When you look at another, do you see our differences or our similarities?

Most judge others by their differences, observing their race, appearance, sex, and in numerous other ways.

Those, however, who see only our similarities, truly understand the genuine worth of another is not on the outside, but rather may only be found within.

The daily schedule for the Convergence event, organized by the Spiritual Naturalist Society, is now available at https://www.snsociety.org/convergence-2026-an-online-conference-for-all-spiritual-naturalists/ . Themes and topics include Religious Naturalism, Current Challenges in Secular Mindfulness and the Future of Spiritual Naturalism, with individual presentations by experts and panel discussions.

It's amazing for me to see so many people from Western countries pointing at the US, relishing how the elitist and meddling country is facing its own hardship. They say, 'Our country doesn't have these problems! Our country is well-off! We're handling this just fine! No mass shootings or hysteria in sight!' - And they're patting themselves on the back. I see this as deeply naive. I'm specifically referring to nationalist countries like Canada, Poland, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and Turkey.

What do these countries plan for the near future? How will they navigate climate change, mass migration, bulwarking? How will they deal with the drug crisis, biochemical weapons, or financial/cyber warfare? They seem unprepared to me, and when they should be busy at work, they reinforce their social status and more or less continue as usual. Nature does not concern itself with human affairs. The war is not concerned with countries that have a few million people. Their hubris is their downfall. Their advantageous position is taken for granted, and the future hardship we will have to endure is written off.

They comfort themselves with their superiority, while feeling a deep sense of fear about their future. And why is that? Because they lost their military ally? And both allies that have a functioning navy? When having a navy is crucial to obtaining a military victory? They know they have lost their advantage and now instead of doubling down they recede into their ethnicity, their nation, their borders. The Union is fragmenting and won't last even 50 years at this rate. And I'll add, I talked about this in December of 2023:

This is mostly an illusion. I'd say Europe has 20-40 years more runway than the US. As you said, Europe's social safety net and legal system are strong. Regardless, these systems will buckle as climate change decimates Europe through drought, storms, war, etc. These issues are as urgent as one could imagine. Humanity is playing a game of chicken and we're the ones who will lose -- while the rich hide in their bunkers. [post]

In conclusion, I believe this hubris is a danger to us all. It's unbelievable to me after all this, given where we're at, that they haven't learned from the situation. Now is the time. We must all set aside our ego, our pride, and take ownership of our future.

Our words may spread love, but they may also be the cause of great pain.

Hurtful words may cause trauma, at times affecting someone for the entirety of their life.

Even one encounter may genuinely aid or terribly harm another.

Our life’s purpose is to help not hurt, love not hate other’s.

Our words, therefore, must always reflect kindness, compassion, and be shared with unconditional love.

World peace isn't one big switch — it's a lot of small systems working better at the same time. Here are the approaches that actually move the needle, from personal to global:

1. Start where you have influence

Learn how conflict really works. Most wars and hate movements start with a simple story: "us vs. them." Learning history, basic media literacy, and how propaganda uses fear makes that story less powerful.

Practice everyday de-escalation. Listening to understand instead of to reply, assuming good intent until proven otherwise, and being willing to apologize. Peaceful families and workplaces scale up — societies that are violent at home are rarely peaceful abroad.

Reduce contempt in your own feeds. Unfollow accounts that profit from outrage, follow people who live very differently from you. Contempt is the emotion that makes violence feel justified.

1. Build community resilience

Create contact across divides. The most proven tool in social psychology is sustained, cooperative contact — working side-by-side on a shared project with people from a different group. Sports leagues, volunteer cleanups, community gardens, interfaith service projects.

Support local problem-solvers. Neighborhood mediation centers, youth mentorship, after-school programs, and job training do more to prevent violence than speeches about peace. When young people have a stake and a future, recruitment by extremist groups collapses.

Protect truth infrastructure. Local libraries, independent local news, transparent school boards, open town halls. Communities that can discuss facts together can resolve conflict without violence.

1. Systems that make peace more likely

Education for all, especially girls. Every additional year of schooling, especially for girls and women, is strongly correlated with lower conflict, higher economic stability, and better health outcomes.

Economic fairness and opportunity. Poverty doesn't cause war by itself, but extreme inequality + unemployment + corruption creates fertile ground. Fair trade, microloans, small business support, and enforceable anti-corruption laws reduce desperation.

Strong, impartial institutions. This is the unglamorous one: courts people trust, elections people trust, police who are accountable, free press, protection for minorities. When people believe they can get justice without violence, they choose nonviolence.

Diplomacy and arms control. Sustained dialogue channels, peacekeeping missions, treaties on nuclear, chemical, and small arms, and programs that help former combatants reintegrate.

Environmental cooperation. Water, food, and climate stress are conflict multipliers. Shared management of rivers, oceans, energy, and disaster response gives countries a reason to cooperate even when they disagree on other things.

1. A few habits you can try this week

Have one conversation with someone you disagree with where your only goal is to be able to repeat their view back to their satisfaction

Volunteer for 2 hours locally — it counters helplessness and builds social trust

Learn the conflict history of one place you only know from headlines, from sources written by people who live there

Donate or support organizations focused on mediation, humanitarian aid, or education rather than just outrage

In an argument, separate the person from the problem — attack the problem together

Peace isn't the absence of disagreement. It's a way of handling disagreement so people don't get harmed.

If you want, I can turn this into a plan for you — like a 30-day personal practice, ideas for a classroom or church group near Spruce Pine, or organizations to explore based on what matters most to you.

So tired of lines that have been drawn then dictated that we choose a side. Treating people like they’re worthless if their appearance or thoughts are different than the ones that have been confirmed to by a larger group. Tired that the human population doesn’t realize we’re all in this together. And to think otherwise is done in the service of ignorance or greed. Please don’t tell me the human race is doomed to this. I will die one day. But will the human race die? Will there be because we have absolutely nothing to give us place in the cosmos? Is our legacy doomed because our biological inadequacies? Please be better so the human race doesn’t fade. Cosmic chaos I understand, solar indiscriminate destruction, sure. Planetary imbalance, ok. But annihilation set forth by those who are a part of the human race, please don’t do that. Please?

Mind serves instincts. Survival instincts.
Survival of who? 1) One person, 2) a society, а group of people, 3) all humanity.

For example, the mind helps survival:

1. For a person: to find food, to get a good job, and so on.
2. For a society: it makes up ideas (like democracy, Islam, or communism) to explain why people must live this way. This helps the group (society) fight and survive against other groups.
3. For all humanity: this text exists to help humanity survive. It stops humans from killing themselves in wars where groups fight like wild animals in the jungle while hiding behind ideas and "truth".

Mind is useless if it does not help us survive.
Mind must know its place.
It is a servant. It is not the main boss in the life of a person, a society, or humanity.

Let us not praise the mind. This can lead to the suicide of global humanity.

The mind claims to hold the truth, but this is only because claiming the truth helped survival in the Pre-Nuclear Era. Claims to truth are now obsolete. In the Nuclear Era, the Mind's claims to truth, just like Faith's claims to truth, are suicidal for all global humanity because they lead to division and wars.

Let us work together to stop the suicide of humanity in the fight of people who rely too much on their mind or faith.

The human mosaic is made up of many different colors when seen together reflect the beauty and love in the world. Most though, choose to see the mosaic, each as a separate hue. This results in prejudice, as we differentiate and judge others by their race, ethnicity, sex, religion, wealth, and in hundreds of other ways. By viewing our world and each other separately, we see only the worst of humanity, resulting in war, hunger, inequity, and the needless struggles from living in a self-centered world.

We need not continue though, to view the world and others this way. Instead, we may choose to see the exquisiteness of the completed mosaic, one where the colors are arranged in a beautiful design. If we do, rather than only seeing the worse in others, we now will see our similarities instead, realizing only together, selflessly sharing our innate wisdom and unconditional love, our spirit with all others, may we all realize life’s true potential and understand the genuine reason for our life’s journey.

Just like a mosaic, it is when we combine all our differences into a beautiful montage that will we truly understand, it is only by uniting our spirit’s wisdom and love with the spirit within all others, the true beauty of life may reveal itself.

Hi everyone!

Some asylum seekers in New Zealand would like their cases to be allocated sooner. Should they have the right to make such a request? If an asylum claim is ultimately declined, the applicant is generally required to leave New Zealand. So this proposal is not intended to extend anyone's stay in New Zealand.

A petition submitted to the New Zealand Parliament proposes giving standard onshore asylum seekers the right to request earlier case allocation without having to demonstrate exceptional circumstances, while retaining existing priority categories.

The Government's 2026 Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill proposes tighter rules for certain aspects of the asylum process in response to concerns that the system may be exploited. This petition focuses instead on giving applicants who want earlier allocation the right to request it.

From a humanist perspective, should applicants have this opportunity as a matter of procedural fairness?

New Zealand Parliament allows people living overseas, including non-citizens, to sign its petitions.

View the parliamentary petition

I would welcome your thoughts. If you support the proposal, you're welcome to sign.

Thanks for reading!

After we have lived our lives, as we approach death, it is common to reexamine how our life went. Did we live a successful life? The end of life offers a unique opportunity to do this, because at this time, the ego, our learned self-centered beliefs, loosens its influence on us, And the spirit becomes our predominant reviewer.

At this point in the cycle of life, it no longer matters how much money we made, the size of the house we lived in, the job we had, or anything else associated with success, as dictated in the world by the ego. We are all finally equal now and we judge our success through a different prism: that of the spirit. When we review our lives, what we had thought was success often holds a different meaning now.

It is at this time, especially during the last few days of our life, we come to the realization what we thought was important, really was not. All the material things we accumulated, friends we had, places we visited, jobs we worked, amount of money we made, or any other comparison you can think of, which belongs in the world in which we had lived, becomes meaningless.

It is at that moment, the moment where the ego has minimal control over our actions and decisions, the true meaning of life finally becomes evident. It is then, despite how strongly the ego may have influenced our life before, the opportunity To view our life in a different way presents itself. At this time in our life, primarily viewing our lives through the eyes of our spirit, we may find we have many regrets.

We begin to understand the selfish pleasures in the world we had sought were not very important. As death becomes evident, we finally realize none of that matters. When we die, unless our culture is like that of the ancient Egyptians, our body will be buried or cremated, And nothing we accumulated during our lifetime will accompany us. Our body will then be placed in a coffin or urn, just like every other person who dies, regardless of their stature or their lifetime accomplishments.

At that moment, just before we die, we finally understand we truly are all equal. No one was ever better than another. Race, money, prestige, no longer matter. As we get closer to our death, it becomes evident the self-centered path the ego had us follow to find success and happiness may have not been the right path after all. The fear, hatred, and prejudice we once felt are no longer important to us, not because we are going to die, but because it never did matter.

~ Ken Luball ~

According to the website of Humanists UK:

After decades of working closely together, Humanists UK joined forces with the Rationalist Association (the parent body of the RPA) in 2025, emerging as a unified charity that today has over 150,000 members and supporters.

Members would presumably mean paying members of the organization. But what does "supporter" mean in this context? How are they counted? And how many actual members does Humanists UK actually have?

Humanity has the ability now to feed the hungry, clothe and house the needy, end climate change, war, intolerance, and many of the other self-inflicted challenges caused by their indifference to others who are different than them or who they do not know.

We must no longer accept these things are an irrefutable part of life; they are not. Only when we put the needs of the many before those of the few, may genuine change truly occur, and the many problems humanity has living in a self-centered world begin to be mitigated.

It's over: we have relinquished our grasp on the in the yolk of our own agency. Our chemistry is now subject to the exploitation of the few with the tools of many machines until the many machines makes tools of them.

we have done nothing about it, we are not doing anything about it, and we will continue to do nothing about it.

we had a good run.

This feels like a plug, but seeing many leftists feeling depressed about the world have inspired this event.

I'm from a Discord Humanist community, and this is our upcoming weekly voice event: "How to Have Hope and Agency in a Doomed and Justless World, the Humanist Way".

- For fellows to acknowledge the despair they feel about modern society and politics.

- But also a space to create Hope and a better life for each other. Not blind faith, not wishful afterlives. Actual Humanist action and support, even the smallest count.

- Also, open to member's interest in taking it in different directions.

- If this goes well, we can have future discussions or action plans. I'll support anyone up to make things happen.

Event link:
https://discord.gg/jjn7G296y?event=1560603434556727366

Community server: https://discord.gg/PtnM8s4cX

About this event:
We have Weekly Humanist Assemblies, which is a voice call event with weekly activities on discussion,  movies, games, or even research. Community support in general, and also for learning and growth.

Hi I'm new to this community but I was thinking about the show My Name is Earl. I really think most of the worlds problems could be solved if most people wrote down the bad things they did and actually try to solve it. It would teach a lot of empathy and understanding others. I don't think anyone IRL I including me has the discipline to do this publicly but I really think I could help.

Shine your light brightly; share your love unconditionally with all others, spreading inner peace and love around the world.

Doing so, you may help awaken in others their light within as well, beginning them on a journey to discover inner peace and love in their life as well.

I see a lot of dissatisation online, people dissatisified with the way the world works.

I asked "what does the world need?" to a futurist friend.

Her answer may seem obvious, and I know the answer has surfaced in culture many times, but I thought some people may like to hear her thoughts from this year.

Here is what she wrote:

The ultimate answer is: Love.

Seems in very short supply everywhere. Led by our power brokers.,

The single greatest reason for mass dissatisfaction, IMHO, is the lack of moral and professional competence by our political and business leaders around the world; people have no other leadership options; the systems we use to establish the status quo are now morally corrupt. The bad guys are in control. (Until we say and act otherwise).

With morally corrupt leadership, the systems have become self fulfilling, continuing the immorality. People do not see any way of breaking the chain, hence dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Rule of thumb: how the leader behaves, so follows those down the hierarchy.    Nowadays, the higher up the hierarchy, the greater the lack of morality – in all our previously moral institutions that genuinely cared about the common good: education, governance, justice system, health and welfare.

The single force that needs to change: Greed.

How to switch from Greed to Love is a ginormous leap but quite possible in today’s highly connected and bountiful world.

Aim: everyone to live love to their ability and circumstances. Live kindness, respect, honesty, generosity, cooperativeness, compassion, and positivity. For all people and our planet. Always.

This minute. Tomorrow. Next week.

If we all consciously behaved daily with these values in mind, doing the best we can (being realistic here, we don’t have unlimited options ourselves), the world would instantly be a better more satisfying place to be. Not perfect, we aren’t perfect, but thriving happy functioning societies.

The status quo operates on the premise that Greed is Good, greed leads to wealth which leads to happiness. Having more means being happy. These are lies perpetuated by the hierarchy that requires the majority of people in the world to continue to operate on the belief they are true, keeping the status quo of the Haves getting more and the Have nots getting less relatively.

The only exception I’ve found is with first nations peoples living their cultures around the world. They know less is more. Happiness is feeling good about contributing to a kind, sharing, caring, respectful, diligent, and honourable world.

What can we non-first-nations people do?

First we decide to be Love in our present circumstances. Every little instance adds to the bigger change. Think small. Think easy. Think enjoyment. Think feel good. Love being kind and generous. Love sharing. Love doing kind acts anonymously. (No ego, just feel good about yourself).  

Look for opportunities to Do Nice. Eg: Pick up that piece of litter on the footpath and dispose of it properly. Smile and as you walk by them, thank the cleaner sweeping the floor in the shopping mall for doing a good job. Smile and thank the supermarket checkout clerk for stacking your shopping bag well. Smile at every opportunity that is non-threatening to others. Say hi or nod to passersby in your neighbourhood. Be ready to offer assistance, respectfully! to someone who seems struggling .

Note: They may not want your help, and even be insulted by your offer. If so, say :“Great that you don’t need my help, have a wonderful day” or some such positive statement.  Do not say “only trying to help” or  ”just asking”, or any other comment that is about you & your reaction.  Make it a positive encouragement for them. 

And then move on, feeling good about offering and being a positive moment in their lives even if they seem miserable and grumpy.  We don’t know what pain they live with or expect next.  Be the example of positive in all situations.  You will feel good even if they choose to feel miserable.

End of speech.

What is your current status in Humanism?
(A) identifying as a Humanist only to yourself,
(B) individually acknowledging your Humanist values when in discussions with friends and family, or
(C) a member of "organized Humanism," i.e., a member of a local, regional, or national group.

Also explain a few of the pros and cons of where you stand, and if you're possibly in transition from one to another. (I'll add my own perspectives in the comments.)

I don’t like defining myself by what I don’t believe rather than by what I do believe. I also think it surrenders the narrative to theists, letting him be the default.

It’s easy to get caught up in our own problems and everything we’re dealing with. But doing something for someone else without expecting anything in return can shift our perspective. Even a small act of kindness can remind us that life isn’t just about our own problems.

To truly know another, listen intently to the silence in between our racing thoughts.

This is who we truly are, not the pretense fostered by the façade we created to protect us from the world.