Are we losing our humanity?

National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW, 13th Floor
Washington, DC 20013

The pressure of explosive population growth will increasingly require us to empathize, collaborate, and negotiate within our own small communities and as nations.  Yet, vitriolic political rhetoric, more time spent with technology and entertainment, and evidence of religious and cultural intolerance despite a spike in diversity within nations may all be indicative of a decrease in a globally shared sense of humanity.

As a technological, economic, and political leader of incredible social diversity, the United States serves as a bellwether for world’s ability to “all get along.”  What are the implications of diminished humanist values in an era when American business, political, scientific, and policy decisions have inevitable and repercussive global ramifications?   

Topics discussed:

    In a world of proliferating technology, intensifying competition for resources, and rising nation-states how will we be able to humanize the increasingly complex choices we must make as a society? 
    How can we create a culture of intellectual confluence that embraces both technological advance and that which makes us human? 
    Is there room for the humanity of all seven billion people to be recognized, or is it inevitable that many will remain (or become) commodities?
    As our interactions are progressively mediated through electronics, how will we educate for humanistic interchange?
    How does the legal definition of personhood blur the human status of individual people?

Can a re-infusion of humanist values and perspectives in the way we train our scientists, businesspeople, doctors, and engineers help them develop more efficient systems and have greater impact, while increasing the bottom line?

Moderator: Rosemary Feal, Executive Director, Modern Language Association

Panelists:

• John Churchill, Secretary, The Phi Beta Kappa Society
• E. Wayne Holden, President and CEO, RTI International
• Sally Kitch, Director, Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University
• Nick Lambesis, Chairman and Founder, Lambesis
• Esther Mackintosh, President, Federation of State Humanities Councils
• Cora Marrett, Deputy Director, National Science Foundation
• Christine Rosen, Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation
• Rafael Rangel Sostmann, President, Tecnológico de Monterrey Foundation
• Gene Schwam, Founder and CEO,   Hanson & Schwam Public Relations

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