Hayot argues in favor of "humanist reason" "[b]ecause sometimes that reason, which emerges from the extensive study of human lives, cultures, and environments (and all the nonhuman things, living and nonliving, that such cultures and environments include)--and which therefore understands all proposals for the political or social future of a human group of any size, local, national, or global, as constrained by what we know of the history of the planet and the species, and also open to the vast array of actually existing possibilities that the planet and the species have shown us so far--has helped move societies closer to the creation of a democratic social welfare planet, in which health, well-being, and the opportunity to explore one's full capacities as a being (human or otherwise) do not depend as much on the exploitation and diminishment of others as they do now."