Value

The rapper/gangster subculture of the last twenty years has based song after song on the theme of respect. That culture seems incapable of realizing that respect is gained where respect is given. Brutality does not earn respect. It earns fear and violence.

Rather than approaching one another with macho intimidation, I suggest we take each other in with an eye to value those things which make each of us unique and valuable in some way. Valuing one another and ourselves for what we can contribute is a way to avoid focusing on our deficits and weaknesses.

The current pop-culture abhorrence of "judging" is often a defense against looking at selfish and/or dysfunctional behavior in ourselves. Judgment is absolutely necessary to survival and productivity in life. Anyone who stops judging human behaviors and situations will have a bumpy road ahead. However, judging behaviors can be balanced by valuing those aspects of behaviors, people and situations, which enhance our lives. In other words, it helps to learn to tolerate the bad, within limits, while appreciating the good in any relationship or situation.

As we become more adept at recognizing and validating value in our relationships and life situations, our lives gain depth and quality. This process helps us to define our own personal values, which then become sign posts along our paths in life.

Universal

Universal human rights would be the same civil rights for every human being, no matter how they look or what they believe or whom they love or where they were born. Everyone, everywhere.

This requires a change in human perception. Rather than granting people respect based on their looks or how they sound, it requires granting all people the same respect on first look. This challenges an instinctual human tendency to classify. It is a survival instinct. Is this object safe or dangerous? Life experience shapes the form this instinct takes as people age. Education, ignorance, love or trauma can shape this instinct, for functional good or dysfunction.

For people old enough to have been shaped by life, learning to disregard the tendency to classify people as safe (good) or unsafe (bad), based on very superficial criteria, is nearly impossible. It requires tremendous practice and mindfulness. And, even then, the mind reverts to old habits easily.

Meditation in Buddhism is a tool to overcome the dysfunctional mind, the cluttered mind. As a humanist, I find meditation helpful. However, I find that I have been able to develop my own little instant-replay system. As I go through my day, I evaluate my responses to people and my interactions with them. I try to keep that more objective consciousness running, like a surveillance camera, which I can replay after an interaction or an experience.

I have learned a great deal from this practice. I have been able to use some of what I have learned for the better in my life. I have also learned how deeply judgmental and prejudiced I tend to be towards people. Decades of dyed-in-the-wool habits, which are exhaustively relentless, just under my conscious mind.

Prejudice is simply stupid. Judgment is not in itself a bad thing. As a nurse in an acute psychiatric ward, I was paid for my preformed understanding of certain dysfunctional behaviors. I was also paid to make professional judgments about dealing with these behaviors to avoid violence or unnecessary pain. I want an experience cop around if I am in a dangerous situation. His informed classification of a behavior, based on training and experience, could lead to a judgment which could save my life.

Universal judgments about racial, ethnic or sexual groups are counterproductive and unsafe. They lead to violence, war and social regression. Perhaps the current political correctness of certain social classes and arenas is a good form of behavioral therapy for nonconstructive prejudices and judgments. However, the tendency of the politically correct to condemn all judgment, even when based on experience and knowledge, as bad or wrong is simply stupid, in my opinion.

My practice as a humanist is to promote universal human rights in any way I can. I see this as a process that occurs with one situation or relationship at a time. I think the political advocacy of specific special-interest groups in the American political system is currently an anachronistic method to achieve universal human rights. I feel the process is in itself divisive. I would prefer to see all groups who feel disenfranchised joined in a universal human rights coalition, which could approach government and demand comprehensive legislation on human rights for everyone in society.