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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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Jonathan Edwards was not uniqueAt the same time, by overturning earlier rulings and withholding the protection of religious freedom from an Indian using peyote in a religious rite of the non-Christian Native American Church, it has undermined the Bill of Rights. In his opinion for the majority Justice Scalia wrote: “It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that [is an] unavoidable consequence of democratic government…” But isn’t that just the point of a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion? In a democracy there is no need to protect religious practices widely engaged in and regarded as politically correct. The purpose of the First Amendment is to provide protection for “religious practices that are not widely engaged in.” This is just the protection Scalia withholds. How different is Scalia’s vision from James Madison’s observation: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christianity, in exclusion of other sects?” It is difficult to see how Scalia’s view reflects the intent of our founding fathers. “A leading conservative scholar…called Scalia’s opinion a ‘paradigmatic example of judicial overreaching…[in which] use of precedent borders on fiction.’” (Kairys, With Liberty and Justice for Some, p. 106.) “Strict constructionists” introduced a new notion, intent, into deliberations. Government is exonerated in violating a person’s civil liberties unless malicious intent can be proved. Not only is this notion absent from the Constitution. It is destructive to the spirit of the Bill of Rights. That spirit maintains government must follow certain rules. Those rules are inviolable, independent of intent. The burden of proving malicious intent would effectively nullify the protection that is the purpose of the Bill of Rights. Due process is one of the most important subjects addressed in the Bill of Rights. Five of the ten amendments speak to this issue. One of the heinous practices the Bill was designed to prevent was using torture or coercion to extract a confession from a defendant and using that confession to convict him. Yet in Arizona vs. Fulminante, the Supreme Court ruled a conviction could stand despite a coerced confession being part of the evidence. The “strict constructionists” ruled this was a “harmless error.” In other areas the Court ruled that “socially inappropriate” speech in schools may be censored. (Where is this in the Constitution?) At the same time, in overturning a Minnesota conviction of teenagers who had burned a cross in the yard of an African-American family, the Court made its decision in terms of a new set of standards, not found in the Constitution or the writings of our founding fathers. It rejected decades of tradition and precedent. It is easy to understand why people would want to use the expression “strict constructionist.” It paints a more pleasant political picture than “radically right wing,” and it is easier for one who is labeled a strict constructionist than one who is labeled radically right wing to get confirmed as a justice. Still, it is one thing to question whether there are circumstances in which judicial activism, from either the left or the right, is appropriate. It is quite another to misrepresent right wing judicial activism as “strict constructionism.” THE FOCUS OF HUMANISM During the Renaissance the term “humanist” referred to teachers of what Cicero had called “studia humanitatis”: grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. These teachers, having started from this base, proceeded to concerns about a civilized way of life, taking up moral and political philosophy. This provides the link to the broader notion of humanism, to the concern for the dignity of man (an expression coined by Pico della Mirandola, a fifteenth-century Italian humanist). Augustin Renaudet provides a concise sketch of this broader notion: “The name of humanism can be applied to an ethic based on human nobility… What is essential remains the individual’s efforts to develop in himself or herself, through strict and methodical discipline, all human faculties, so as to lose nothing of what enlarges and enhances the human being.” (Braudel, The History of Civilizations, p. 340) Braudel goes on to add: “In a certain sense, too, humanism is always against something: against exclusive submission to God; against a wholly materialist conception of the world; against any doctrine neglecting or seeming to neglect humanity; against any system that would reduce human responsibility…. Humanism is…an embattled march towards the progressive emancipation of humanity, with constant attention to the ways in which it can modify and improve human destiny.” (p. 340-1) This doesn’t seem so terrible. Responsibility and discipline are desirable goals, as is the emancipation of humanity. More can be said about humanism in terms of its etymology: “It comes from humanitas: which since the time of Varro and Cicero at least, possessed a nobler and severer sense in addition to its early vulgar sense of humane behavior... It meant the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature... Above man as a member of the horde, and man as a supposedly independent personality, stands man as an ideal: and that ideal was the pattern towards which Greek educators as well as Greek poets, artists, and philosophers always looked. (Jaeger, Paideia, v. 1 p.xxiii-xxiv.) Perhaps the most succinct characterization of humanism comes from Buddhism, in which many sects regard Shakyamuni Buddha as God. Nichiren, a perceptive thirteenth-century student of Buddhist teachings, saw a different significance: “The real meaning of the Lord Shakyamuni’s appearance in this world lay in his behavior as a human being.” (The Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, v. 3) Walt Whitman expressed a similar sentiment, most directly in his notebook draft (section 49): Mostly this we have of God; we have man. Humanism encompasses an optimism that people are capable of improving their lives, even without help from the supernatural. But it does not deny the beauty and value in religious sentiment, and it is compatible with most religions. Contrary to claims of those who routinely denigrate humanism, the bestknown humanists were deeply religious. Erasmus was unquestionably a devout Catholic priest, despite his criticism of abuses of the Church. He edited the works of St. Jerome, and he included a theme of humanism — and the Reformation — in the forward to his translation of the New Testament into Greek: “Would that these [the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul] were translated into every language…and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen but by Turks and Saracens.” His illustrious twelfth-century predecessor, John of Salisbury, had been exiled from England by Henry II because of his support of Thomas á Becket. The Italian humanists of the Renaissance argued for freedom and tolerance, for the study of morals, politics and economics as opposed to metaphysics and theology, for the value of social utility rather than monasticism and asceticism. They valued a simple Biblical piety as opposed to the scholasticism of the late Middle Ages. Yet none had an anti-religious or anti-Christian bias. Religion has enriched our lives. In the East, as well as the West, it has inspired great literature, architecture, art, and music. The belief that people have souls has had a civilizing effect and has mitigated harsh and inhumane treatment. In the sixteenth century the Spanish Church sharply criticized the brutal enslavement of the Amerindians by the entrepreneurial Conquistadors. In modern society religion is a valuable counterweight to the sterility of materialism. It has enabled people to understand their lives in a more profound context and to relate to others in more meaningful ways. It has reminded them of their spirituality, that they are more than animals. It has encouraged many to develop compassion and empathy and to muster the courage to act on those sentiments. The profound compassion illuminating the life of Mother Teresa presents an ideal that moves us all. But while religious sentiment has led many to act out of concern for others, it is not necessary to subscribe to any set of religious beliefs to cherish such ideals and act accordingly. To act on such ideals is part of the humanist tradition and may have prompted John Dewey’s claim that humanism is the highest expression of religious faith. In addition, religion has a darker side, which humanism seeks to avoid. Western religions have claimed to be the sole repository of the most important and unquestionable truths. In defending orthodoxy, correct belief, they have denigrated intellectual integrity because it can corrupt faith and open a door to heresy. In Western religious traditions doubt, the antithesis of faith, is anathema. But without a capacity and willingness to entertain doubt and meaningful self-reflection, religious belief can degenerate into dogmatism. For this reason religious orthodoxy can be an impediment to tolerance and understanding. This impediment is reinforced by a transcendent source of beliefs, which generates appeals to authority and is unable to resolve differences among different authorities. Religiously, we live in gated communities. Rather than encouraging people to widen their embrace of others, religions have introduced yet another dimension of insider versus outsider. This incubates collective egoism and xenophobia and has been one of the most fertile breeding grounds in history for prejudice, discrimination, and ultimately, violence. Some religions, in their characterization of God’s omnipotence, have denied free will and encouraged people to seek the source of and solution to their sufferings outside themselves. This can be an obstacle to self-improvement, for it discourages people from taking responsibility for their lives. The very notion of a transcendent God has fostered a hierarchical class of priests as intermediaries, demeaning the status of ordinary people. In the extreme, the judgmental nature of Western religions denies any value in people. It is not just that we are imperfect. It is how we stack up against God, the embodiment of perfection. Our shortcomings generate a revulsion, most harshly vented by Jonathan Edwards: “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked, his wrath towards you burns like fire, he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent in ours...” Jonathan Edwards was not unique. This has been a recurrent theme in Christianity. It permeates the writings of St. Augustine and St. Jerome and plays a role in Protestant traditions. Martin Luther wrote: “Further, there is in man a positive inclination to evil, a disgust for the good, a hatred of light and wisdom, a delight in error and darkness, a flight from and abomination of good works, a race toward evil.” The denigration of even the well-meaning individual, the focus on imperfections glaringly revealed in the harsh light of contrast to God, also characterizes the writings of John Calvin. “No work of a pious man ever existed which, if it were examined before the strict judgment of God, did not prove to be damnable.” In contrast to this sentiment, humanism focuses on the value in persons. It seeks to enable people to overcome their weaknesses and realize their potential, rather than instructing them in the Truth. Issues of right versus wrong get replaced by issues of win — challenging and overcoming problems, extending horizons, nurturing wisdom, developing appreciation and compassion — versus lose. This encourages a virtue-based, as opposed to a rule-based, morality. A framework for such a focus is provided by the notion of interconnectedness. We are not monads. Our actions affect everything around us, and we in turn are affected by our surroundings. While individualism may be a strand in our values, so, too, is responsibility. We forge our own destinies, but not in a vacuum. We are all part of the same interactive network. This notion has found expression in venues as diverse as the poetry of John Donne, post-Jungian depth psychology, and the Gaia environmental movement. It is implicit in Buckminster Fuller’s notion of spaceship earth and in David Bohm’s holomovement theory. It plays a metaphysical role in the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination, and also in the Hindu and Jain traditions. It lies at the heart of ahimsa, the doctrine of not causing pain to any living being because we are all interrelated. Einstein captured the essence of this view: “[The human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” On a more fashionable note, this is a theme of learning organizations. “At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind — from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world.” (Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 12.) Perhaps this notion of a web of mutually dependent life was expressed most eloquently in the moving speech attributed to Dwamish Chief Seathl (Seattle), responding to the government’s proposal to relocate Northwest Indian tribes onto reservations: How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? This idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water; how can you buy them?… This we know: All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself… One thing we know. Our God is the same God. This earth is precious to Him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers, after all. This calls us to understand our actions from a broader perspective, rather than restricting ourselves to immediate consequences. In just the last half century we have destroyed a significant portion (with some estimates as high as 50%) of our planet’s tropical rainforest. These forests enrich soil, reduce erosion, and provide habitats for many species of animals. They also regenerate our atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. (Boreal forests, which are also under attack, are even more efficient, absorbing nearly two tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year.) The destruction of forest to provide timber or beef to mature economies or cropland to developing countries has negative consequences for the entire ecosystem, even if they are not immediate economic consequences. How can we deal reasonably with such issues that affect all life on the planet, that are inherently multi-national, but that also provide profits for the few who immediately benefit from the byproducts of forest destruction? Closer to home, how can we deal with similar considerations related to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming? The spirit of humanism is to resist the temptation to narrow focus, but to act with broader vision. In explaining why we should care about such questions, why we should value a broad perspective, diverse traditions have suggested an independent moral component of the universe. For Plato, immutable moral truths are more real than the physical world. For Kant, synthetic a priori moral truths rank with truths of mathematics and causality in their universality and necessity. The notion of karma (Sanskrit for “action”) stresses the power of moral causality across lifetimes. It may be appropriate to understand the great prophets of the Old Testament as advocates of moral causality, rather than canny analysts of geopolitical developments. Is it possible that a society that permits such a gap in wealth that fur coats for rich children are sold in the same neighborhoods where other children are sleeping in the street is morally impaired? Such a view of a moral, even spiritual, universe is not an expression of softheaded musing. Einstein, hardly fuzzy-minded, observed: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” Humanism, inherently ecumenical, embodies the substance of a moral and spiritual universe without religious dogma. Theoretical truths about the nature of God, the relation between God and man, or even what language(s) God speaks are unimportant. It is easy to look back at the classic heresies and wonder what all the fuss — and bloodshed — was about. It is also easy to wonder whether an image of God so concerned about the specific beliefs of individuals and so willing to punish people for having the wrong beliefs is not demeaning of God. By contrast, what matters is the actions we take to fulfill our own potential as people, to help others fulfill their potential, to exercise our responsibilities to the environment, our community, family, friends and neighbors. |
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