Metawareness, Proanthropy, and History
Metawareness, a key idea in Naturalistic Humanism, is a reason-based understanding of ourselves and others derived from recognizing that behavior is completely the result of everything leading up to that behavior. The same is true for entire societies.
Proanthropy supports the understanding that cooperative, caring, and contributive behavior is the healthy expression of human nature under sufficiently supportive developmental and social conditions. Destructive behavior signals that essential conditions for healthy development and functioning have been absent or disrupted.
Trying to understand international conflicts without applying metawareness, and proanthropy, we are unlikely to see that there are human beings on both sides – people behaving exactly as we would behave in similar conditions. Seeing a conflict, even one as intractable as that between the Israelis and the Palestinians, through the lens of Naturalistic Humanism make solutions possible that would otherwise be elusive.
Listen to show #103 below!