Cairns, Walls, Humanism
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Let’s munch a bit on that fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Proposition: every philosophical or religious tradition builds cairns and walls.
The cairns — you know, those cool rock piles that crop up on beaches or show the way across rock faces — guide us to that tradition’s insights and truths.
The walls say “this is in,” and “this is out.”
But here’s a question: who gets to decide about those walls and cairns?
Many introductory books on Humanism start with the walls.
What do the walls around Humanism look like?
First, there is generally a discussion of the un-orthodox nature of Humanism — what Humanists don’t believe. That has something to do with supernaturalism and the breaking of the rules of reality as materialists / naturalists understand them.
It also has to do with “revealed” ideas — the pipeline from the supernatural to the natural through a shaman, seer, or prophet. This usually becomes an if / then proposition: if the observable laws of the universe are never broken and if human beings never receive reliable information from the supernatural, then nature is as nature appears (though our observations change with time), and human beings are responsible for human ethics and morality: we create meaning and purpose.
Too often, these walls are framed as mostly a differentiation of Humanism from European and North American Christianity.
This is a poor way to build a wall, since Humanism is a global naturalistic tradition that predates Christianity. Or monotheism for that matter.
One reason Humanism has been walled off in this way is that one of the narratives for the development of Humanism is so often told within a Unitarian context. (This is, as I mentioned last week, a subtraction narrative that is only tangentially based in reality.)
Whereas the Unitarian (and later Unitarian Universalist) narratives are based in assumptions of Christian, European, and American exceptionalism and an “onward and upward forever” American empire (assumptions that are quickly crumbling), Humanism reaches back to older naturalist and materialist understandings of reality.
With the American Century long passed and US influence declining across the globe, it’s time to reconsider the walls and cairns of Humanism.
After those walls go up, Humanists begin pointing to the cairns of the tradition:
people are capable of discovering the laws of reality and capable of moral action based on our genetic and social evolution.
“The meaning of life” is a human need and is discoverable through human means.
The rites and rituals of humanity are based in genetic and social evolution, and can therefore be altered and enjoyed in new, creative ways.
And on . . .
— Cairn, cairn, cairn until we have crossed the trackless rock face.
Walls and cairns. Finding our way.
In the end, the tallest cairn is this: We are on our own in the universe.
Welcome to knowledge and wisdom.
Taking a big bite of that fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil reveals this: We created the gods and we can un-create them.
That is wisdom. It’s ancient. It’s contemporary.
First Unitarian Society on YouTube
