Eleven Practices for Calling In a Non-Humanist World

If not now, then . . . the end

Found on Instagram, March 18, 2025

Part of Us

This week is turning out to be one of the worst in human history. It’s certainly the worst week in my lifetime.

Gruesome mass slaughters and state madness have happened before. But never have we witnessed a limit-case of collective human cruelty in such horror-movie detail and in real-time.

The wholesale slaughter of Gazans has started up again with the full support of the U.S. government. The dead and disassembled children and grieving families scroll relentlessly on our screens again. After a brief and relative cessation, the suffering is all the more searingly unbearable.

We’re hurting from the hurt we are causing. And I mean we.

Beyond recognitions of the West’s collaboration in Israel’s genociding of the Palestinian people, we are all human.

Yes, our tax dollars are paying for this genocide, which is already incredibly painful. But ultimately we can put an end to that circumstance,

What we cannot escape is the knowledge, no matter how deeply buried, that the people perpetrating these unspeakable acts of torture, rape, forced starvation, unending displacement, dismemberment, gleeful humiliation, and mass murder are part of us.

No matter how vehemently we declare Israel, Israelis, and their collaborators to be evil or hateful or insane, we can somehow never distance ourselves enough.

We are all human.

All of the big things we might abhor in others are written in us to varying degrees.

Israel, Israelis, and their enablers may be a limit case for humanity, but they are of us and in us.

Double whammy

Humans brought up in humanist Abrahamic cultures (see below) are groomed to arrange ourselves on spectrums of good and evil. We’re taught to arrange ourselves on spectrums from the best to the worthless without much in between.

We are taught to live, shuttling back and forth, along an axis of punishment and reward.

We’re taught to call some of us “inhumane” or “inhuman” even though we are all humans.

We’re taught to eject those who mirror us too painfully.

Read that sentence again.

Some definitions

Human: a species of animal

Humanist: a set of beliefs and practices aimed at the domination by a few humans of other humans, other animals, and the natural world.

Humanism erected itself in the 14th century on top of Abrahamic concepts of punishment and reward and the superiority of the few over the many.

The basic tenets of humanism

1. Humans are superior to all other life forms on the planet

2. Some humans are superior to other humans because of their superior intelligence, cultures, technologies, and science. They rightfully dominate.

Humanism proceeds through practices of hierarchical definition and categorization. These moves are justified and enforced by self-proclaimed supremacies of philosophy, culture, epistemology, science, and medicine.

Many humanists elevate themselves by defining humanism as secular and superior to religion and “superstition.” With this bid for superiority, they (tragironically) bring much of Abrahamic culture with them.

We can’t take this with us

Western culture, at this point, is largely an immersion in the multi-century merging of humanist and Abrahamic worldviews and practices.

We compare and compete. We hierarchically position ourselves and everyone else. We brand ourselves with supremacist, exclusionary narratives. We use categories and definitions of “the other” to capture, command, and control people and resources.

And we punish. We endlessly punish.

If we truly want a different life, we can’t keep our punishing cultures.

If we want change that isn’t just a horizontal move, we just can’t keep them.

We also can’t keep our reward-based cultures.

We’ve got to recognize the indestructible value of all beings over conditional and earned value.

We can’t keep measuring others and ourselves with our fake and self-serving measures.

We can’t keep categories such as “evil” or “inhumane” or “inhuman” as an excuse to reject people’s humanness. This is a hard truth, especially right now, but whatever humans do is what is human.

And we can’t keep even a whisper of an idea of punishment or vengeance.

This is fact, my people: Any change that keeps the lessons we’ve learned from our humanist Abrahamic cultures will deliver us to more of the same.

We’ll still be ordering everything into best and worst, into defendable, mine-able, and expendable. Just like Trump.

We’ll still be exercising human-ist privilege to the detriment of other beings with whom we share this world.

Do you want a new world?

Do you long for a compassionate world? A world in which alliance, creativity, and stewardship lead rather than domination, command, and control? I know I do.

Here are eleven practices for embodying the world we actually yearn for.

1. Let’s look our enemies in the face and own the aspects of them that are reflected in us.

2. Let’s recognize that we are on a continuum with everyone. There are no breaks between us. We’re all just more or less of whatever it is we are.

3. Let’s denaturalize false narratives of autonomy and independence. We all depend on the entire world for our existence, every breath we draw, and the maintenance of every dimension of our lives.

4. Let’s throw out all notions of punishment, including for our kids. All carceral systems must be replaced with strategies for healing and reintegrating those who have caused harm. That doesn’t mean we can’t act powerfully to stop harm. We should. But no one should be considered expendable or damned.

5. Let’s dump all notions of evil and even concepts of outsiders and outliers. Everyone who’s here belongs here regardless of how they show up. Belonging is not negotiable. It’s primordial.

6. Let’s stop measuring the immeasurable or what is pointless to measure: accomplishments, cultural value, intelligence, knowledge to name a few. Let’s not ever call anyone or anything the best of its class, because we really don’t know. The real field of manifest life is infinite.

7. Let’s rout out any and all activities involving denigrating and harming others to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

8. Let’s stop reinforcing “us” and “them” based on hierarchies of affectional relationships, cities, states, countries, cultures, religions, races, sexes, genders, sizes, and abilities.

9. Let’s never claim to know what we don’t know.

10. Let’s honor ways of knowing that are not ours.

11. Let’s be gardeners together, not owners apart.

This global confrontation with the worst in us can bring out the best in us. It starts with our longing for a world that reflects the wisdom of the heart. It starts with taking a long look in the mirror. Let’s do the work and follow that longing together.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter on Substack to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.