Probably no better quote can be found about fundamentalist religion’s theological stance towards intellectualism, the need for reason, the progressive nature of human knowledge, the inevitable rise of specialization and expertise in a complex world, and the institutions that promote and sustain them, and the folly of superstition and dogma, than this from Bill Donahue writing for the radically theocratic Catholic League: “Susan Jacoby.... is not ready for the asylum, but she is ready to find a home in the asylum’s first cousin—the academy. Indeed, there are few colleges or universities that wouldn’t be proud to hire her. And that is because she entertains a radical secular world-view, one in total harmony with the elites on campus.”                                                                                                                                      

Ms. Jacoby is a historian, journalist, astute cultural and sociological analyst, and leading figure in the secular movement in the United States today. Donahue was reviewing her first major book publication Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (Metropolitan, 2004) and wrote the aforementioned quote in reference to Jacoby’s observation of the Bush presidency’s continued assault on the the First Amendment’s separation clause: “It is no secret that the Bush administration is engaged in the most radical assault on the separation of church and state in American history.” Mr. Bush, we remember, wasn’t able to keep very much secret, especially a remarkable lack of interest in history and his persistent abasement of the English language.

 

Four years later, Jacoby would publish what would be a more focused recent history detailing the  trend in the cultural and psychological make-up of the American population, and her conclusions were not optimistic. The events of the past four years should inspire anyone interested in the origins of the strain of mass insanity racing through the American citizenry as fast as COVID-19 to check out The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon, 2008). She introduces the book with a tribute to Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life as a work that “provides the foundation for insights that may lie decades or centuries in the future. She explores the thesis that the most recent version of American anti-intellectualism “can  best be understood as a complex of symptoms with multiple causes, and ...over time possesses the potential to turn a treatable, livable condition into a morbid disease affecting the entire body politic..” She  narrows the vectors of anti-intellectualism to the two she considers as foundational: mass media, and secondly—in an indirect rebuke to Donahue’s nonsense–the recent resurgence of fundamentalist religion.

 

In the chapter “The New Old-Time Religion”, Ms. Jacoby recounts a time within the past 75 years that, for a vast majority of the American public, religion seemed to assume its logical place as a guide for living and a way of looking at life’s big questions that accommodate such direction: its place as a private belief and understanding, and not as a force in legislating its tenants as  matters of public policy in a secular government. After the sensational Scopes “Monkey Trial”, fundamentalist political meddling seemed to go into hibernation. But we learned that hibernation is a time to rest, refresh, and re-group. As early as the mid-1950s we witnessed the beginning of its return to the public sphere with large revivals, now televised on America’s new favorite pastime, the television execs apparently inspired by the popularity of The Greater Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade, a literal old-time tent revival in 1949 in the heart of LA that drew over 350,000 in eight weeks. “As we now know, the conclusion that American fundamentalists were a dying breed was a misjudgment of historic (dare one call it biblical?) proportions. The growth of fundamentalist denominations at the expense of mainstream and liberal Protestantism, which began in the fifties, accelerated throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties and gave birth to the Christian right.”

 

Borrowing the name from previous religious revivals in the country, one could think of the current spiritual fervor as a “Third” Great Awakening, after the first in the mid-18th century and the second in the early 19th, as a “cyclical manifestation” and “course-correction in an unsettled society. But today’s revival is more troubling for a couple of  reasons, a double-edge sword swung by archangel St. Michael that promises to make the current trend an indefatigable and cunning foe in the culture wars. The first is what she calls the “disjunction of the fundamentalist faith and the sum of human knowledge.” Today we simply know much more about how the world works than we did in recent centuries past, and we have it all accessible at our fingertips for those able or interested in discovering it. Failing public education–and private, in a different way–are certainly to blame. But this choice between learning or fantasizing about the world may be involved a feedback loop with the second edge of that sword. That problem was never  more obvious than in the last presidential cycle: “the political engagement of modern fundamentalists on the side of one party and their belief that it is both a right and religious duty to institutionalize their moral values” (italics mine). 

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 I’ve left out of this one-chapter snapshot of Jacoby’s magnum opus  examples making her points, and some of those examples could easily be updated with fresher ones. And thumbnail peeks into other chapters titled “Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars,” “Junk Thought,” “The Culture of Distraction,” and “Public Life: Defining Dumbness Downward” have been left as possible motivations for the reader; but all suggest the cause for Jacoby’s admission of the book’s pessimistic outlook. She concludes that in America’s new age of unreason, the inescapable theme of our time is the erosion of memory and knowledge. She does not conclude without at least suggesting  several conditions that could offer some hope out of a modern day Dark Age, all primarily concerning recapturing the those two eroding qualities that separates humans from real progress. It should go without saying that Bill Donahue and his Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim counterparts are not a part of the solution and therefore a part of the problem.

 

Reporting for The Humanist Advocate

Marty Bankson

March 3, 2021

 

 

The following post borrows its title from the magazine article that is its subject. The sub-headings are also similar. 

 

The three inevitabilities of life: taxes, death, and criticism. We know not much good can be said of death, but there are some benefits from paying taxes, and often criticism can be a rich learning experience.  Not the obsessive, masochistic self-criticism of oneself, or the systemic mandatory progress reports or write-ups of the organization, or social shaming and bullying on the internet, but from a refreshing and thoughtful evaluation one can find room to rewire within her own person for the better.  

Freethinkers, atheists, humanists have received their share of criticism, often recycled, seldom novel, so we should usually be prepared to respond to it. Examples: Atheism is just another religion. Why are you mad at God? There can be no morals without a supreme lawgiver. How did something come from nothing? 

Gotcha. No problem. So how about something new?

Look no further than the May issue of Philosophy Now, a for-the-masses print and online journal of philosophical concepts and their application to the current state of world thought and events. British philosophy instructor Robert Griffiths offers up a few shortcomings of the foundations and ethical framework of humanism (a term more specifically applied as secular humanism in the United States) as he sees it. He breaks down the problems and resultant outcomes  of contemporary humanist  teachings and  activity as he sees it in three major flaws or inconsistencies. The first listed here begins with the problem and follows with its unintended consequence of disinterest.

Humanism is based on classical 18th century concepts says Griffiths: the Enlightenment, post-Middle Ages skepticism, the recognition of the individual and the concept of specific rights and freedoms among other humans, new and revolutionary approaches to philosophy and the potential of the human species through reason and scientific exploration. Humanism holds as a foundational precept the folly of religion, expressed possibly best by Baron D’Holbach, David Hume, and others of the enlightened age. The problem as Griffiths sees it is that  a sizable segment of today’s younger generation agrees with the conclusions of this centuries-old thought , but are simply not concerned about it. God or no god, no big deal. They have no problem with the idea of atheism, but have moved on from it, certainly won’t spend time reading about it.  Apatheists the philosopher calls them. Humanist spokespersons on the other hand feel the need to emphasize religion, to emphasize their identity  as atheists and/or anti-religious. Humanists need gods to argue against; millennials and younger have just forgotten them. This is the unintended ineffectiveness: organizational humanism is not expanding at the same rate as the number of non theists and “nones” increases. Griffiths observes that relegating the idea to the mental trashcan and just forgetting it is probably the truest of all atheisms. Adding to this problem is that philosophers of religion—theologians—are able to cook up more sophisticated arguments in revisiting those centuries-old debates. (He does not mention that dozens of theoretical physicists and cosmologists have countered much of these newer religious apologetics with some very convincing arguments of their own.)

 

Ethics

Ethics might be defined as morality in action. Dictionary.com says “morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and action, or behaviors.” Humanism claims humans have and live by moral code, one which is derived from the species itself, and not handed down in the doctrines of religion. The author expresses the doubt that there is any moral code that is found universally “moral codes are tricky things”, an argument that other thinkers have made before him. But since atheists feel the need to “explain what they should do with their lives, they are at least a little didactic.” This hedging conclusion—that humanists are willing teachers and learners—may be the sole positive statement for humanism found within the essay. 

There are three major groups within the study of ethics: deontology which concerns rules, duties, and obligations; consequentialism—weighing the consequences of an action as opposed to having a predetermined rule (“thou shalt not bear false witness”...but even it prevents harm to an innocent person? And its subset utilitarianism which has to do with maximizing happiness or well-being—the greatest good for the greatest number; and virtue ethics which stresses developing a life of good moral character: patience, kindness, compassion, and leading by example. Griffiths uses the obvious utilitarian approach Stephen Pinker writes about in his book Enlightenment Now  contrasted  with humanist Richard Norman’s discomfort with both deontological and utilitarian ethics, leaning toward virtue ethics in his 2012 book On Humanism, and A. C. Grayling’s “fairly relaxed” attitude about the ethical guidance of humanism in The God Argument (2014) as proof that there is no agreement among humanists themselves about what an ethical code would look like other than some overly-generalized platitudes.

Non-Humans

At a time when there is a widening appreciation of the ultimate importance of the biosphere and life of all varieties and on the planet itself, humanism’s overriding  focus is on human beings. Science has shown us that the moral gap between humans and non-humans is not as great as it was once assumed. Humans must recognize the harm they have done over the millenia to other sentient beings, and “humanist humans are exhorted to develop an outlook which leads to appropriate moral behavior towards non-humanity…..which rules out the relaxed liberal attitude to moral outlooks adopted by Norman and Grayling...and humanists of deontological bent who take the view that humans are the primary bearers of moral value.” Humanism needs to look and act the part of “sentientism, according to which all sentient beings have inherent moral value.” Griffiths doesn’t think that humanist ethics can accommodate the idea in Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights that non-humans have “inherent value and associated rights independently of how this might affect the interests of humans (italics mine). Griffiths thinks that “some” humanists are not interested in the moral status of non-human sentient beings or putting more emphasis on responsible stewardship of protecting the environment.

 

You, like me, may find some truth in some of his points, but in others, not so much. The problem of attracting younger members to humanism is real, but I don’t think a foundation in 18th century philosophy is what turns them away. And not having a unified “humanist ethic” is an unrealistic demand. A mix of all ethical approaches seems to be about as universal as it gets unless one is speaking of fundamentalist religions. More emphasis on our fellow sentient earth dwellers? Sure, we need to work on that, as well as our environmental concerns. But I do believe that  the need for action on these issues cannot help but soon be at the top of our concerns.

None of these problems, other than possibly a southbound growth curve, are fatal flaws for secular humanism. The only inevitability facing humanism is criticism itself.

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Read the complete article here. It could be a good discussion topic for a monthly meeting or just an informal get-together, and expanded to include other works along these lines.

 

Marty Bankson reporting for The Humanist Advocate

June 24, 2020

 

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“....no one is born to be anything but human.”—Eugene C. Thomas

 

Eugene C. Thomas—Baba Geno—has been  a recent guest on NOSHA’s cable access television program The Humanist Perspective. Insights into his life becoming  the consummate humanist, from student and soldier, to spiritualist, writer, community radio broadcaster, and attorney-at law, can be heard at the link above.  Here, he shares an introduction to his planned book compilation of essays and observations–edited, with permission from him.

 

 

Why Do I Write? I did not consider myself a writer until very recently.  I wish I could say when the moment hit me, that epiphanic instant, the realization, but that would be impossible.  I wish I can say that I knew, as a young child, my destiny was to write, that a talent was seen in me to write by my teachers, my Mother, my Grandfather, the adults in my early life, that I was born to be a writer.  However, no one is born to be anything but human. Nevertheless, like a lot of black kids growing up in America, other than the basics necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, schooling and love provided by family and elders – I was not afforded the sumptuousness of self-discovery.  The leisure of affluence, time or travel to find one’s self, one’s life passion, to develop and grow that passion into a way of living is a dream of few and a thought foreign - perhaps implausible to the many. What I can say is that fleeting sporadic thoughts of writing and of being a writer has been with me for many years now.  Mostly daydreaming, however, of book titles and summaries of the titles, using great syntax in formulating complete sentences and paragraphs of my daydreamed books. Using profound expressions, thoughtful analysis and stories of the human endeavor that have enlightened many folks the world over, with many more anticipating my next best seller.  A grant winner as a MacArthur genius. I have written many books that way, best sellers that changed the world, but only in my mind. But with the thought given, more questions emanated from within my being. Questions that seemed to me to be very insurmountable, at times unanswerable and just downright scary and disheartening. “Why do I want to write, my desire, the source of my need to craft words? ...What do I want or need to write about? What will I say? …Who am I writing for, myself, my well-being, for other folk and humanity? …Am I a Black Writer because I’m Black or a Writer cause’ I’m human? Who determine such? …How to write, what to read, where to start? …Can I survive and make money as a writer…Should I go back to college for an MFA? …What is my purpose and intent? Money, vanity and ego, fame, love, beauty, wisdom, truth, humanity, literary immortality? …Why Am I Writing?”  Questions perpetually evolving with each day of living, finding that truth and wisdom divulge more questions, expanding like the universe deep into the unknowable, the “Dark Matter” of one’s mind and thoughts.

In “The Creative Process”, James Baldwin suggest that writing is an art, the writer, an artist, and as such, “he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.”  But the state of aloneness he speaks of is not the aloneness of simply being alone, by one’s self, feeling lonely or a contemplative serenity one may experience while observing a beautiful sunset. No, it is the ubiquitous aloneness of “birth, suffering, love and death”, the inevitable scrutiny of thought and awareness we all, individually, must have with oneself as we live and experience these great enigmas of being human.  We come to know that for most people (if not all) existing today, living is suffering through life occupied with ever-present tragedy, relative to each individual and the societal environment one happens to be born into. However, what I find to be true is that many of us seek to avoid this certainty with palliative myths and fictions of foundation and cultural sustainers created by individuals, societies and nations alike in attempts to bring order to the masses, to give personal meaning and resolve to life’s pandemonium and an inexorable death.  Perhaps it is societal conditioning that coerces many into numbness with thoughtless entertainment, sporting spectacles and pharmaceuticals. Maybe it is our evolutionary habituate, some would say instinctive, fear of dark places, of the unknown that compels us to dodge these thoughts, the aloneness of self, the banality of birth and death. But we as writers, as artist, at Baldwin’s urging, we are “enjoined to conquer the wilderness” of self-within, cultivate the aloneness – “the mystery of being human” - “to illuminate that darkness, …to make the world a more human dwelling place.”  We cannot run and dodge. We must face birth and death and all things therein between simply because we, you, me, I exist. Hence, I ask myself, why am I writing?

I am writing because I have something to say.  Something that need to be heard, one voice amongst the 7.6 billion trying to understand this transitory journey we call life.  Yet I am like Ellison’s greatest protagonist, “a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. (Nevertheless), I am invisible, …, simply because people refuse to see me.”  Herein lies my concern. For in America - White-America and its’ socio-political systems in particular - it is my assigned racial fallacy, my prescribed color, my Blackness that precedes me. It is always first, the initial encounter, response, interaction or reaction until given proof, …proof that I am a well-meaning individual, no harm intended or implied.  The art of putting white folk at ease has become habitual, second nature – many times unconsciously automatic – for myself and many black folk. Sadly, we are inclined to view each other through the lens of our prescribed color and all the presumed implications therein first and foremost. The individuality, the humanness of the individual tends to become secondary, invisible within the fallacious racial scheme imposed.  I am seen, nonetheless, synchronously not seen. But within this state of invisibility, I will take a stand, shout out loud for myself, for those whom society proclaimed invisibles and tell my (our) story.

 

I’ll tread in the resolve of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, “I'm coming out, no less invisible …, but coming out nevertheless. …since there's a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.”

 

I am writing my own book, telling my story—a memoir, an autobiography, a collection of essays, experiences, observations and thoughts.  Not because I’m famous. Not because I think I have some life changing advice or a happy ending or words of encouragement to offer anyone.  There is no story of a personal rise and fall followed by an extraordinary life-saving redemptive struggle. I have no desire to find my purpose for living in challenging death by jumping off a bridge with a giant rubber band as my lifeline.  No desire to conquer the Earth in climbing Mount Everest or travel across the Pacific Ocean in a 10 foot sailboat, facing waves as tall as a 10 story building. No stories of astonishing feats and expeditions to tell. There is no story of the prodigious black kid from the rough streets of New Orleans who was rescued by a good white Samaritan savior, from a contrived life of poverty and all things therein - drug addiction, criminal endeavors, bad education, mental illness, prison, police killings or an early death by gun violence to engender sympathy.  I didn’t escape the turmoil and chaos by my exceptional sporting abilities. Although there are moments where love may be the focus, an example of our human struggles of joy, happiness, pain, life and death - there is no story of an unrequited love or love happily-ever-after. In my opinion, there are way too many memoirs of the sort already and they tend not to reflect the reality of the masses. Tens of thousands are written and published every year for example, by people I had never heard of, with memoirs of reflection sitting in the forest somewhere (sometimes lost for two days) to obtain self-discovery or memoirs of relationships with the family pet after its’ death or the lonesome long-haul trucker bringing to life the view 10 feet above the road as he traverse across America delivering goods and commodities.

 

I am writing for my sanity.  Trying to make sense out of the non-sense, this state of absurd reality we find ourselves in at this time, the era of Trumpism.  The inhumanity we impose upon each other, be it individual relations or those imposed by societies and governments at large. A time where nations, leaders and individuals are living within their own reality – exclusive of reality – the reality of our interconnectedness, the intertwining sinews of ecological, cultural and biological evolutionary processes that binds our humanity as one.  The reality of our shared and individual Humanness, dwelling on a mass of atoms, roaming the Dark Matter of the universe - unknown.

We don’t see the humanity in our fellow beings as we go about and interact with each other on a daily basis.The parent who abuses and neglects a child has lost sight of that child’s humanity.  Emotional and physical abuse between spouses, minor traffic incidents that become road rage skirmishes of life and death are moments of humanity unseen. A teenager that bring firearms and pipe bombs to school to murder his fellow classmates and teachers, does not comprehend or see the humanity in himself and those injured or killed.  The systems of White World Supremacy, what W.E.B. DuBois’ in Black Reconstruction pronounced as a “carefully planned and slowly evolved method” – a method of institutionalized racism and “the psychological wage” of whiteness that gives societal deferential treatment to the fallacy of whiteness and race.  A structure deeply-rooted in the dehumanization of people taken from Africa, shipped to America as commodities of labor to be beasts of burdens, breeding specimens and Union contraband after the Civil War – denying their sense of humanness ever since through violence and intimidation, manipulation of laws and socio-cultural propaganda.  

 

Even the religions of the world, at their core, are antagonistic and inhumane with one and other.  Within most of the sacred texts, doctrines and tenets of these religions there is some form of “The Golden Rule” similar to the biblical rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12), that a God or god(s) “created mankind in his (her or their) own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female …” (Gen. 1:27 NIV) and to “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34 NIV).  “For God does not show favoritism.” (Romans 2:11 NIV). Yet in spite of this illustration of the goodness and hope in Christian scripture, also contained within those very same texts and doctrines are the inconsistent promulgations that the only way to salvation and grace is through their particular dogma - the tenets. It is the only way at the exclusion of any other god belief. That "If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah (God) Never will It be accepted of Him. Of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks Of those who have lost." (Soorah Aal'imraan 3:85).  “Never have any other god. Never make your own carved idols or statues that represent any creature in the sky, on the earth, or in the water.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,…” (Exodus 20:3-5 NIV). Even Buddhist must follow the compulsory Noble Eightfold Path to reach Nirvana – salvation, otherwise, you exist in a world of chaos and sorrow, destined to repeat it again and again until submission to the Path.  These contradictions are not exclusive of African traditional religions or any other native or indigenous belief systems. And it is through belief in the core tenets, the paradoxes of the dogma, doctrine and texts –believed literally by many to be infallible - that leads and has led to countless acts of man inflicting inhumanities upon one and other in their god’s name.  Wars of conquest, Crusades, Jihads, plunder, pillage, rape and exterminations of entire populations are staples of history. From nation to our individual relations, xenophobic beliefs, nationalism, political and ethnic separations and most of all, religious fanaticism tend to give birth to human indifference, to see “the other” – be it consciously with intention or unconsciously through social conditioning - as less human than themselves.  I have come to think that within all of this, on any given level within this stratum, essentially it is the individual, the ego of self-centeredness, selfishness, vanity, opulence and power - even fear - that give life to schisms and division primarily through rhetoric and propaganda within and throughout a given populace and give cause or validation for inhumane actions. How does one make sense of this nonsense?

 

I am writing in search of truth, whether truth is subjective or objective, relative or absolute,  where ever it may be found and whatever the source may be. “Truth and Morning become light with time” so says an African Proverb.  But to understand and know truth, I realize that must be truthful with myself first and foremost, to find my own truth. The narrative that I have been telling myself, the truths, the lies, and all things in between and outside of the two—the story I have based my life upon..   The real truth of the matter is that I am a Human Being, a Homo Sapien Sapien, simply, before any other label is or was attached to my Being.

 

I am writing because I am a writer.  I have always been a writer but I just didn’t know it.  My journey as a writer began with the story books my older brother, T-Bird, read to me, a toddler of 3 or 4 years of age, when he entered the 1st grade.  He would bring home the reading books with stories of Dick, Jane and Spot the dog, to practice his newly acquired reading skills on me. At night, he would read them to me as bedtime stories, to which I found plenty of joy.  From this joy, began my fascination with books and words, yet I had no idea of being a writer or what a writer was for that matter. However, “Tuggy the Tugboat” and “The Little Engine That Could” were my favorites – so much so that I began to recite the words of the stories along with him, sometimes to his exasperation.  Eventually I began to read them on my own, perhaps due to the now frequent refusals and difficulties of getting my brother to read to or for me.  

I started to keep a diary of my life at about the age of nine.  I became captivated with diaries by watching TV shows such as The Brady Bunch, “ABC After School Specials” and various cartoons where some of the characters kept a secret diary, with secret plans, secret thoughts and secret experiences, off limits to everyone.  Even parents were forbidden to look inside. This idea, the idea of having something, thoughts that only you alone knew fascinated my mind so much, that I began to write about me, my secret plans and my life. Unfortunately, this endeavor did not last long and neither did the diary I had written, a boy 9 years in life had better things to do outside – like playing ball in the parks and streets, shooting marbles in the backyard by Nelson’s house, bike journeys around New Orleans and hopping trains to Audubon Park and back.

 

Now that I am a writer, the question still remains – “Why Am I Writing?”  I don’t have the platform, training or education of a journalist or the prestige and tenure of an English Literature professor.  The affluence and influence of a prominent intellectual with access to money and time to write, publishing and the public, tend to require a “friend of a friend with friends.”  Even as I write daily - in my journal, in my note book of essays and ideas, when jotting down thoughts or something I heard in passing on random pieces of paper, on social-media comments and postings - as I wake in the morning, go about my day and laying down to sleep – it is hauntingly there – stirring in my thoughts without a solid answer to grasps.  Thoughts of no one reading or hearing my words, that I, individually, don’t matter in the world’s grand schemes and schisms; or am I egoistic and slightly vain to think that my writings, thoughts and ideas should matter? Was in not the Ecclesiast Kohlat who proclaimed the “Vanity of vanities, [is that], all is vanity.”? Well if all is vain, as suggested by the Preacher, then writing is all that I have – the essence of my free will of thought and mind revealed within this illusion of free will.  I write to help me in understanding this banality of aloneness we traverse, our individual journey within the parameters of birth, joy, suffering and death - in grasping how my youthful optimism got lost and caught up in a middle age pessimistic, perhaps at times, nihilistic view of life’s realities and experiences; to emerge hopeful with a love for life and living.

I write because I know the power of words, words written and spoken, for it is words that spark and perpetuate man’s cruelties and inhumanities.  It is words that ignite revolution and progress and inspiration. The etymology of words, written and spoken, are humanity's evolutionary attempt to communicate with each other regardless of their cultural or geographical origin. No word or language is original within itself.  Language, word creation and usage coincide with our evolution as we walked out of Africa and dispersed globally. What matters most, in my humble opinion, is the context and intent of its use by the user, the writer/artist. “But some situations may require you to write about a subject that is not from your heart... then what?” I was asked by a friend and poet one day as we discussed the purpose of writing.  There is nothing that requires you to write heartless unless it is malicious, intentionally misleading and or false. Even during my time as an attorney writing legal briefs, preparing for trials, I always wrote from the heart and mind. It is required only if we choose to separate our humanity from all writings. Yes, there are some occupations and situations that may require one to write mechanically and technically, but to write without mindfulness and consideration of all angles, aspects and implications the words may or will have upon the reader, situation or whomever your audience may be in any genre or format is not requirement. Why would one not want to write from the heart and mind in truth and honesty no matter the situation? Is that not what humanity needs, truth and honesty in this climate of Alt-facts, Trump, police violence and oppression? We, as writers and artists, must be responsible for our words no matter where we put them, be it verbally or written, for we are humanity’s illuminators of life’s darkness for the individual and society.  The bearers of hope. As James Baldwin advised, “Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.”

A wise man once said to me, "There is no Them. There are only facets of Us." We now know that humanity’s Star, our Sun, will dim someday and so will our humanity, unless we reconcile our dystopian past and present, our inhumanities, to be hopeful for the future – our very survival.  3 Yoruba Adages “No condition is permanent, Change is inevitable, Change or perish”.  

 

I write because I am.

Eugene C. Thomas

 

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“There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own.” Albert Einstein.  

In the August 26th edition of the TheHumanist.com, author Brody Armstrong brings up some interesting points about a current topic usually at, or near the top of everyone’s “Most Concerned About” list when pollsters send out its routine queries under that heading: health care. What differentiates Armstrong’s short analysis is the role social media, specifically the way the fundraising-for-profit GoFundMe app and others like it have worked themselves into the conversation about the current healthcare crisis.

 

“Why GoFundMe Isn’t the Solution for an Underinsured America”  shows how this form of charitable giving to people with serious or even catastrophic injuries or illnesses—while (in some minds) is an ethical requirement aspiring to a positive moral good—has its shortcomings. GoFundMe often boasts of huge goal-busting campaigns, but some cases go without a single dollar donated, and many more close woefully under-supported. From this, Armstrong surmises that the only way to ensure everyone’s medical needs are met is through a national single-payer, Medicare-for-all styled universal coverage. Reliable, steady streams of funding is an inherent problem with all charitable organizations, as well as a host of other problems from administrative to the philosophical. From that, we are led to questions about any charitable or philanthropic endeavor. Do they really help in “the big picture” of solving, or at least alleviating their focus issues, or are they just band aid fixes? Are they nothing more psychological salve for feelings of pity or guilt rather than rational decisions to assist made after recognizing a special social ill? Are acts of benevolence defeating their own purpose by fecklessly chasing symptoms rather than investigating and evaluating root causes and dedicating efforts to eradicate them?

Criticism of philanthropy and charitable donations of time and money may seem cynical or misanthropic, especially to humanists of both secular and religious stripe. There are some worthy points to be considered, however. They come from the full spectrum of political philosophy and social theory; from mundane considerations of cost effectiveness and equitable distribution; and yet others from the use of them for personal aggrandizement or ego boosters and power trips. From the political left and Marxist class theory, we get the story that the capitalist power structure has no interest in subsidizing the disadvantaged unless there is a profit to be made somewhere along the line, and private charity is a bogus solution for repairing the inequities in the provision of basic human needs, and fails to recognize the responsibility of the state has in this role. The old fashioned conservative view is that individual and religious and social organizations are the proper way to solve age-old problems (when bootstrapping one’s own way is not possible) and it is not the domain of a limited government. In the large middle (which is predominate in today”s liberal democracies in the West and beyond), the compromise of a public-private effort between these two polar extremes has developed as a mixed policy and has been thriving since nearly the beginning of the Progressive Era in the early part of the Twentieth Century, and became thoroughly entrenched by the last third of the century, wherein government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance, and others were installed at public expense to address what economist I. M. Rubinow called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: "accident, illness, old age, loss of job.”

The administration of, and personal influence on charitable organizations has also been the subject of scrutiny by naysayers. “How much is of my money is actually going toward….”(what I thought it was going for, or somewhere else)? And how much is going toward the organization of the charity (and church!) itself, which is running it? This has been such a concern that a cottage industry of watchdog groups like Charity Navigator has been hatched. And what of those who use part of their fortunes to “influence” decisions about how their and others’ contributions are to be dispersed; or how generous contributions to Harvard University, for example, by Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner (White House employee and famous son-in-law) landed the very average student Jared a seat in the freshman class there. Of course, no one said Harvard U. is a charity, but…you get the idea. Or the case where the donor simply (and innocently) gives to the cause that interests or concerns her the most, rather than where her generosity has proven to be more urgently needed elsewhere.

 

None of these “sore spots” of charity should, or likely will, be taken as disincentives to donating time, money, or material to charities; it is meant to show the bumps and blemishes in the system—and even paradoxes that lie at the foundation of the principle. With a large source of private contributions in decline (the church), as well as unpredictable downturns in the the economy, NOSHA needs to keep and expand its efforts to fill in the gaps in its modest way to the betterment of our fellow humans. But a dire outlook from the reality of today’s economic numbers shows that 40 years of stagnant wages of the middle class, along with the increasing wealth (and concomitant political power) into fewer hands, legislating smaller tax liabilities for themselves results in an eroding tax base and “austerity economics,” where social services will be cut, likely resulting in a return to Rubinow’s nightmare of the merciless Four Horsemen riding roughshod over the dignity of basic human needs; and the modest but heartfelt gifts of private individuals and humanist and benevolent organizations like ours will be but drops in the bucket. Armstrong’s analysis of the futility of GoFundMe is correct, but needs to be expanded to apply across the board to the principle of altruistic giving. The well-being of each is the responsibility of all.

 

Marty Bankson 

The Humanist Advocate