Planetary humanism: the new paradigm
By Bill Cooke

It is a source of greater-than-usual pleasure for me to see Humanism show such flair and dedication in Uganda. As Roy Brown has mentioned, Africa is the birthplace of us all, but I can claim a more direct inheritance, as I was born in Kenya and lived there for the first nine years of my life. And it is gratifying to hear the priorities of Ugandan Humanists, who speak of the liberating power of rationality to overcome the debilitating effects of superstition. In the West it has become difficult to say that without someone sneering at your naïveté or putting the words 'reason' and 'superstition' in scare quotes so as to make a display of their sophistication. But here in Uganda, people know better. In Uganda, the debilitating effects of superstition are known to be real. And the liberating effects of valuing reason over superstition are just as real. These are not the topics for condescending chatter over a cafe latte.

We have heard enough at this conference to convince us of the importance of rationality. We heard it in the several stories of petty discrimination and ostracism Humanists have suffered. We heard it in the testimony of one man's odyssey from witchcraft to Humanism. We have heard of the slaughter in Rwanda, during which on many occasions, church leaders averted their eyes or even participated in the killing. And the memory of the massacre at Kanungu is still fresh here. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments was starkly superstitious and placed faith and revelation above reason. And upwards of one thousand people died in the tragedy, each death a testimony to their faith. And then there is the Lord's Resistance Army. Joseph Kony doesn't value reason or the open society. We are told he speaks with spirits and wants to instate the Ten Commandments as the principle of government. His method of achieving this result is mass slaughter of innocent people and the abduction of children to serve as his soldiers.

So the Uganda Humanist Association has its work cut out for it. But the willingness of the Ugandan Humanists to help the lives of people impoverished, physically and metaphysically, by faith and superstition, is admirable. In the face of these challenges, the Center for Inquiry and the International Humanist & Ethical Union have essential goals in common. We are both concerned to extend and develop Humanism, free inquiry and the open society around the world. And we can work together here, as we can everywhere else, to achieve these goals.

The Center for Inquiry works to build and extend Humanism throughout the world in two ways. On the one hand, it provides a vision of what it is we are working toward. This vision is best expressed in Paul Kurtz's term Planetary Humanism. There is no further extension of Humanism possible than Planetary Humanism. When Humanism works on a planetary level, it knows it must see all species as co-existing interdependently on planet Earth. But how to give Planetary Humanism meaning? The new agenda which the Humanist Manifesto 2000 outlines involves five main areas:

o Global security
o Human development
o Social justice
o International law
o Environmental protection.

The Manifesto then gives more specific expression to this agenda, when it urges the following things:

o backing the United Nations as the principal coercive agency of the world
o recognising overpopulation as one of the most fundamental causes of world distress
o continued support for the existing international conventions regarding human rights
o fighting tax avoidance among the largest multinational corporations
o developing a suitably transnational system of international law
o more immediate effort to raise awareness of and to then combat the environmental deterioration.

So, if this is the agenda of Planetary Humanism, what mechanisms does the Manifesto propose to bring this vision into effect? The Humanist Manifesto 2000 calls for:

o an effective world government based on popular elections
o a workable international security system
o increasing the powers of the World Court
o the creation of an effective planetary environmental monitoring body
o planning an international system of taxation for the sole purpose of assisting the underdeveloped nations
o development of global institutions to monitor and regulate the behaviour of multinational corporations
o keep alive the free market of ideas.

These proposals are visionary in the best sense of the word, rather than Utopian in the worst sense. They are all constructive proposals for lessening the opportunities for inter-civilisational discord or conflict. But they also permit the greatest scope for the battle of ideas to take place without descending into a bloodbath or pogrom. So, put simply, the new paradigm of Planetary Humanism as outlined in the Humanist Manifesto 2000 involves strong commitments to free inquiry, to democracy, to secularism, and to solving planetary problems at a planetary level.

How, then, does the Center for Inquiry plan to make real this vision of planetary Humanism? First of all with practical assistance, as with the donations of money to the Ugandan Humanists, and the assistance in provisioning its office. Secondly, with the provisioning of intellectual resources. Prometheus Books is quite in any way the largest publisher of free-thought material in the world. It is wonderful to see the couple of hundred donated Prometheus titles in the UHASSO office near the university. As well as the Prometheus titles, there is Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazine, the two largest-circulation Humanist and skeptical magazines in the world. And of course, the Center for Inquiry hosts the organization African-Americans for Humanism, whose Executive Director, Norm Alien, has been a stalwart worker for Humanism in Africa for upwards of fifteen years now. Norm Allen truly is, in Roy Brown's words, a pillar of African Humanism.

But we all know that the road will be hard. The new paradigm of Planetary Humanism cannot be brought about by crusade, jihad, prayer or any other supernatural contrivance. It has to be brought about the slow way, by convincing people one person at a time. H G Wells wrote in 1931 that the 'alternative before man now is either magnificence of spirit and magnificence of achievement, or disaster.' He spoke of an Open Conspiracy in which people from all around the world take part in a global renewal. Central to the Open Conspiracy was the need to recognise that our own immortality is irrelevant and has significance only within the context of the human race as a whole. Bertrand Russell said the same when, in the context of the Cold War arms race, he urged us to take the broad view of the world and of our place in it. More recently Peter Singer said similar things when he criticised the dreary obsession with the self that has become, in the West at any rate, one of the most all-pervading aspects of culture. Singer described what he outlined as the ethical life as 'one in which we identify ourselves with other, and larger, goals, thereby giving meaning to our lives.' Paul Kurtz spoke in similar terms when he coined the term eupraxsophy, meaning the dynamic fusion of wisdom and action which together result in breaking away from the bonds of the self and seeing one's life as having meaning by working for the common good. Our job as Humanists is to articulate the vision of a Planetary Humanism, and then work together in a joint effort to bring this vision to fruition.

Bill Cooke is Transnational Director, Center for Inquiry, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo.