February 2022 Newsletter

Americans for Humanity
February 2022 Newsletter

My recent reading of Hannah Arendt’s On Violence shook me to the core, prompted some serious re-evaluation of my thinking, and led me to rewrite the opening to the Preface. If you’re interested and your time is limited, you might just read the first four paragraphs

The Comments section in my essay Hannah Arendt on Violence and Politics includes a summary of how Arendt altered my worldview. In particular, she challenges the notion of automatic “Progress,” rejects “enlightened self-interest,” and affirms a “disinterested” commitment to compassion and justice.

Simone Weil’s Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation has also had a strong impact on me with her focus on obligation. She 

holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which (s)he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings….It is for the intelligence to conceive the idea of need and to discern, discriminate, and enumerate, with all the accuracy of which it is capable, the earthly needs of the soul and of the body… That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.

Like Arendt, Weil calls for people to accept their obligation to be compassionate and pursue justice simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Significant new resources, such as The Trouble with Cultural Evolution,” by Massimo Pigliucci are posted on What’s New.

Recently I’ve engaged with a number of thought-provoking Dialogs, including exchanges with Dan Brook on Plutocracy?, Roger Marsden on Holistic Spirituality, and Michael Johnson (“The Growing Democracy Project”) on Systemic Solutions, which concludes with a summary of our disagreements, Feel free to join these conversations!

Larry Walker, the site’s Assistant Editor, has been:

  • Finding ways to engage individuals to contribute to our website in areas that align with their passion.
  • Engaging individuals to write Adaptive Action pieces related to their areas of passion.
  • Reviewing Resources to identify those that are hidden behind Paywalls, improving the site Navigation to be consistent for our users, and filling out the excerpts of various Resources where they are missing.
  • Digging deeply into the claims made by Jeremy Rifkin regarding the Digital Revolution because his ideas emphasize decentralization, which is consistent with our website. This research is leading to related resources that will bring us up-to-date on the Digital Revolution in 2021.
  • Suggesting and/or adding a few new Resources to the website as he encounters them.

We’d welcome your participation in these and other efforts to improve the site!

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