Bill Cooke’s article “Must Humanism Be Optimistic?” (Free Inquiry, October/November 2021), reminded me of the reasons I’m reluctant to call myself a humanist. Although my main objection is to the term itself, I’m also uncomfortable with “The Affirmations of Humanism:  A Statement of Principles.”

My least favorite principle is the one cited by Cooke:

We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

I respect and admire Paul Kurtz, the author of the Affirmations. He was a giant in the philosophical realm, and our debt to him as secular humanists (for want of a better term) is immeasurable. But times have changed since he wrote those Affirmations and not for the better. In today’s environment, the principle quoted above reads like a greeting card for Secular Humanist Apologetics Day.

Temporarily skipping the first “belief” (optimism rather than pessimism), the paragraph knocks over a platoon of straw men: despair, dogma, ignorance, guilt, sin, fear, hatred, selfishness, ugliness, blind faith, and irrationality. Believe it or not, we secular humanists really do reject those things, along with cruelty, terrorism, and poor personal hygiene. Must we actually articulate our opposition, or are we just trying to convince the religious majority that we’re not as bad as they think we are?

Back to optimism. I’m uncomfortable with a defining statement of principles that requires a belief in optimism. I can no more “believe in” optimism than I can believe there’s a god, or that the United States is the greatest country in the history of the world (whatever that means), or, like Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, that every awful occurrence is really for the best because we live in the best of all possible worlds. If that’s what’s required to be a secular humanist, I’m out.

Optimism in today’s United States would border on the delusional. Truth itself is under attack. The assault is led by an orange madman who was elected president once, nearly elected again, and may be reelected in the next cycle. One of our two major political parties has embraced this madman’s lunacy, kowtowing to his nihilistic whims and promoting his lies in support of its antidemocratic agenda. The other party, while generally well-intentioned, seems too hobbled by civility and protocol to mount an effective opposition.

Nearly half the country (74 million voters!) endorses Donald Trump’s insanity and wants to reinstate him. Due to our anachronistic governmental structure and electoral system, Trump’s supporters have been able to clog the legislative process and impose their minority programs on the majority of our people. Their leaders unabashedly lie to achieve their desired goals, which include overturning election results, rescinding the right of women to control their own bodies, forcing their particularly obnoxious version of Christianity into a position of national privilege, confounding all efforts to mitigate climate change, and endangering the lives of our citizens by advancing a false narrative about COVID-19 vaccines.

Our nation is teetering on the brink of an authoritarian coup. The success or failure of that coup may well depend on the outcome of our forthcoming midterm election, which right now isn’t looking too promising. Optimism, anyone?

Steven Pinker has suggested the world is getting better, as evidenced by a relative decrease in violence (in proportion to the world’s population) and an increase in human lifespan. He attributes this progress to humanity’s embrace of Enlightenment concepts, particularly science and reason. But reason, most notably in the United States, has never been embraced by the general populace, a fact that corrupt and authoritarian leaders have exploited repeatedly to forward their own interests. And science is primarily a tool, a blind instrument that can be (and is) used for good, evil, altruistic, or egocentric purposes according to the inclination of the user.

Ironically, the improvements cited by Pinker are facilitating our downfall. We may be experiencing a relative decrease in worldwide violence and a (short-lived?) increase in average lifespan, but those tendencies are also contributing to an unsustainable increase in population. In addition to overpopulation, our blind devotion to “progress” has led to widespread pollution and an ever-increasing depletion of the resources needed for our continued survival. Our world is growing hotter, more arid, and less habitable at an accelerating rate.

But if we can’t believe in optimism, is pessimism our only alternative? Why not realism? This would entail observing events, developing opinions, testing those opinions (if only by thinking them through), and drawing realistic conclusions. Then we could opine or proceed according to our conclusions or do more hypothecating and testing. Kind of a quick and dirty application of the scientific method—less rigorous and formalized but nonetheless a mature and logical approach to accounting for life’s random absurdities.

Now let’s dissect our self-imposed title, “secular humanist.” To most of us, secular means we reject religious or supernatural explanations of anything and everything. Within this context, the word implies an embrace of reason along with a respect for the scientific method. It seems like a worthy adjective.

Humanist means we’re concerned with the welfare and betterment of humans. This seems to make sense at a parochial level, because humans are what we happen to be. But many, if not most, of us extend our concern to nonhuman species as well, which suggests, at least to me, that the term humanist is inadequate. In fact, considering the devastation humanity has wreaked upon every other earthly life form beyond microbial complexity, the term seems downright embarrassing.

Although many of the existing principles of “The Affirmations of Humanism” are worth retaining, we should jettison the platitudes and “feel-good” generalities. We also should consider retiring the “humanist” appellation and substituting something like “rationalist” or “freethinker.” For example, we could call ourselves “secular rationalists.” We could also rethink our aspirations, a discussion to which I look forward.