Dad and I have been talking for some time about our discomfort with the term “humanist” (a term which, by the way, can be applied to both Christians and atheists). Neither one of us seems to have much interest in putting humanity at the center of the universe; we’re both more willing to call ourselves religious naturalists.
My fever came back this afternoon, and I slept through the time I usually talk with dad. But late in the evening, I came across the following in a book of critical essays on science fiction; it begins to express some of the feelings I have about the position of humanity in the universe:
It isn’t that mankind is all that important. I don’t think that Man is the measure of all things, or even of very many things. I don’t think that Man is the end or culmination of anything, and certainly not the center of anything. What we are, who we are, and where we are going, I do not now, nor do I believe anybody who says he knows, except, perhaps, Beethoven, in the last movement of the last symphony. All I know is that we are here, and that we are aware of the fact, and that it behooves us to be aware — to pay heed. For we are not objets. That is essential. We are subjects, and whoever among us treats us as objects is acting inhumanly, wrongly, against nature. And with us, nature, the great Object, its tirelessly burning suns, its turning galaxies and planets, its rocks, seas, fish and ferns and fir trees and little furry animals, all have become, also, subjects. As we are part of them, so they are part of us. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh….
Ursula K. LeGuin, “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown” [1975] in The Language of the Night (Ultramarine Publishing, 1980), p. 116.