Positive Humanism: A Primer
Bo Bennett
December 12, 2021
Dr. Bo Bennett spoke about “Positive Humanism.” He started by differentiating two types of religious believers: “hardcore,” and everybody else, for whom religion is mostly a cultural acquisition, and who can be persuaded away from it. Bennett said religion does offer a lot of good to a lot of people, “a package deal.” But positive humanism offers a better deal.
Bennett spoke of his own background, growing up Catholic, in the second category. His “drug of choice” was motivational speakers and books. Which he drew from in producing his own book about business success, after achieving it with a financial payday during the 1990s dotcom boom; he became a paid speaker too. Until realizing all this stuff was basically full of crap.
He also lost religion, seeing that too was full of crap, and becoming an “angry atheist,” actively debating the subject. Until calming down and moving to his “positive humanism:” An “outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters . . . stressing the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasizing common human needs, and seeking solely rational ways of solving human problems.”
He also invoked “positive psychology” – a scientific approach focusing on strengths, not weaknesses, and building the good in lives rather than repairing the bad. It has five elements, with the acronym PERMA – Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement.
All this Bennett characterized as an applied philosophy aimed at improved wellbeing, with no supernatural aspects, instead science-based using reason and critical thinking. He noted there’s no mention of social and political issues, which he prefers to leave aside.
The biggest question that arises, Bennett said, is how we get morality. Is it objective or subjective? Of course there’s the idea that we get it from God. But Bennett invoked Socrates’s Euthyphro question: does God make up moral rules, or get them from somewhere? If the former, it’s just fiat; if the latter, then God is merely a middleman. And anyhow, no human can actually access Godly truths; we cannot trust what his self-appointed human interlocutors say.
So Bennett moved on to a “quick introduction” to other major moral theories. There’s moral subjectivism, acknowledging it’s just based on how a person feels. Cultural relativism just accepts what any particular culture happens to decree. Ethical egoism says morality is determined by one’s own best interests. Kant’s “deontology” says one should do what would be good if everyone else did likewise. And utilitarianism seeks the greatest good for the greatest number.
But what Bennett himself prefers is “sentiocentrism” – looking to the overall effect on the wellbeing of organisms in proportion to their ability to experience wellbeing. But he allowed that morality is incredibly complicated. With a secular-based wellbeing morality as our goal-based choice, it’s an ongoing discussion.