All posts tagged: TheHumanist.com

Blocked by a SpamAssassin – TheHumanist.com

Blocked by a SpamAssassin – TheHumanist.com

A few weeks ago, in an online exchange with a colleague, my email responses were repeatedly blocked. The technical reason read: 550 5.7.1 Blocked by SpamAssassin. Getting blocked is technically something that happens to me somewhat frequently, and in weird ways. In fact, if I actually engaged in conspiracy mongering, I might find it all rather personal. I write about consciousness, and while I know it sounds crazy, it sometimes feels like there is an energetic block to getting my thoughts and ideas out into the broader world. At any rate, I decided to ask ChatGPT what 550 5.7.1 Blocked by SpamAssassin meant. Initially, it offered a long list of reasons explaining in technical language why spam detection tools may have filtered my emails. These included certain types of content, sender reputation, too many links and so on. None of it felt relevant, as I had emailed back and forth many times with this particular colleague. While I am not a frequent user of ChatGPT, I spontaneously – and in an admittedly rather annoyed voice …

Deconstruction & Coming Out – TheHumanist.com

Deconstruction & Coming Out – TheHumanist.com

The other day, I reached a milestone I never would’ve thought I’d reach with my mom. After being on testosterone for over a year and half and trying to keep it hidden from my transphobic parents, my mom found out – and the world didn’t stop spinning on its axis, nobody’s head exploded, no volatile arguments ensued. After a very nerve-wracking phone call in which I had no choice but to admit that I was on T, I came away from the conversation not only with pride in myself, but a bit of pride in my mom as well. Yes, the bar is low – shouldn’t all parents love their children unconditionally and accept their choices if they make them happy, so long as they are safe and informed? Well, yes. And for so long, even now, I tell myself not to get too happy, because she is still nowhere close to acceptance. I only refer to my mom in all of this because my dad and I barely talk, as he has never expressed …

The Underworld of Grief – TheHumanist.com

The Underworld of Grief – TheHumanist.com

Stories about the underworld are rarely really about the dead. They are about the living—about how human beings survive grief. From the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the imagined life of William Shakespeare and his son Hamnet Shakespeare, the same question returns: How do we continue loving after loss? We often imagine great writers as monuments cast in bronze, untouchable and distant. Shakespeare—the most famous playwright in the English language—is often treated this way: a towering intellect whose words echo across centuries. But the life behind the work was startlingly human. At eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne (sometimes noted as Agnes) Hathaway, who was 26 and already pregnant. Their first child Susanna arrived just six months after the wedding in 1583—an event that likely stirred gossip in their small Warwickshire community. Soon after came twins: a son and a daughter, Hamnet and Judith. The young couple began their lives not as legends but as ordinary people negotiating the messy, unpredictable realities of love, family and survival. History has a way of smoothing the edges …

Honestly Boring – TheHumanist.com

Honestly Boring – TheHumanist.com

I remember the first time I ever heard the word homosexual. I was in the first grade, and my mother and I were sitting in the living room watching “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” as we did each day when I’d come home from school. In response to a comment one of her guests had made about their marriage, Rosie made an impromptu joke about not wanting a husband.The audience laughed uproariously in that way that grown-ups always did when they had an inside-joke amongst themselves that they thought kids wouldn’t understand. My ears perked up. “Why doesn’t Rosie O’Donnell want a husband?” I asked. My mom sat on the couch behind me, carefully applying a coat of mauve nail polish. “Because she’s a homosexual, and she already has a partner.” She didn’t look up. “What’s homo sexual?” “It means she’s gay,” She lifted her gaze to the television, “It means she’s a lady, but instead of a boyfriend or a husband, she has a girlfriend.” I laughed, thinking that meant one of them had to …

Listen, America – TheHumanist.com

Listen, America – TheHumanist.com

Your broad stripes,your bright stars–surely you seehow they flagin the scumbled air. Your bitter quarrels,your burning hills,the nodding amber grains– They wail, Wake up!But your swaddling flagsmuffle their pleas. Lies everywhere sharpen tonguesand shade the truth. Your boots on the neck of decency,as people coagulate in the streets– Are you listening? Listen! I don’t want to watch people dieunder the weight of your fears. One way or another,right and left,bright stars or broad stripes,the wages of povertyand its father greedmound to an avalanche of spite. It cleaves the heartland. Your tired broken booksand sacred papers lay silent.Pages riffling, they wave goodbye.  Your furious rainwaterswells to bursting. We watchas whole towns tumble awayin baptisms of rubble.Flames rifle your valleys. And your broad stripes,your bright stars?See how they flagin the thickening air! America, listen!You’re running scared, America.Who is your master, America? What burns on your horizons?What rough beastslouches at your center? Source link

Morality Gets Heavier – TheHumanist.com

Morality Gets Heavier – TheHumanist.com

There is peace in waking up and knowing exactly what you’re supposed to do with your day. How you’re supposed to parent. What things in life should be prioritized. I was given that on a silver platter, dressed up as a delicious plate of salvation. The Mormon Church is the key to happiness. Everyone knows that. It was easy to believe.My friends believed it.My parents adored it.And so did I. It’s a beautiful thought — that there is a father in the sky who loves me and who gave me a plan to live in peace and happiness for eternity. That if I followed the rules closely enough, I would be safe. That goodness was something I could earn through obedience. But what happens when that framework shatters? When the questions you whispered for years turn into shouts. When you can no longer reconcile that the loving God you believed in does not love the gay community, does not respect minorities, does not include them, and does not uplift women. When a quick Google search …

An Acknowledgement – TheHumanist.com

An Acknowledgement – TheHumanist.com

This is not written as a request. It is written as an acknowledgement. Sometimes what stays with us is not a performance, but a moment of clarity — a shared human condition named plainly, without spectacle. When that happens, it can sharpen our attention. And attention, I have come to believe, is often the first ethical act. I am a humanist, not as a belief system, but as a way of orienting myself toward other people. My life is guided by four principles, in this order: ethics, compassion, kindness and honesty. The order matters, because each one shapes how the next is expressed. For me, ethics comes first because it is about trust. It is the commitment to act in ways that do not take advantage of imbalance — whether that imbalance comes from power, visibility, vulnerability or circumstance. Being ethical means behaving in a way that makes you safe to trust, even when there is something to gain by doing otherwise. Ethics is not about what I am entitled to. It is about what …

Start with Humanism – TheHumanist.com

Start with Humanism – TheHumanist.com

Call yourselves Humanists, first, foremost, forever. This classification encompasses all others. After the word “Humanist” you may add your preferred subset label: Humanist Muslim, Humanist Christian, Humanist Buddhist, Humanist Atheist, Humanist Agnostic. It is important that these subset terms do not precede the word Humanist. You are Humanists first, and what you are after that is secondary or tertiary or even further down the line. You are Humanists first because you are human infants first, insusceptible of further branding at that time. No infant is Muslim or Christian or Atheist or Conservative or Liberal or American or Dutch or Egyptian or any of the like. An infant is simply human, inducted by that native condition into a decades-long future, participating in basic human goods, chief of which are friendship, play, learning, skillful performance and the rearing of children. You are Humanists first because Humanism is easiest to believe. There are no fabulist doctrines to embrace. No winged ponies. No uncertain nativities. No staggering saintly pedigrees. No demonic possessions. No impracticable moral embargoes. No otherworldly rules …

The Trump Museum 2030 – TheHumanist.com

The Trump Museum 2030 – TheHumanist.com

In Vegas town, where lights shine bright and long, within a casino where the bets went wrong, The Trump Museum, like a golden dream, Rises in 2030, the ultimate theme. Through gilded doors the eager tourists stride, where forty-fifth’s great hologram presides. With thumbs held high beneath a waving sheet, The banner reads: “Make America Great Again,” so sweet. The curators within, a dizzying array, have built a shrine to spectacle, not policy, today. The centerpiece, a throne both rich and low, A golden toilet set in bulletproof glow. A nearby Oval Office, marble in the wall, with crystal chandeliers addressing one and all. A life-sized, moving Trump-bot, standing proud, From gold-plated iPhone tweeting to the crowd. The “Tweet Hall” shows the posts, both long and crass, Printed like war propaganda upon the glass. The “Wall of Winners,” plaques both thin and wide, for family, cabinet, and those who stood inside. With patriotic songs and lights dramatic-bold, And QR codes to Fox News stories, quickly told. A towering wall of “Emergency Decrees,” All framed in …

Our NIMBY Democracy – TheHumanist.com

Our NIMBY Democracy – TheHumanist.com

A moral rot has been spreading through the politics of our cities and our suburbs for the last few decades, a rot dressed in earnest language about “community character,” “environmental review,” and “local control.” This is the rot produced by the ethos of NIMBY — Not In My Backyard — a rot that has been the relentless force methodically hollowing out our democracy, all while its perpetrators proclaim themselves nothing less than its last hope and final rampart. NIMBY Democracy is a civic order in which the very people who posture as progressive, virtuous guardians of the public good (those who live in the upper middle class suburbs of metropolitan areas, and those who are energetically gentrifying large stretches of our inner cities) devote their political capital not to championing the material betterment of the least among them, but to assiduously undermining and crippling that very public good by defending exclusive neighborhoods, protecting property values and blocking homes for the working poor. The result of their tenacious “civic engagement” (they will proudly post on their …