How to become a Level 1 Humanist!

For some time I have been thinking about what practical skills I should be pursuing to be a better citizen, person and Humanist.  Obviously the title ironically refers to cult-like approaches to paying money to level up, but there is a serious question about what skills should be most widely distributed amongst the Humanist community and which ones should (in the main) be addressed first.  This requires a balance between the skills that have the biggest impact, are most likely to be used and are relevant to Humanism.

Skills to make Humanism itself more successful would include knowledge of Humanism, persuasive speaking, psychology of belief, understanding of the arguments that are most, commonly used against our point of view, and an understanding of opposing points of view.  Of these, the quickest and easiest is the basic understanding of Humanism.

To actively help others, we should accrue organisational skills, determination and confidence to put ourselves out there, an understanding of social issues, and the ability to identify and solve problems. There is a menagerie of problems in our societies but the problems that are most immediate and identifiable would be physical injuries.  This is a simple starting point from which we could work outwards.  The next most immediate problems for the individual are physical and mental health.

There are many approaches to physical fitness and a huge number of people offering their services to solve this problem, in addition it is a long term project that does not lend itself to reactive solutions.  So it could be put aside to begin with.  Mental health is a different matter. It is a long term project but as far as reactions to immediate problems, it is something we as a society are not widely skilled in...

There are important questions to be asked and answered about the current profusion of mental health issues, but for simple beginnings perhaps fixing the things before us is a good start.  There are a variety of proposed solutions, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has a strong evidential back ground and I look forward to learning of other effective in-depth approaches, but starting from the beginning, a first aid type approach may be beneficial here too.  

There are emerging approaches to identifying, dealing with and sign posting for mental health issues.  You can find out more about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_first_aid, but in short “Mental Health First Aid is a training program that teaches members of the public how to help a person developing a mental health problem (including a substance use problem), experiencing a worsening of an existing mental health problem or in a mental health crisis.”  Supporting until professional help can be found.

To help society in a wider context we need skills such as public speaking, relating to people and (as distasteful as it might be) some political knowledge.  All of this is important and part of the long term project but does not provide the short term impact that one would look for a quick return on investment from an initial effort.

A cherry on the cake for a prospective student of this kind of improvement would be a small bit of evidence based self-improvement techniques.

So this leaves my current list for a short course on self-improvement from a Humanist perspective as follows:

-Standard first aid

-Mental first aid

-The basics of Humanism in two parts: history and philosophy.

-3 Self-improvement techniques

For myself I am going to have to pick these up piece meal, but it would be fantastic if this was in a week end course with the first aid elements during the day and the philosophical aspects in the evening, perhaps over dinner.