Progressive alliance ......

Humanism has to be both rational and understanding. This means understanding that rationality should still be the organising principle of our actions but also that at an individual level it is not irrational to find a personal way of understanding and coping with uncertainty and change. Those who seek inner knowledge and self-discovery are not those who take a dogma and try to enforce it on others like the fundamentalist and arch moderniser. They are people who create within themselves a way of understanding the world from their own knowledge. They have a value base as does the secular humanist but one that does not preclude self-doubt, enquiry and rational discourse – something the fundamentalist and arch moderniser does not understand.

So the new progressive alliance of the 21st century has to be a humanistic one – but one that embraces those who seek both self-knowledge as well as external enquiry. In time, such an alliance will have a positive impact on both religion and politics leading to religion becoming more personal and less organisational and politics being more personal but yet again based upon values around which choices can be made. For the humanist, this is the imperative of the 21st century.

To achieve this humanists must become a part of the cultural change that makes all this possible both at a community level and at a global one so that such alliances of humane progress can take root and help us survive the 21st century as a human race.