Becoming Humane - Being Humane

Evolution of the Humane - Globalisation of Peace - World in Balance

Living Humanism - Right Livelihood - Global Communion

Living Humanism is authentically transformed energy of life, - information of life which is transformed into creative human spirit thus harmonizing noosphere, the global sphere of ideas. Right Livelihood is the human expression of authentic understanding and resonant action within the global community of life. Right Livelihood will lead towards a genuine social organisation of humanity - towards responsible cooperation for mutual benefit, towards global communion. Global Communion is the realisation of the Social Instinct of Humanity - in contrast to individualistic elitist aberrations of history and present. The social drive will enable humanity to support biosphere as indigenous peoples always did and still do.

 

 For HUMANISM!

International Coalition for Humanism, St. Petersburg
forhumanism.org

 

IX. Conference of The International Coalition "For Humanism!"

The System Crisis of the Commercial Civilization
and the Humanist Transformation

1-2 May, 2005 in St.Petersburg, Russia

Final Declaration

Transparency & Transcendence, Golden Keys To Peace

more contributions to follow...

Common Ground of Analysis and Therapeutic Strategy in respect to „System Crisis of the Commercial Civilization and its Humanist Transformation" and „Transparency and Transcendence, Keys to Peace"

 

X. Conference of The International Coalition "For Humanism!" 29-30 April 2006 in St.Petersburg, Russia

The Global Crisis Aggravating: Catastrophe or Transformation ahead?

Basic Components of the Humanist Transformation of Society

Resonance the Creative Principle of Evolution & Grace the Driving Force in Harmony with Cosmic Law (pdf)

The Society of War and its Transformation (German) (Russian) (pdf)

S. Semenov, St.Petersburg

BASIC COMPONENTS OF THE HUMANIST TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY

Dear friends,

I am sincerely glad to see you, I am glad that we are together again and can discuss the issues that concern all of us. The problem we deal with for more than a decade is such by nature that from year to year these issues arise always more and become always more acute. So formulating our answers to them we should be always more scrupulous.

My report today is dedicated to detalisation of several principal theses presented by me in the last year.

Then, concluding my short speech, I said that to us the inevitability of the humanist transformation of society is absolutely evident. In the past year there occurred a whole series of events that witness convincingly that the planetary civilisation is moving quickly to its decline. I think that the participants of the conference will analise and evaluate these events. Yes, to us the inevitability of the humanist transformation of society is absolutely evident, but also clear is that this transformation will take place only when for the bulk of the planet's population two things become evident: on the one hand, the impossibility of further conservation of the existing social order, on the other hand, the necessity of adoption of a new order founded on humanistic ideals.

As to the impossibility of further existence of society founded on commercial relations, here all is clear: the general understanding of it is the more close, the more acute manifestations of the global crisis in all its magnitude. Of course, for some time the ruling classes will still be able to deceive the population of their countries, in all ways obscuring the fact of causal connection between the global problems and the fundamental principle of today's society - the principle of profit. But there are quite a lot of clever people on our planet who see this connection and speak of it publicly. To make them shut their mouth completely is hardly possible. And this means that, with the global problems worsening, the understanding of their true nature will inevitably become general…

Unfortunately, for the humanist transformation to happen, the sole understanding of inadmissibility of further existence of commercial relations is not enough: also necessary is the clear understanding that the new society should be founded on the principle of harmonious development of personality.

And here is the problem: first, today there are too little people who are devoted to this principle, for understandable reasons; second, until now they do not see the necessity to achieve agreement in definition of the corresponding ideal.

What is a harmoniously developed person? This is the question I am going to deal with in the first place.

The Ideal of Man.

At first sight this question seems artificial: man is man, why ask questions. It seems that one should think not about human nature and not about what a harmoniously developed person is, but about how make society such that all people feel good. And it's the way in which almost all social-political organisations act today. But in fact their social conceptions are of course based on certain understanding of man. Because, if you want to make life human, you have to bear in mind certain measures of man. Simply today everyone judges by himself. And the desired social organisation seems conforming to one's own needs. As the structure of needs differs for different social classes, the corresponding political conceptions turn out to apply not so much to humans in general as to specific classes.

In general, considering what should be a society where everyone would be able to develop into a harmonious person, one has to begin with a strict definition of the notion of Man.

As this notion has been discussed during many years in our community, such definition has formed long ago and it is known to all of you: "Man is a being of triple nature: biological, cultural and spiritual".

In other words, biologically man is such that in order to fully realise his genetic potentialities he needs not only favourable biological milieu (which is healthy food, pure air, good lodging etc.), but also favourable cultural milieu that would permit development into intellectual, emotional and spiritual being.

Such understanding of human nature places culture, i.e. total experience transmitted from generation to generation, to the basis of the entire social structure.

It is important to see that the culture, as such, has two parts. Its one part, comprehensible to everyone, is the knowledge humanity accumulated about environment and possibilities of its favourable modification, i.e. science. Another part, much less evident but much more important, is the experience of human education and self-realisation. A quarter of century ago I named this part of experience transmitted from generation to generation the psychic culture.

The psychic culture is all that helps humans to develop their true human qualities: to think clearly and precisely, to feel sensitively and to feel with, to perceive Universum at all levels of its structure (up to substance); to use one's body in effective and harmless manner.

Under the conditions of the aggravating system crisis of commercial civilisation the psychic culture has fallen into extreme decline. It is understandable: a person gifted with all mentioned abilities is a bad consumer while in order to realise the formula "commodity - money - commodity" you need a greedy insatiable consumer.

From all components of the psychic culture the most potentially dangerous for the society based on commercial relations are, on the one hand, the experience of perceiving Universum in its fundamental structure, on the other hand, the experience of feeling with, of perceiving all-human unity... A person who gained such experience naturally rejects individualism which today justifies the admissibility of producing potentially dangerous commodities. This is why the named components of psychic culture are practically unknown to general public or known only in extremely mythological forms of archaic religious beliefs.

I am telling about it to clarify why it is so complicated today to achieve agreement in defining the ideal of harmoniously developed personality. For us, this ideal means the following:

- good physical health, so that it would be always nice to use one's body;

- well developed intellect and high organisation of consciousness;

- well developed structure of feelings open to the experience of human kinship;

- such development of higher cognitive abilities that enables access to spiritual-psychological unity with other people as well as the World.

Only such man is truly a Man!

What are the implications of this high ideal for our social-political practice? From all said it is obvious that an absolutely necessary condition of humanist transformation is the presence of an organisation that can, first, make everyone understand the human ideal, second, accept a leading role in the new society...

What must be this perspective organisation of humanists? It is this question that the next item of my speech deals with.

The Humanist Party.

At first sight, the same as with the ideal of man, it seems that there is nothing to discuss and one should just found the corresponding political party. However, in reality a humanist party may in no way be an ordinary social-political organisation. In order to be able to make our contemporaries understand the high ideal of man, it must be a union of people which not only agree in definition of this ideal but are devoted to it in practice. This means that it must be, first of all, an instrument of self-perfection for its every member. So the organisation in question must have the psychic culture as the basis of its activities.

Fortunately, we have the experience necessary for that. I mean the Psychic Culture Studios.

For understandable reasons, the studies in these studios were centered on health invigoration, but much attention was also paid to the issues of self-perfection. In the course of a quarter of century we created special methods of ascension to the truth of one's individual way. Now they may be propagated to however large audience. I think now it is right time to do it!

So, the party - yes! But the party of an absolutely new type: in other parties the internal unity supposes only assimilation and adoption of a social-political doctrine, while here, in addition, everyone's personal practice aimed at realising the truth of one's own way in the World is needed.

The Principle of Exchange and the Principle of Synergy.

The next question is how humanity shall realise its economic activity in humanist social order. This question arises every time we say that this order will be non-monetary.

According to our vision of humanist civilisation, the economic activity of mankind will be realised not on the basis of exchange between economic subjects (be them individuals or cooperatives) but on the basis of cooperation in coping with tasks standing before them. These tasks are satisfaction of natural human needs as well as realisation of ideas of various social groups united by common interests. Exclusion of the principle of exchange, the principle of any requital for labour, its replacement with the principle of synergy, i.e. co-operation, co-action, co-participation, - this is the way that we believe the only possible.

This is why we constantly ask other humanistically oriented people what is their vision of social-economic perspective.

To our great regret, in most cases the answer lies within the paradigm of commercial relations which is a particular expression of the exchange principle. However, although the principle of synergy and that of exchange are complementary to each other, when lying at the basis of social structure they exclude each other, so that society is founded either on commodity exchange, and then the worst beast qualities of human nature inevitably come to surface, or it is founded on free cooperation, and then mutual aid and love come in place of aggressive competition.

The question that inevitably arises in such case is the question of how economic and creative efforts of society will be regulated? According to our view, such regulation is possible on the basis of global highly computerised system using modern telecommunication means. If such dynamic connection of every person with the whole of mankind is provided, the interests of this person as well as those of the whole civilisation can be correlated and satisfied in an optimal way. In what concerns the technical part of the matter, realisation of this project is possible already today.

The problem consists not in impossibility of reorganisation of society on the basis of synergy principle but in that the mankind is not ready for such a revolutionary transformation. We should not spend our energies to working out palliative models of preservation of humanist values in the circumstances of the system crisis of commercial civilisation; we should focus all our energies on promotion of the idea of historical necessity of the humanist transformation. This sublime transformation is coming toward us at a great speed, and we should do all we can so that the human cost is the lowest possible. Unfortunately, the level of public recognition of the problem is extremely low. Therefore, in view of the deepening system crisis of the civilization, one has to forecast many victims. I told about it at the conference of last year in sufficient detail.

The Global System of Integration.

The next item of my speech is that very global highly computerised system of integration based on modern telecommunication means without which the transition to humanist society is practically impossible. I shall call it GSI for short.

As you remember, a year ago already I pointed out that if you want to abolish the formula "commodity - money - commodity", then you have to have a precise system taking into account needs of all people and of every single person. Likening the present-day civilisation to a steam-engine where the role of steam is played by money, you can liken the coming humanist formation to a modern electronic device that works on the basis of electricity and information.

Today everyone satisfies his needs through the medium of earned money which is a primitive universal regulator of social production. Setting aside the question of gaining money, I shall draw your attention to how it is spent.

When you buy something necessary it looks as an act of choosing something more or less appropriate to your individual need out of a multitude of diverse goods. In appearance the very possibility of such choosing is good, but in essence it is bad. In the first place, the bought article corresponds to your real need only to a certain degree which, by the way, always diminishes due to commercial denaturation. In the second place, a considerable part of produced goods stays unbought... and the labour spent for their production is wasted.

So if even we abstract from a great lot of negative and dangerous phenomena resulting from the economic activity mankind today, this very activity should be recognised as extremely ineffective and wasteful. The steam-engine is a very low-efficient mechanism.

The Global System of Integration will allow production of what really corresponds to needs of every single man, and precisely in needed amount. The efficiency of social production will grow exponentially. As the productive forces of contemporary civilization are great, having rid ourselves from the absurd wastefulness, we will be able to provide the possibility of complete harmonious self-realisation to everyone. And this is the humanist society. In general, GSI is an absolutely necessary tool of progressing into future.

In fact such system is already forming very quickly in the shape of global computer net open to mobile phones and devices of telemonitoring. Of course, the information that circulates in this system today is for the most part poisonous, for it can not be otherwise in the conditions of commercial civilisation. But the system itself is practically a ready technical solution of GSI. With its help, I repeat, mankind will reach such degree of integration where the interests of every single person are harmoniously combined with the interests and possibilities of all.

Speaking about GSI I would like also draw your attention to that, in fact, only its embryo in the form of global computer net is an accessible means of our communication with like-minded people in the whole world. Hence follows the practical necessity for every Coalition member to master this informational canal. We should expand our presence in the Internet as much as possible. We should bring our humanist ideas first of all to those who, using the net, have done a step into future. Yes, the bulk of information in the net is poison, but our ideology is an antidote. And we must offer it actively to all people searching an answer to the question: What will be Tomorrow?

Conclusion.

In conclusion I shall repeat briefly the most important of what I've said.

For us the necessity of humanist transformation is completely evident. At the same time it is clear that it will take place only when the bulk of the planet's population realises, first, the inadmissibility of continuing economic activity on the basis of commercial relations, second, the necessity of transition to the social formation aimed at complete realisation of the ideal of harmoniously developed personality. I have described our vision of this ideal in sufficient detail.

To make wide public understand this ideal we need a special social-political organisation. It is reasonable to call it Humanist party, but it should be a party of a new type - a party which propagates humanist ideas and at the same time is a tool of personal self-perfection for each of its members. It is also important that the party itself becomes embodiment of the synergy principle that is destined to abolish the exchange principle: may participation in our common work become the experience of free unselfish cooperation. As to the mainstream of our common efforts, it is obvious - the propagation of humanism. And the principle informational chanel is Internet.


Wolfgang Fischer, München

Dear Friends,

with great pleasure I accepted the invitation to this year's conference in St. Petersburg. It really is wonderful to meet again so many friends who I already met last year.

Concerning the topic of this year's conference: „Aggravation of the Global Crisis: Catastrophe or Transformation?" I want to talk about Resonance and Grace. I want to introduce the understanding of Resonance as being the creative principle of evolution and of Grace as being the force which wells from being in harmony with cosmic law.

Let us continue the exchange of ideas in the tradition of the Coalition for Humanism and in being rightfully positive that spreading of unifying humanist thought has effect for the benefit of the world and the people. My contribution aims to point at a new perspective of religion and spirituality, a perspective beyond traditional concepts. If everyday reality is the benchmark for religious or political concepts their misuse by elites at the cost of the majority of people will be overcome rapidly. I am sure most of what I am going to present is well understood by most of you since long. It is part of our human identity, be it consciously or not. Still it is empowering to jointly envision these relations again and again. We do need decisive empowerment in order to make progress towards world peace.

Humanistic information which we develop and adopt by mutual exchange of what we think, feel and aspire creates resonance in noosphere of ideas, the space of the spirit. The energy of thoughts which are resonant in relation to the origin of all being, to idea and organisation of the cosmos has the potential to wake up the collective unconsciousness. It provides hope to the desperate, orientation to the disoriented and it proves to the malicious that they cannot escape unnoticed. Our collective efforts and our personal striving serve to support developing humanity. It is to interpret the signs of the times correctly, that is to say authentically in order to become capable of navigating coming transformation of world society into the direction of eco-social justice and peace.

We are to maintain a future worth living for coming generations.

Global crisis is aggravating. We all are aware of it. We feel it and we experience it. And to anticipate already here the answer to the topic of this conference: both lies ahead of us, daily catastrophes as well as the big transformation. It is not about either - or, it is a simultaneous as well as. And - being realistic humanists - we start from the idea that we the people finally will avoid a self-induced nemesis.

From where do I retrieve the hopeful certainty that humanity escapes from mutual murder in global suicide? I take this certainty from a regulating principle of the cosmos which I try to make comprehensible in the following scheme. We will deal with the exposed relations in order to become able to spread them widely.

We deal with the concept of the source of living energy. It is about grace, the agent which wells from alignment with cosmic laws.

It is about Resonance in the Face of Diversity - the Creative Principle and Transformational Drive of Evolution.

If we start with Causality in linear-logical systems it easily is comprehensible that a frame of reference or orientation is required in order to avoid exponential aberration: Without a frame of reference occurring events seem to happen mechanically, seem to be always repeatable, seem to be of arbitrary acceleration and of never ending expansiveness. Mankind considers itself independent from nature and is learning to understand truthful relationships painfully from the consequences of its behaviour.

In cosmological organisation Causality naturally is self-referring. We can call that autonomous responsibility for oneself, a responsibility which causes self-limiting development: Occurring events are vital, they are not always repeatable, valid only the very moment and already different in the next, mankind understands secure dependency on a common origin and recognizes in this interrelated dependency real freedom.

Based on a creative balance between linear-logical development and cosmological organisation different dimensions of existence emerge. They co-exist in the run of cosmic evolution contributing reciprocally and proportionally to complementing diversity and integrity, viz. preponderance of uncontrolled exponential development inevitably jeopardises integrity.

a) Inorganic Dimension emerges by Mineralisation and Crystallisation: Coming into being of Matter - from subatomic dimension till the beginning of macromolecules

b) Organic Dimension emerges by Organisation: Coming into being of Life - from biopolymers to cells and human beings

c) Human Dimension emerges by Spiritualisation: Coming into being of Wisdom, of Awareness about the Common Origin - from the individual to a joint human global community: Communion of Planet Earth, GAIA

What are we capable of to know? What do we perceive? What can we achieve?

It is obvious that inadequate facilitation or deceitful obstruction of the genuine learning process equally cause disturbances of human ripening. Exponential development of political power and material wealth violently thrust aside cosmological organisation thus causing destruction of integrity resulting insanity. Authentic life drive perverts into fateful death drive and entails derailment, transgression, aberration as well as fear and misery. The destiny of this direction if not corrected by those who support or promote it is auto-aggression and obliteration of the driving agents in order to safeguard remaining parts of evolution from the aggressor.

My intention here is to present a short line of thought to you which might find resonance within some of you. Such resonance then would be shared with more and more fellow human beings and by itself it would path the way towards growing unity and human stability. Spiritual power of resistance would gain strength and withstand the intrigues of those who deliberately again and again incite hatred in order to proceed with their dehumanising strategies to gain power and wealth for a few elites at the cost of global integrity.

If there is Natural Law (obviously it is) then there is only ONE such Law. This is to say that this Law equally applies to ALL and everything. And IF this Law exists (it obviously does) there certainly are respective consequences regarding following this Law or on the other hand living, behaving against this Law. These consequences are personal, social as well as historical ones and again teach the lesson of the Law. This is to say the Law reveals itself authentically by experience of the inner and outer worlds. Man made restrictions of experience are counterproductive to evolutional freedom and lead to adulterated mental concepts, finally to complete disorientation.

The essential point however that I want to emphasize on is that we human beings by nature cannot make any statement on the Origin of Natural Law. This is to make clear the absurdity to make pictures of God, to argue about God's appearance, God's family, whereabouts and preferences. Nevertheless some individuals, institutionalised religions as well as political theories which are based on patronising predominance exactly make use of such references, statements, notions, ideologies for their partial interests.

The Origin of the Law of Nature we do not know. The Law itself however can be experienced. Quantum physics speaks about a potentiality which is based upon the Law of Nature. Potentiality is described to be the basic element of existence. Potentiality basically represents itself by Modulation into Energy on the one hand and/or by Information into Matter on the other. Resonant Interaction of Energy and Matter with one another and with the Origin creates the growing Complexity and Diversity of Life. Information via molecules, organelles, viruses, cells, tissues, organs etc. transforms into Bodies thus creating the genealogical tree of Evolution. Simultaneously and interrelated modulation via spontaneous reaction, egocentric competition, instinctive behaviour and altruistic cooperation transforms into spiritualisation of the mind thus creating an authentic representation of in fact reality within the mental sphere of symbols: coherence of reality and mental symbolic world. A coherence which is to be handed down by Culture.

In terms of evolution only recently the human brain evolved as a consequence of organisational forces of evolution's drive. This brain due to a highly reflective potential situated in its latest part the cerebral cortex gives opportunity to the emergence of authentic spirit. A genuine learning process is to fill the initially fairly empty inner world of symbols. As virtually anything can be stored in the cerebral memory it becomes necessary to differentiate spiritual qualities. This normally is achieved by trial and error, by sensing pain and joy. The destiny of this learning process is human maturity, a condition where general understanding goes beyond individual knowledge.

Human maturity is a coherent condition which is based on alignment beyond agreement, a being beyond ideology amidst an achieved transparency of every day life: Global Ethics and Graceful Behaviour are the liberating expression of Resonance between Mankind, Environment and Natural Law in Harmony with the Origin.

The above shown scheme is to give an overview on evolution. The scheme also may help to reconcile the schisms between Creationists and Evolutionists, between religious and non-religious people, between atheists and others. It seems the truth is to be found beyond imagination. As we all know by experience despite of wishful thinking and careful acting how difficult it is in every day life to get closer to each other across existing borders, be them mental within our heads or social within the cultural context or whatsoever. Despite of the necessity to join forces in order to enable us to solve globally growing self-induced problems even people who propagate Love and Peace fight each other - not to mention political and religious fanaticism, fundamentalism etc. Despite of growing misery the learning of the lesson still seems to be somewhat difficult for many people.

I do hope these ideas may help intra- and inter-religious as well as intra- and intercultural dialogue to get closer to each other, to discover parts of the above mentioned line of thought within one's own innermost beliefs and perceptions, to gain confidence in your own autonomous thoughts and findings, to share such findings in dialogue in order to encourage others to withstand the disorienting zeitgeist.

Orientation must be authentic if we want to achieve creative conviviality on Earth.

As creative conviviality is a condition which makes anybody happy, this condition inevitably will be achieved by global society. It is a condition of resonance between mankind and nature. It is a condition of realised responsibility from private spheres to world community. It is a new step of evolution.

Natural Law already refers to this condition, this is what I intended to communicate. The sooner we succeed in insistently convincing also our fellow men in growing numbers of the possibility, or even more, of the necessity of a resonant-responsible behaviour, the faster and moreover less painful we jointly can realise a transformation towards general sociability, towards solidarity, subsidiarity and non-violence. This is already being realised within small cells of communities all over the world. We have to spread this transformation beyond national and international borders by our active collaboration with the various social movements. Global people's governance is to stop corporate governance and national security doctrines from jeopardising existence.

Current rulers and profiteers also want to survive. And due to the growing inclination of eco-social conditions also their so called security forces will understand that they themselves are part of the people whose present turns out to be unbearable and whose future is being jeopardised.

We over and over have to point out that Natural Law does not know exceptions. In this respect catastrophes are our self-made supporters. They are adamant taskmasters as long as we do not realise our learning target: Humanity & it's joyful Organisation from the local to the planetary dimension.


Please support our effort if possible also financially


Emanzipation Humanum, version May 2006, Criticism, suggestions as to form and content, dialogue, translation into other languages are all desired

http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/human/humanism001.html
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/human