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Yeouch

Lauren

A quiz to brighten the dullest of days.

Hairshirt

Excuse us, could you just put down that hammer for a minute and listen. You’re so busy getting things done you rarely take any time out just to relax. In fact, you’ve probably forgotten how to relax. That’s because you’re so anxious to prove that it’s possible to lead a good and moral life without religion that you have built a strict and forbidding creed all of your own.

You keep a compost heap, cycle to the bottle bank, invest in ethical schemes only and the list of countries you won’t buy from is longer than the washing line for your baby’s towelling nappies. You admire uncompromising self–sacrificers like Aung San Suu Kyi and Che Guevara, and would have liked the chance to be incarcerated for your principles like Diderot or Nelson Mandela.

You would never cheat on your partner, drink and drive, accept bribes or touch drugs. You never waste money though you give lots to charity. Living a good life? You’re a model to us all. But it wouldn’t hurt you to try a little happiness once in a while. Loosen up.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

Except for the insult. Lighten up, my ass.

29 thoughts on Yeouch

  1. I’m a “Haymaker” (is that British for Hedonist?)

    You are one of life’s enjoyers, determined to get the most you can out of your brief spell on Earth. Probably what first attracted you to atheism was the prospect of liberation from the Ten Commandments, few of which are compatible with a life of pleasure. You play hard and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loyalty and a relaxed but consistent approach to your philosophy.

    You can’t see the point of abstract principles and probably wouldn’t lay down your life for a concept though you might for a friend. Something of a champagne humanist, you admire George Bernard Shaw for his cheerful agnosticism and pursuit of sensual rewards and your Hollywood hero is Marlon Brando, who was beautiful, irascible and aimed for goodness in his own tortured way.

    Sometimes you might be tempted to allow your own pleasures to take precedence over your ethics. But everyone is striving for that elusive balance between the good and the happy life. You’d probably open another bottle and say there’s no contest.

  3. Handholder

    You go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people , which means you’re always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.

    You prefer the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian values of Edward Said. Don’t fall into the same trap as super–naïve Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al–Qaradawi to justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran: a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know is right even if it hurts someone’s feelings.

  4. Apparently, they think I’m a “handholder,” which just goes to demonstrate the gap between worldview and personality.

  5. I, too, am a handholder, and I agree generally with the assessment.

    “You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.”

    But the way they phrase it, they make it sound like it’s out of a certain namby-pambyness. There’s a certain amount of smug-fuckery in the results. I’m “uncomfortable” with zealous humanists “outspoken and unkind views of religion”, I just roll my eyes them. They sound way too much like a smarted-up bitchy anti-religion 17 year-old. I _was_ that bitchy anti-religion 17 year-old, so I know the speech.

    I’m a “handholder” in that I “go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs”, but their implication is that it’s cause us handholders” are uncomfortable with confrotation. Nope. I just think nobody has it all right all the time, so I try to point it out when neither side gets it all right.

    When one side vastly outweighs the other in sanity and coherence and good sense, I’ll take that side enthusiastically. But not absolutely.

  6. However, I agree with the sign the hairshirt is holding… I _do_ want my body composted after death. Not for puritan reasons, but for reasons that can most closely be caled religious, and that desire is the more “religious” feeling I think I have……

  8. I’m a “handholder” too, and I agree with KnifeGhost’s assessment of it.

    Plus, half the time none of the answers were quite right for what I wanted. If my partner converted to some crazy religion I’d try to talk hir out of it and then leave if need be, but not be so harsh to kick hir out and change the locks or ignore it or some nonsense like that. Also, if I ever had to make a decision like the nativity thing for a niece of mine (no kiddies for me!) I would ask her what she wants to do and then take appropriate action from there. I mean, have these people never heard of communication????

  9. You admire uncompromising self–sacrificers like… Che Guevara…

    I’m sure the quiz intended this as sone sirt if compliment, but I’d shudder at being compared to anyone who so gleefully tortured and killed democrats (small “d”), gays, or anyone who generally didn’t share his murderous totalitarian philosophy.

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  13. Haymaker, which I don’t think really describes me at all.

    Of course, part of the problem is that I don’t consider myself a Humanist, at least not as defined there. I consider myself more of a Christianity-based Unitarian/Universalist.

    If that makes sense.

  14. Haymaker, but changing one answer made me a hairshirt. The combo is more correct. I like to work hard & play hard.

  16. Handholder. Although I would defend the right to free speech as a princible, the truth is that I told Salman Rushdie off for being a miserable pig of a human being and it wouldnt sadden me at all to find his “voice” snuffed out.
    Like jon C said, perhaps the quiz-makers considered this a compliment.

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  19. Apparently, I’m a Hardhat.

    You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.

    Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.

    Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.

  20. I’m a Haymaker – and I’m purring.
    My husband is a Hairshirt – and he’s chafing. (He keeps wanting to discuss the “contradictory nuances” in the questions. Bit of a sense of humor failure…)

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  22. And in the way the questionjs are phrased, there are time when you have to essentially admit to compromising your values if you don’t want an explicitly anti-religion answer. EG: the circumcision question. If you don’t buy that infanct circumcision is a great evil, and you’re not against it for knee-jerk anti-religion reasons, there’s no answer for you. AT BEST, you can answer that you’d, despite your Great Humanist All-Seeing Wisdom, bite your toungue and allow it, but ONLY if done in a hospital. Quite frankly, if I met and fell in love with an observant Jewish girl, I’d probably know long in advance if she wanted him circumcised in the traditional way, and frankly, I’d say “bring on the mohel”.

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  24. ….holds hands with EricP, Thomas, Knifeghost, and tekanji

    I thought the graphic for Handholder did a nice job of both patronizing the ideology and women . It pretty much said that I loved terrorists (because I support expression of diverse views, evidentally) and that I was wishy-washy on the Salman Rushdie controversy.

    Like KnifeGhost I felt the questions narrowed one to specifically antiChristian prejudices and divided the world into those who were Atheist and those who were religious.

    Pardon me, but I am an agnostic. More and more I believe that atheists hate my kind more than they hate fundamentalists. This test adds to that suspicion.

  25. To be fair, from the looks of everyone else’s results, it looks like smug-fuckery is more or less universal for these guys. I wonder what the designers of the test or the editors of the magazine scored on it….. This isn’t to say they aren’t self-righteous pricks, but they’re universally self-righteous and pricky.

    But then…. I’m not exactly a Humanist to begin with.

  27. I’m a Haymaker, too. That quiz must have tapped into my love of good food and drink, chocolate, baking, making soaps, sex stories, and great entertainment. I do like my leisure, and I love la dolce vita. However, I’m not a Marlon Brando fan, as the quiz said. On the other hand, the quiz said I like George Bernard Shaw, which is true. I have a whole page of his quotes that I use as signatures sometimes.

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