Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "humanist"

What is the purpose of a scientist? It is the search for truth of course. But is it all that a scientist is supposed to work for! The question that I shall be addressing in this article is what is the purpose of a humanist scientist? Now, here you may wonder, what the heck is a humanist scientist? Aren’t all scientists humanists?

A person can be a humanist in his or her personal life, but in professional life the sole identity of a scientist is a scientist. Now in this case, there is a small proportion of scientists, whom I call “humanist scientists”. The goal of a scientist is to dedicate himself or herself to the search of the raw, unfiltered, pure truth. Here comes the twist. The purpose of a humanist scientist is to discover the purest form of truth possible, and then apply it to the human society in a way that brings most positive outcome in the path of global progress.

For example, the idea of God which has been imposed on us by our society, has nothing to do with the reality. God is not an Supernatural Entity watching over earth and its inhabitants. God is exclusively a part of human consciousness. Without the humans there is no God. Without us, there is no God, that any living creature should be concerned of. However, I never attempt to take away people’s God from them, because that God is associated with a lot of human sentiments in the human psyche that act as fuel in daily survival. If you try to take away some hungry man’s stale bread, he would fight back, but if you give him something healthier and more substantial than the bread, then he would throw away the bread himself and accept your better food. The same is for God. So, instead of adamantly trying to demolish that God, I rather attempt to channel those sentiments associated with it in the human psyche towards something more productive and humane.

My mission is to make the external God of human society obsolete in front of humanity’s internal Godliness.

As a humanist scientist I focus on giving humanity something rejuvenating, healthy and productive, instead of wasting my energy on the negative elements of the man-made God. Remember, negativity cannot be destroyed with negativity. Fill the humans with positivity and the negative elements would eventually become powerless. Darkness cannot be repelled with darkness. It takes light to do that.

Being a scientist does not mean simply saying the hard truth. You can do that in your journal publications, for later scientists to have the raw data to scrutinize and then draw conclusions from. But other than that you have another important job, that is to represent the truth to people beyond the bounds of journal articles, in a way that brings most positive outcome in the society. And that’s where you turn from a run of the mill scientist into a glorious humanist scientist – a thinker by all means.

Humanism itself is the basic quality that defines us humans. And every human who gives humans preference over everything else is a humanist. And when a scientist turns this simple internal character into an important part of his or her work, that scientist becomes a humanist scientist. Then on, his work is no longer purely about the discovery of truth, but also to mould that truth in a proper fashion before presenting it to the humans. Mind you o brave scientist, your job may be to find the truth, but the purpose behind that finding is to take the human civilization a few steps forward. You are a scientist, which means, you have the most effective tool in the entire world, that can actually shape the world, both literally and metaphorically. So, use that tool called science wisely. Science is like religion – in the wrong hands, they both do more harm than good.

So, make sure that your hands are the right hands. The world is filled with scientists, yet it is suffering from the agonies caused by its people. It’s because the world lacks courageous humanist scientists. What the world needs today my friend, is not yet another researcher of science, but a conscientious scientific researcher of humanism. Now, my question to you is – are you that person whom the world is desperately searching for? Are you?

Remember, as long as you deem science and philosophy merely as your work, such work shall only be a drop in a giant unfathomable ocean. You need to make science and philosophy your life, and only then you shall give rise to a tsunami of humanistic progress. It is a tsunami waiting to happen. It’s only a matter of time that you realize the true purpose of your life and make that tsunami manifest, first within and then without. Become the tsunami of practical optimistic truth and wash away all the weaknesses and horrible stains of the human world.

Further Reading

Principia Humanitas

Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost

When fame and abundance kiss somebody's feet before that person is wise enough, he or she is very likely to lose track of what's necessity and what's luxury. And modern society is filled with examples of such intelligent stupidity - stupidity that is carried out by apparently smart humans. Because being smart is not the same as being wise. The world has enough smartness, but not enough wisdom to bring that smartness into proper productive practice - and I mean productive practice not sophisticated practice - there is a difference. A person smart enough to visualize a Falcon rocket engine can easily pinpoint the locations of various organizations that spread terrorism, yet the person chooses to explore the space further instead of prioritizing the technological advantages to first fix real issues of the human society that inflict harm to the humans every walk of the way.

The world is a miserable place not because we have lack of resources, but because those who have an abundances of resources do not have the slightest idea of true human need. The resources needed for colonizing Mars if put to proper practice can fix the world's global warming issues - it can fix the world's climate change issues - it can fix the world's terrorism issues, yet people are more interested in the pompous idea of living in Mars for whatever reason, instead of paying attention to improving human condition on earth. I am not against technological advancement, for I am a scientist, but my soul aches when I see smart people are dumb enough to chase after illusory glory of doing something different and innovative instead of focusing the powers of their soul on cleaning up the misery business on earth. You can, yet you don't. Why?

Smartness without wisdom is stupidity. You are smart - yes indeed - but I am sorry - you are stupid at the same time. How can you dream of having a cheese burger on Mars when your own kind on Earth is suffering! How can you think of taking rich kids into the orbit just so they can admire the beauty of earth from the heavens, when that very earth is infested with the primordial evils of human character! Awaken the human within you my friend, and pay attention. Awaken the human within and let it consume all the miseries from the world that you live in. Say a member of your family falls ill, would you ignore his or her misery completely just because you want to make life more comfortable for others than it already is, or would you first try everything in your capacity in order to heal your loved one!

Be wise my friend, for it is not enough to be smart. You are smart - there is no doubt about that - so utilize that smartness for humanity and heal your own kind. Heal your kind with your capacity my friend. It is wailing for healers - not some delusional faith healers, but real tangible healers. Would you not do anything! Would you not give your soul to fix the broken soul of this world! Arise my friend, Awake my friend and work for humanity, not to make it sophisticated, but to make it peaceful first. Remember, humanity first, then everything else.
Peace first, sophistication later. Harmony first, luxury later.


Your Friend
Abhijit Naskar, Neuroscientist

I say things – things that would most gloriously make me appear as an atheist to people, such as – “God is a human creation” – “scriptures come from humans” – “forget the gods and pay attention to humans”. However I never hail myself as atheist, and you never hear me saying out loud that I am an atheist. And it is because one simple reason, I hate discrimination, I hate bigotry and I hate creating walls. I don’t wanna create an wall between me and all the peace loving people in the world who are just happy with their religiousness and they are not trying to impose on anybody’s else’s beliefs. Now, these are the people are I work for, just like I work for all other humans who want progress, who want the world to be a better place, if not for us, at least for our children. That’s why I don’t call myself an atheist.

Because when you put a label on yourself, that label comes along with a log of psychological baggage. And in most cases you may not be aware of these correlated psychological elements, but those who listen to you may do. So in their brain they would draw an image of your personality. And they will give that image qualities based on their subjective understanding of the label that you imposed on yourself. Like when you say you are an atheist, usually the religious population of the planet would very easily deem you to be against all of their religiousness – religiousness that is a part of their identity. And you cannot take away that identity – if you try, then there would be no difference between you and the religious fundamentalism.

And though I am not anti-religion, I am anti-fundamentalism. Fundamentalists do not make up the whole religious population on earth. As a scientist, as an educator, of course I am against indoctrinating children, I am against teaching them biblical stories as factual truth, I am against prayer given more attention than actual human contribution in the society. Still I am not against religion, because of those people who identify themselves as religious but do not take their scriptures literally and have the brain capacity to think which part of those books are good and which are not. And this process of taking the good things from the scriptures and ignoring the primitive ones, happens in most of the religious psyches of the world quite unconsciously.

I am not an atheist, because of these peace-loving religious people who are simply good people and they accept people from different religious orientation as equal. And no, not all religious people go around their neighborhood screaming the exclusive superiority of their religion and God over all others. They love their religion, but they don’t make a fuss over it, like the fundamentalists do. Religion is simply a part of their cultural identity, nothing more – it is fostered as a supremacist ideology only in the head of the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists are the enemy because they are driven by the elementary primitive notion of their religion being superior to all others, and hence other people are lesser humans. Fundamentalism is the enemy, not religion. In fact, fundamentalism is an enemy of religion itself, because in a progressive civilized society religion means realization of your inner divinity, not meek obedience to books of the dead people.

I am a scientist, and as such one of my core purposes is to understand the truth behind various phenomena of the universe with as much accuracy as possible And one of those phenomena is religion. And in order to understand it with as less subjective biases as possible, I must refrain from being called either “religious” or “atheist”. Now that’s the scientific reason for me to not hail myself as either atheist or religious. And as for the humane reason, which is more appealing to me as a human being, it is that the only label I go with is “human” – because that’s the label I received from Mother Nature. And that’s the label that makes me a part of human lives in human society, regardless of religion, regardless of race, regardless of gender and regardless of sexual orientation. The label of human is beyond race, beyond religion, beyond gender and beyond sexual orientation.



Further Reading

Principia Humanitas

Illusion of Religion: A Treatise on Religious Fundamentalism

You know what humanity is best at! It is best at distorting stuff - distorting thoughts, ideas, and more specifically words. Among these distorted words lie terms like religion, philosophy, science, faith, and others. But the one term that we are interested in, in this piece, is the term "humanism". Humanism is next in the line of distorted words, right after the word "religion". To be very articulate in brief - the terms "humanism" and "religion" are essentially one and the same thing, yet a whole so-called human lifetime is not enough for most humans to actually fathom this simple mortal revelation. Most humans neurotically perceive religion to be the system of following doctrines and humanism to be a pompous philosophy of the intellectuals.

In reality, religion is not a system of following doctrines at all. If anything, it is about not following any doctrine and finding out things for yourself. And, humanism is no more a philosophy than love is. Love is not a philosophy, neither is humanism. In fact, if we go underneath the layers of words and labels, we would see that love is essentially plain, ordinary, everyday humanism - it is as simple as that - there is nothing more for me to tell you about humanism. I don't really intend to tell you anything about humanism in this piece. Rather, let's find out together, what humanism is not.

For starters, it's not a pompous philosophy or an ideology for a bunch of people to discuss over a cup of coffee. As I have said in "Principia Humanitas":

“Humanism is not a pompous philosophy to be talked and debated about by a handful of intellectuals - it is the purest form of moral compass, which defines the civilized heart of thinking humanity.”

Humanism simply means to be human. Now you may wonder, what does "to be human" even mean! Does it mean you need to wear a specific sophisticated label that makes you appear as a smart and over-glorified intellectual! Does it mean, you need to talk sense all the time! Does it mean, you stop believing in anything that does not fit your ship-shape limited logical perception! Does it mean, that you have to be the smartest person in the group and make more sense somehow than all others around you! Does it mean, you have to be a so-called non-believer or atheist, and have to defend that atheism, at all costs, like the religious fundamentalists do with their own beliefs and delusions, above all humane fundamentals!

Let me go straight ahead and say it - No. You don't need to do any of it - as in, none of it - you don't even have to call yourself a so-called humanist - because most of the so-called humanists are not actually advocating actual qualities of being human, rather they are advocating radical rationalism - radical logicality. One recent incident comes to my mind in this context - it is their support for corporations that forbid their muslim employees to wear a hijab at work-place. Full-body burqa with niqab that covers the whole face of a woman, may surely be a sign of uncivilized cultural barbarianism, because it basically exudes a clear implication of segregation against all humans, but not a simple hijab, which is basically a scarf that one wears around the head. So, advocacy of banning basic cultural elements, is not a sign of progress or being human. This kind of radical attitude may not look as immediately dangerous as radical fundamentalism does, but, it is nevertheless, as harmful as that. In fact, radical rationalism is nothing but atheistic fundamentalism or logical fundamentalism. As I have said in "Principia Humanitas":

"Fundamentalism of any kind, be it religious, atheistic, political or educational, is the greatest threat to human excellence – it is a threat to progress – it is a threat to greatness."

The whole business of fundamentalism, which is basically an extreme sense of either romanticism or logicality, is unavoidably destructive and needs a bit of scolding from the real humans - by real humans I don't mean intellectually superior humans, for intellect has very little to do with this real human thing - it has to do with acceptance of weakness and rejection of hatred and extremism. This extremism as we see more and more today, does not always rise from the obvious so-called religious sides. It can rise from any side - and it will keep on rising, as long as sides appear to be more important to humans, than human life itself.

We have this remarkable thing called "life", yet somehow, quite disgracefully, it has become less glorious and significant, in front of the fake glory of labels and ideologies. This is what advancement without conscience does to a species. We have advanced externally, before we actually truly evolved internally. Biological evolution is a fact, and that very biological evolution led to our so-called psychological evolution - I am saying so-called not because it is false. We have evolved psychologically indeed and through this evolution we have gained extraordinary psychological capacities, that basically are not possessed by any other species on earth, yet those capacities are not utilized at their fullest and most productive potential. It's like having money and yet wasting it on unhealthy non-sense like alcohol and expensive cigars, while your neighbor is starving in front of your eyes.

Correct application of the mental faculties cannot be taught to a whole species - it automatically starts when the species gets an actual grip over its true necessities. Earth is necessity, not Mars. Food and water are necessities, not alcohol and cigarettes. To be human is necessity, not being a believer or non-believer. Now comes the real question - what are you?

Recommended Reading
Principia Humanitas

Take my life if you want,
But nothing can take my sight away.
Take my breath if you want,
But nothing can take my might away.
Take my feet if you want,
But nothing can take my journey away.
Take my arms if you want,
But nothing can take my touch away.
Take my tongue if you want,
But nothing can take my voice away.
Take my bones if you want,
But nothing can take my will away.
You can erase me from earth if you so desire,
But you can't stop my ideas from spreading like wildfire.

One two three,
Reason will make you free.
Four five six,
Prejudices must be fixed.
Seven eight nine,
Shout aloud, the world is mine.
Ten eleven twelve,
In love humans ought to delve.
Thirteen fourteen fifteen,
To assimilate you must be keen.
Sixteen seventeen eighteen,
With kindness you must lean.
Nineteen twenty twenty-one,
It’s you that peace depends upon.
Twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four,
Give to the society more and more.
Twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven,
Only actions can build an actual heaven.
Twenty-eight twenty-nine thirty,
Life is to lift the world, not party.

Of all nations on earth,
No nation is the best.
Of all religions on earth,
No religion is the best.
Of all cultures on earth,
No culture is the best,
Of all colors on earth,
No color is the best.
Of all genders on earth,
No gender is the best,
Of all philosophies on earth,
No philosophy is the best.
The world is diverse for us to be strong,
By walking together we'll fly high and long.

You asked, what's my nation,
I say it's humanity.
You asked, what's my language,
I say it's magnanimity.
You asked, what's my culture,
I say it's humaneness.
You asked, what's my tradition,
I say it's humbleness.
You asked, what's my gender,
I say it's fortitude.
You asked, what's my religion,
I say it's servitude.
You asked everything except my purpose.
I tell you now, it's to unite the universe.

Be unrealistic and work for a world,
That the society considers nonsense.
Once upon a time taming fire was unreal,
Then arose a bunch of brave sentience.
Today's madness is tomorrow's sanity,
If we’re mad enough to stand solo on guard.
Today's sacrifice is tomorrow's civilization,
If we can give all without hoping reward.
If only one person dies for the cause,
A hundred people realize their humanity.
I may die today in the line of duty,
But the struggle continues through eternity.
So let us be brave and go beyond reality.
Let us be accountable and do the necessary.

Wanna study a superpower, study America.
Wanna study dysfunctional power, still study America.
Wanna study spirituality, study India.
Wanna study rotten spirituality, still study India.
Wanna study rise of secularism, study Turkish Republic.
Wanna study fall of secularism, still study Turkish Republic.
Wanna study standards of beauty, study the Korean Republic.
Wanna study doctored beauty, still study the Korean Republic.
Wanna study pride and loyalty, study good old Britannia.
Wanna study primeval pride and loyalty, still study Britannia.
Wanna study statehood, study People's Republic of China.
Wanna study the horrors of statehood, still study China.
Every nation on earth suffers from a distinct ailment.
The first step towards recovery is acknowledgement.