New Humanism

Children are initially innocent, in the sense that they are a priori not influenced by prejudice. They are also curious to get to know the world around them. For them, that world is a world of discovery, fantasy and play, but also a world in which they become confronted either directly or indirectly with issues such as climate change, pandemics, poverty and religious, cultural and political conflicts.

With their innocence and curiosity, children are also vulnerable, as they can easily be manipulated by purported truths and ‘evidence-based’ stories of the adult world. However, that doesn’t mean we should keep things simple for them, on the contrary. Cognitive development theory as well as every day experience tells us that children, in their development towards adolescence and beyond, have the early and intrinsic capability to deal with the complexity of the world around them. Taking that complexity as a given, they have the right to develop the intellectual and ethical competences to learn to deal with it.

With that premise, the New Humanism Project wants to open the dialogue on what it implies for all of us to become human in a complex world. That dialogue could start from the following three questions:

What are the intellectual and ethical competences children need to develop in order to become (self)reflexive, caring and tolerant cosmopolitans or ‘citizens of the world’?

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What kind of education could support and guide them in that becoming while they are at the same time exploring their own path of life?

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Is there a need for a universal curriculum for ethical competence and, if so, what should it contain?

Obviously, a reflection on this topic is also a reflection on the ethical positions adults (as parents, educators, policy makers, …) would adopt with respect to it. In that sense, deliberating an ‘education for a cosmopolitanism beyond comfort zones’ is at the same time a reflection on what adults think is good for (their) children and on what we can learn from different visions among them.

workshops
Becoming Human in a Complex World
dialogues on an education for a cosmopolitanism beyond comfort zones

We launched the dialogue with a pilot workshop in New York on 27 September 2019 with the aim to organise follow-up workshops with people and organisations having a specific interest or role in education practice, theory or policy all over the world. The corona pandemic has put a temporary halt to that plan, but we came back, and are eager to continue the dialogue with you.

The outcome of the dialogues will cristallise into a synthesis text that will be presented to UNESCO as a recommendation. Just like UNESCO and countless people and organisations, we affirm that the right to education is a fundamental human right, but we believe committing to that right doesn’t stop with providing access to education. Recognising diversity and pluralism but also equality, attention should also go to the competences we all need to joyfully, freely and responsibly live together and to care for each other while facing those complex social, cultural and environmental issues now and the future.

Contact us
if you would like to organise a workshop with us.

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The adagio that we cannot solve our societal problems with the same methods that (facilitate to) create them is well known. The vision that inspiration and motivation for ‘new methods’ need to come from deeper thinking about who we are as individuals and groups and about how to deliberate these problems and live together is less popular. This vision is the point of departure of the New Humanism project, and it thereby deliberately distinguishes the political from the social context.

The idea is that, for the political, in order to tackle societal problems such as climate change, poverty and the various forms of social oppression, we first need to rethink and reform the formal methods we use to make sense of our coexistence, namely the methods of education, scientific research and democracy. Second, but not least, there is an urgent need to reconsider the modern conformist patterns aimed to ‘order’ our social relationships, as they alienate the human being from what love can and should be: a compassionate love for the other, based on a reflexive self-care, while accepting the ethics and aesthetics of ambiguity of that connectedness.

Why would we need a ‘new humanism’ for this? What’s wrong with the old one? We aim to present here a vision on our individual and collective being and capacity transcending the one that emerged as a reaction against oppression by the pre-modern elites of emperors and priests. While liberating ourselves from this oppression was of course a good thing as such, throughout the following ages of social, scientific and technological progress, humanity has built up a self-confidence leading to the current ‘hyper-rationality’ driving education, science, economics, politics and even our social and love relationships today. In that sense, the New Humanism Project explores a new way of looking at the problems the world is facing. It rejects cynical post-whatever defeatism as well as ‘back to the good old and simple times’ nostalgia. Alternatively, we want to present an ‘ethics of care’ view on who we are, what we can know and should know and how we can deliberate the issues, and we believe this view is essential for how we organise our coexistence.

Read a general introduction to the why of this endeavour here.

We invite everyone to join the dialogue, whatever background, expertise or orientation. Go to the forum if you want to jump into it right away or contact us if you have specific ideas or proposals.

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The New Humanism Project brings together a collective of people with diverse (spiritual) origins, colours and interests. They all contribute to the project as volunteers, sharing expertise and insights from out of their own professional contexts.

Gaston Meskens launched the project and coordinates the whole thing.

Gaston is a philosophical activist and artist with master degrees in theoretical physics and nuclear physics and a PhD in moral philosophy (University of Ghent, Belgium).  His art and philosophical work dwell around the question of how to better deal with uncertainty and complexity in a world still struggling with the cramps of modernity.

More about Gaston here.

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The activities within the New Humanism project are done in cooperation with the following cool people:

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Shamina de Gonzaga is the Executive Director and Main Representative to the UN of the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations (WCPUN), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to facilitating partnerships across sectors that promote awareness and implementation of the UN’s goals, and Editor-in Chief of Centerpoint Now, a WCPUN publication. She is the co-founder of What Moves You?, an educational media collaborative with projects including the “Indocumentales/ Undocumentaries” traveling documentary film and dialogue series on Mexico-US immigration, and the “Global Voices” traveling exhibit on the Millennium Development Goals. Formerly Special Adviser on NGO relations in the Office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly for GA Presidents Jan Eliasson of Sweden, Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa of Bahrain, and Srgjan Kerim of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, she has worked with non-governmental organizations since 1996, and was the Chair of the 61st Annual Conference of NGOs associated to the UN Department of Public Information, “Reaffirming Human Rights for All,” marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNESCO, Paris). She co-authored with Michaela Walsh, the publication Founding a Movement: Women’s World Banking 1975-1990 and holds a Master and Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages from the University of Pennsylvania.

Arianna Flores Corral is a Fellow within the United Nations University Early Career Climate Fellowship Programme of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Before that, she worked as a Climate Change and Education for Sustainable Development Fellow in the Global Development Network based in New Delhi, India. She has worked as a consultant for UNESCO on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and was an intern in the ESD section at UNESCO Asia and the Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok. She has published multiple articles, reports and/or book chapters, both in English and Spanish, related to environmental policies in Mexico, sustainable cities in Thailand, electricity security in the Nordic Countries, resilience, adaptation to climate change and education for sustainable development.

Kurt Johnson has worked in professional science and comparative religion over 40 years. He has a PhD in Evolution and Ecology and is author of over 200 scientific articles and seven books, along with further articles at Kosmos Journal, The Contemplative Journal, Evolution Institute, Integral Life with Ken Wilber and peace studies with Philip Hellmich of the SHIFT Network. A prominent figure on international committees, particularly at the United Nations, he is author of the influential book The Coming Interspiritual Age (2013) and two award-winning books in science: Nabokov’s Blues (2000) and Fine Lines (2015). Kurt, a former monastic, is a member or founder of The Evolutionary Leaders, The Association of Transformational Leaders, the international Contemplative Alliance, the Gaiafield and Subtle Activism Networks, the Self Care to Earth Care network, the UN NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, the NGO Forum 21 Institute, and the UN Committee for International Yoga Day, and is President of the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Kurt has served on the faculty of New York’s Interfaith Seminary for 12 years and, for 25 years was associated there with the American Museum of Natural History. He is host for UNITY EARTH’s Convergence radio series at VoiceAmerica, a series featuring global change-makers, and an editor of UE’s two magazines:  The Convergence and Light on Light.

Ken Kitatani currently serves as the Executive Director of the Forum 21 Institute. He is an ordained minister of Sukyo Mahikari Centers for Spiritual Development and is the Chief Administration Officer of their UN NGO (with special consultative status with UN ECOSOC). He also Co-chairs the Advisory Board of the Center for Earth Ethics of Union Theological Seminary and is on the Executive Board of the United Nations Committee for Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns and the Committee for Religious NGOs. Ken graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in East Asian Studies.

Margaret Ninsin holds a masters degree in Legal Studies, a special executive masters in International Business Law and a PhD in Legal Studies. She currently holds the position of General Counsel at OLMEC, an international organization represented in Europe, America and Africa that seeks to raise funds for development projects in Africa. She also works as Chief Executive Officer of MNISSI Law Consult, a legal firm based in Accra, Ghana, where she specializes in arbitration and legal research. Margaret is an advocate working on Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous knowledge, especially in African tropical medicines. She is the founder and president of the Intellectual Capital Institute of Africa, an organization that works in several areas of research and development but most importantly in the area of advocacy for the protection of indigenous knowledge.

Silke Van Cleuvenbergen is the founder and director of the cultural network organisation Praktisch Wild. With a master’s degree in art sciences and more than a decade of experience in art education with a diversity of target groups, she aspires to continuously deepen her insight into the relevance of art, culture and creativity in the personal space and in the development of humans and their surroundings.

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write to

gaston@newhumanism.org

or via

https://www.instagram.com/new.humanism/