The Humanist

Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, is not an easy place to do business. Historically a poor and volatile region, the last five years have been particularly hard on its rural Mayan populace. Since 1994, an armed indigenous peoples rebellion--the...

In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, compassion considered the root of all aspects of enlightenment. It begins in its simplest form as sympathy and later grows into higher levels of concentration required to achieve the greatest wisdom. Compassion is...

In a recent book, To Achieve Our Country, Richard Rorty reasserts the traditional idea that the United States has the unique potential of coming closer than any other nation to the creation of a moral society, one in which "liberty and justice for...

Recent debate in Washington, D.C., and in many cities and states across the United States on proposals to raise the minimum wage suggests an obvious question: why, in the midst of a so-called unprecedented boom, do we need an increase? Two major trends...

Freedom of the Press and Its Responsibility Two or three years ago, I spoke with a man from at an conference in He told me the story of how all "controversial" newspaper articles in must be submitted to a for censoring. After this process, the newspapers...

Economic Enlightenment The Humanist is to be commended for publishing the article "A New Economy for a New Century" by Lester R. Brown and Christopher Flavin (May/June 1999). Far too much of thinking about the next century is concerned with predictions...

Despite historic forward in the struggle against impunity, perpetrators of gross human rights abuses continued to escape justice in 1998, according to Amnesty International's annual report. Released June 16, 1999, the report details abuses committed...

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," huffed the Wizard of Oz near the end of the movie when he is exposed as a fraud. Perhaps something similar should be said about the man in the white cassock in Rome reverentially referred to in the...

A Humanistic Success Story "We not only have some responsibility to the present world community but to future generations yet to be born, and this should transcend that which divides us." --Paul Kurtz, "Beyond Humanist Manifesto II" in the September/October...