "Why?" of our interplanetary future, but instead, the "Why not?" of our future, as a species. The moon; we were there from from 1961 to 1972. Why not establish permanence there? We've sent things to mars; nearly for 20 years. Why not people?"¹

Now, there are examples of humanistic views besides the Facebook page of a fictional company, but tonight I'm incredibly tired, and have about 60 pages of reading to do for Sci-Fi². So I figured I'd link to some pictures. Except then it turns out a Google Images search of "humanism" just gets you pictures of the "Happy Human" logo and stuff from Conservapedia³ and Christian sites warning about the End of Days. I decided I'd skip those.

I think humanism is pretty hard to dispute, except for that idea that people are inherently good^{4, 5}. I side with Locke in that people are born blank slates. While our genes can guide what we might be good at or how we might generally react to things, who we are is mostly defined by our experiences. It isn't hard to teach someone to be good, but they do need to pick it up somewhere (it's like how even though our brains are made to use language, we still need to learn a language to use).

I'd think of someway to wrap this up, or tie all the above together, but I'd rather sleep. I also need to do my Sci-Fi reading.

So instead of a conclusion, here is a picture of a panda:

---
1 The Aperture Science page is quite the fan of space.
2 Technically, I also have 6 blogs and a paper to do for Sci-Fi. I have plenty of time to do those, so reading gets top-belly.
3 This and the Creation Wiki are hilarious. Excellent trolling tools.
4 Problematic, since that is a core part of humanism.
5 Beyond inherent good, you pretty much get into an argument of whether or not people can achieve greatness.