The Spiritual in all of us

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Having recently been approached to contribute to The Humanist Society of Scotland’s ”Thought for the World” Podcast series and in advance of any such offering being accepted and placed in the podosphere, I thought it high time to research the subject a little, especially as a close friend of mine is herself a humanist celebrant and as such, something of a mystery to me.

My childhood in the south west of England was dominated by a Christian fundamentalist upbringing and despite those protracted and excruciating teenage years toughing it out, it was an experience I now acknowledge as being a useful reference point in these times of fevered preoccupation with God in general, and religious extremism in particular.

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The biblical certainties of knowing Jesus, together with a hot ticket to eternal life were great, while they lasted, but once I had reached an age to start figuring things out in the urgent jumble of my own pubescent head, it was only a matter of time before I jumped ship. And when I did, it was with unerring conviction.

With such an early exposure to doctrine and dogma, my subsequent shopping trips around the bustling marketplace of -ologies and -isms looking for human meaning, were marked by a zero tolerance for anything that seemed to be founded in faith, ritual or the supernatural.

I proceeded in the best tradition of iterative questioning, but was easily distracted. There was lots of reading, reasoning and experiential observation, but the exercise was not without a few blind alleyways and some foolish diversions along the way. The conclusions I eventually came to and the resulting lens through which I now see the world correspond remarkably closely with the principles of Humanism which my recent investigations have revealed. It prompted the thought that there must be many other unwitting humanists like myself walking about out there.

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In his book “Ethics for The New Millenium“, The Dalai Lama says:

“I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being…….We may also conclude that we humans can live quite well without recourse to religious faith”.

This is as good a summation of humanism as any.

While humanism functions as an umbrella term encompassing a broad range of ethical philosophies stretching back centuries and representing both religious and secular schools of thought, the contemporary form has at its core a celebration of the dignity and worth of every individual and asserts that moral sense is a facet of human nature which is both universal and innate. Of course, this has huge implications when counterposed with the central doctrines of some of the world’s established religions.

Of these, Christanity, being the religion of the world’s most dominant cultural-political-economic block ,is the most powerful theological influence, if not the most populous. It holds to a belief that still underpins a great deal of our actions and our thinking in the West. The belief that every man and woman is born sinful.

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Apart from the sheer horror of being confronted with an eternity in hell should one fail to negotiate redemption in the correct manner, there are other, and more immediate, associated drawbacks.

Buying in to the concept of original sin is to cede personal responsibility on some crucial moral issues. Dovetailing with the popular Hobbesian vision of our savage primitive heart (and this is surely no coincidence), it reduces the suffering and injustice of our world to an inevitable consequence of the brutal selfishness lying at the root of the human condition. The only earthly solution that follows from this is a strict set of rules, based on God’s own commandments, to limit our worst excesses. But this can only be, at best, a damage limitation exercise, because salvation is outwith our own wretched grasp. Goodness and mercy can only be dispensed from above and even these things will be scrutinised for authenticity when the great day of accountabilty and judgement finally arrives.

But not only is God the lawgiver, and the sole moral reference point for all human behaviour, he also moves through the world in mysterious ways. So if you happen across the good fortune of a life steeped in privilege and plenty while the other half starve, then it is part of God’s will and that, it seems, is well beyond our mortal minds to even attempt to understand.

Yet I cannot think of any virtue or moral position represented by Christianity as a framework for ethical living, apart from the arguable one governing sexual orientation and behaviour, that is not also shared by the humanist.

In fact the tenets underlying a humanist world view have a clarity and unambivalence not always immediately evident in the interpretation of religious teachings.

“An eye-for-an-eye” versus “turn the other cheek” is a biblical contradiction that remains unresolved. My own observation is that a Christian conscience can be a little inconsistent on this one, and perhaps applied as the context demands. The notion of mankind set out in the Book of Genesis, as the crown of creation, and lording it over everything else, is less ambiguous, but carries within it all the hazards of speciesism. This might not strike everybody as a troublesome issue, but our modern sensibilities are increasingly offended by the gratuitous abuse or exploitation of animals, and the related growth in popular activism, backed up by a growing body of protective legislation bears this out. The fact that the rights of animals in this, our Christian country, sometimes receive more priority, more attention, and more coverage than some members of our own species is a further contradiction, and an ironic subversion of the status quo set out in the opening book of the Bible. Proximity, and its distorting effect on perception, does seem to impact powerfully on a pecking order of ethical priorities that are supposed to be fundamental and universal. But we are only human, after all.

Apart from the “capacity” (and the qualification implied by this word is important here) for moral wholeness rightly credited to ourselves by humanism, there is the matter of that more elusive gap in our being. It is a need which religion purports exclusively to fill and is best understood by our use of the term “spiritual”.

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But so entrenched is the interpretation of this word and so disagreeable its associations, that I have a problem using it at all, in any discussion, and not just of humanism, but of any form of expression or understanding about “life, the universe and everything”.

A recent conversation with a friend who teaches moral education actually revealed what I should already have guessed in this increasingly secular part of the world. Self-development, attention to one’s inner life, and the connection to those higher elements of the mind which allow an exploration of motives, feelings, and responsibilities are all legitimate concepts to inculcate “spiritual” values in today’s schoolrooms. It highlights an alternative way to understand a “spiritual” dimension without automatic recourse to the supernatural. Here then is a definition which lacks none of the qualities of wonder, humility, gratitude and respect but which is not necessarily the sole preserve of religious faith or non-rational belief.

None of which, however, addresses the bottom line of our own mortality, or more crucially, the lack of anything beyond it, and for me this remains the biggest challenge to anybody for whom, due to the remorseless insistence of rationality, the consolations of a supreme deity with the prospects of a hereafter are simply not an option.

History, indeed the very world we inhabit today, is littered with examples of the astonishing nobility of which humans are capable. Importantly, these stories of bravery, stoicism, selflessness, and kindness are not confined to the god-fearing. Indeed, many of the greatest, (and often institutionalised), demonstrations of the obverse of these qualities; ignorance, cowardice and cruelty, are by people for whom the vale of the shadow of death is a mere navigational necessity en route to heavenly mansions, and ought to know better.

There is surely no more convincing a case for the claims of humanism than that some lives are lived so well, and so flourishingly, many under the burden of provocation, hardship or injustice, and yet, as “unbelievers”, with neither the spectre of divine judgement nor the incentive of individual persistence beyond the grave to shape their attitudes or behaviour. This is wisdom, courage, dignity and acceptance of a truly extraordinary kind. It is the kind possessed of humans at their best.

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I recently went to see “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly“, the true-story film adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s extraordinary book, written by the author’s nurse and effectively dictated by a single eyelid; that being the only part of Bauby’s body still under his control.

Here was a typical, contemporary man; successful, ambitious, materialistic, perhaps a little neglectful of life’s more important things, and then suddenly struck down by a rare brain stem collapse into a permanent state of complete paralysis. This was Locked-In Syndrome and a physical catastrophe that, nature throughout its aeons of evolution, could never have been expected to make provision for. Amid all the imperfections of replication, a selective order still pertained, ensuring that an organism’s capabilities were proportionate to its environmental and sensory demands. Even in the epoch of homo sapien, with a supreme level of resoucefulness and adaptability now attained, a structural failure or systemic collapse brought about by age, disease or mishap was never meant to result in the state of existence now confronting Jean-Dominique Bauby, and with it the ultimate examination of what it means to be human.

The clever interventions of science and technology, such soaring testimony to our inventive spirit, had now made possible, through machines and medicine, a dimension to being alive that demanded inventiveness of an entirely different kind

At times, the attempt to empathize with Bauby’s struggle was almost too much to bear; here he was, in possession of a perfectly functioning brain, as yet still the most complex thing in the known universe, but, apart from one good eye and a pair of ears, it might as well have been in a jar.

And yet, from some invisible place, sown into the lining of our essence, and to where most of us will never need to even try and reach, Bauby, a man of no religion, finds some mystery of hope, some rarefied distillation of meaning. Like a warrior working from the deep, and beyond the reach of consoling concepts or philosophies, he draws, with slow maddening purpose, the kernel of all he is, and forces it, letter by letter, drip by blinking drip, onto the paper of his devoted scribe.

This flow becomes a simple statement of humanity, in all its subjectivity, its contradictions of sentiment, its struggle for purpose and value. But in the sheer effort of will to do this, it is an expression of human nobility at its most raw.

Fear is too primitive a part of us not to present the hardest of challenges in finding the most noble part of ourselves. But despite the darkness which fear can bring down upon us, and for all the ugly thoughts and deeds our survival strategies consistently weave with it, there is a deeper human instinct, transcending even the urge for self-preservation, and naturally prejudiced towards goodness. Some might call it love. It persists in the species, with or without the presence of God and it emanates from the spiritual within all of us.

“He who knows what good is will do good” - Socrates

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