If you only care about reclaiming a superficial feeling of humanism, I find listening to Carl Sagan's old recordings helps. But somehow I feel that's not what you're looking for.

Lately all I've been caring about was the preservation of my own [existence], wealth, mental integrity, and freedoms, specifically freedom of speech. I feel like I've been corrupted, and emptied. Some people I know have always been like that, and happy about it, but I'm not. But I don't care enough to try to leave.

To be perfectly honest, I feel like this most of the time, too. Humans are bastards, but only because the bounds on their rationality tend to be rather tight. Humans are idiots, more or less. But I think the crux of the problem is whether or not humans are really hopeless.

We have some evidence, in the litany of heroic spirits, that every once in a while some humans can rise above being bastards and idiots. In my own view, the short-term purpose of humanism is to make that happen more frequently. Who better to start with than oneself...