This is a different format and slant than previous posts to this blog, but in the same spirit of the rest of the posts, I hope that this essay communicates my view respectfully to both those who already agree with me and those who are predisposed disagree with me. I also hope the latter group will communicate back through the comments section. What did I overgeneralize or misinterpret? What resonated? Is there common ground that I missed?
The Humanist
Counterbalance to Freedom
The “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” prides itself on liberty above almost all else—after all, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are each citizen’s native rights, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.
That phrase is
perfect, because happiness is such a subjective thing that the pursuit of it
really ought to be left to each individual. There is no one vision of paradise
that would be appealing to every single person on the planet. And yet, there
continue to be quite a few people out there who think they know what’s best for
everybody else. Many of them sincerely want others to be happy. And often, they
are right! Often the advice they give would make a number of people happier,
when their own choices are making them unhappy.
But it's likely these same people don’t always follow the good advice of others, even when they know it will benefit them. Why? Because sometimes
we just feel like exercising our agency instead. Because we can. And that feels
good, even if some of the consequences don’t. Typically when we’re ready to change
(or when the consequences start hurting enough), we change. Agency allows us to
do this at our own rate and on our own terms. The great gift of freedom:
becoming whoever we want to be, whenever we feel like it.
But
obviously we’re not operating in a vacuum. We share space with each other, we
coexist, we depend on each other for survival. For this reason, most of us
agree that certain things merit reducing or removing a certain amount of freedom. Ideally not our own freedom--but we subject ourselves to that
possibility in order to enjoy the benefits of living in a community and a society.
For example, if one of us kills another of us, this certainly justifies the
removal of autonomy from that person, at least until we can be safely assured
they will not go right back out and do it again. Most of us want to feel
secure; basic safety is one thing that we value over freedom, to different
degrees.
What
else justifies the removal of freedom? According to Noam Chomsky’s recent
interview explaining his brand of anarchism, not much. “The burden of
proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their
authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a
justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and
control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and
replaced by something more free and just.” In other words—why would you let
anyone else be in charge of you unless they can prove that it’s better for you
and everyone else if we keep it that way?
Well,
the problem is, many of us believe
very strongly that we have the absolute answer to peace and happiness. If only
we could convince/coerce/force others to live according to our plan of
happiness and peace, everything would be just perfect. Hitler tried it. He knew
exactly what happiness looked like for his people, and he attempted to enact
that view in the world. The crusades were a mass attempt to force everyone to
be happy and peaceful in a very specific way. A great many laws exist in Iran
to make sure that people only demonstrate their peace and happiness the way
that one group thinks it ought to be expressed. When we see extreme examples
like this, we can all agree: freedom is better than enforced conformity, no matter how pretty the ideal that conformity is striving for.
Hence,
humanistic laws: laws that balance the desires of the majority against the
rights of the minority. Laws based on who will benefit or suffer the most,
rather than who has the most power or who is speaking the loudest. Laws which
privilege the liberty and even the personal dignity of the individual over the
desires of the majority. Our laws aren’t purely democratic: we’ve set ourselves
up so that even if most of us want to gang up on someone and take away their
rights, the constitution doesn’t allow it. One of the biggest struggles of the
last century has been expanding the definition of “us”: it used to mean “us
rich white men not of Italian, Irish, or Eastern European descent” and now it
is a more genuine “us,” though it still excludes (and seeks to exclude) certain
groups, including non-citizens, people of different sexual preferences, and
people who have broken certain laws (including certain victimless crimes, and
excluding certain crimes which have extraordinary numbers of victims).
Tolerating vs. Coexisting
A
few years ago, I spent a day in Salt Lake City with a good friend of mine. I
hadn’t seen him since high school, but just like I remembered, he had a way of
making me feel loved and valued. It was a great day. We acted like high
schoolers, hanging out in the park and talking, getting milkshakes, walking
around (okay, maybe that's just Mormon high schoolers).
I
told him all about how much happier, more secure, and more open-hearted I had
been since leaving the LDS church. He listened with respect and apparent
understanding, and I showed the same respect and loving acceptance towards his
decision to remain a faithful member. I started getting warm fuzzies. We're communicating with each other across
our differences, I thought happily. We're
coexisting. This is great. He really listened when I told him I am happier now
than I was before. He's actually respecting my autonomy and my lifestyle.
At
the end of the night, those fuzzies disappeared in an instant as I heard him
say the phrase, "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, Rachel,
but…" and he handed me a Book of Mormon. "I was hoping you might read
this for me? And pray about it?"
A
wave of frustration washed over me. I tried to calmly explain why this was so
offensive, and he listened with a patient smile. I told him I understood that
the impulse to keep pushing his ideas on me was a loving one, but despite this,
it is disrespectful and implies a highly conditional love to continue to insist
I change. I had clearly stated that I was not in the market for a new belief
system, and furthermore, he knew for a fact that I had already tested out his
ideology and decided it wasn't for me.
This
friend was certainly “tolerating” my presence as an agnostic. He didn’t treat
me as sub-human. He didn’t hurt me or snub me. And that’s pretty much what
tolerance amounts to: putting up with something you’d rather not have to put up
with. He had little interest in changing his mind about me—seeing me as a whole
and happy person, rather than someone missing the point of life.
Coexisting
involves more mutual respect and humility than tolerance does. Coexisting means
allowing others to prosper in whatever way they see fit, and in return, being
allowed to prosper in whatever way you see fit. Instead of trying to change
each other into someone who fits our personal image of what is Right, we should
refocus our efforts on making space for others to flourish into whatever
manifestation of humanity they should choose. Let our own lives reflect our
ideals of the world; let us know the best ideals by their fruits, instead of
their volume, popularity, or aggressiveness.
The Ex
Imagine
you were with a man for many years. Imagine at some point you decided to
divorce him, citing irreconcilable differences. Suppose you parted on good
terms, he fully supported you setting off on your own, and all was well.
Imagine that despite this, many of his friends are very invested in getting the
two of you back together. They don't believe you that he was okay with the
split; they don't believe you that you're happier since the split. Some of them
even think you're an evil person for divorcing your Ex. "Did he tell you that?"
you ask them, and they say "He's too nice to say that. But you should be
ashamed of yourself!" Or they say, "Yes, he did tell me that!"
but all they can show you to prove it is something another friend claims he
said--a friend who says a lot of messed up things that don't sound like your Ex
at all.
You
don't mind hanging out with your Ex's friends still--some of them are pretty
cool about the divorce--but you start to avoid the ones who get up in arms
about it, or try to convince you to reunite every single time they see you, or
who clearly don't consider you part of the group now that you're not with your
Ex anymore. But some of them don't stop there.
"Your
Ex didn't like it when you drank. You shouldn't drink," they say.
"You shouldn't date women," they say. "What would your Ex say!"
They don't seem to understand that what your Ex thinks doesn't really matter to
you anymore--and they don't believe you that any time you check in with your
Ex, all is well. Telling them to mind their business doesn't affect them at
all. "I'm his good good friend!" they say. "It's my duty to tell
you these things." ("I promise I didn't tell them to act this
way," he always says apologetically when the two of you talk).
I’m sure I’m not the only ex-Christian to feel this way.
Believe it or not, I’m in touch with my own concept of the divine, and I’m not
extremely interested in outside interpretations of what he or she or it wants
for me. I’ll listen politely to your opinion, share mine, and then hopefully we
can both be done with it. If you said something poignant, I’ll think about it
more. Hopefully the same applies vice versa. But being pushy about it isn’t going to change my mind. And it’s
certainly not going to influence me to get back together with my Ex.
It's
long been a struggle of mine to state my problem with organized religion--not
because it's hard to pinpoint, but because it's important to me that I state it
in a way which makes it clear my problem is not with the beliefs, the people
who hold them, or their personal practice of those beliefs. I understand that
some people want to put more faith in God than in science; I don't agree but I
see how someone's life could take them in that direction. I myself once
sincerely believed there was no nobler cause than being a follower of God, no
better way to fight for humanity.
Respecting Other’s
Viewpoints 101
When
I was seventeen I participated in the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange year to
Germany. As part of my training to visit another culture, I was taught that
respecting other people's culture and opinions means that even though my
traditions make much more sense to me and often seem innately superior, I’m here
to learn about others. Be open to trying
new things, they told me. Practice
your listening skills--you're not just here to tell people about your awesome
culture; you're here to learn amazing things from theirs. Open your mind.
They've been doing things this way for a while--something must be working for
them. Sometimes your way actually is better, and sometimes theirs is. You'll
never get anywhere with another person if you assume you're right about
everything.
Several amazing conversations and experiences later, I was heading back to the
United States with a new take on the world, reflecting deeply on my long-held
faith. After two years of deliberation, I left the church of my youth. Over the
years, this decision has drastically changed my views on the ethics of
regulating public morality. I strongly believe that even my sixteen year old
self, faith unshaken, would agree that there are certain pitfalls that should
be avoided.
Trading Autonomy
There are many religious people, especially those in the
so-called religious right, who actively advocate the removal of autonomy in the
name of public morality, though the same people will often oppose it in any
other sphere. For example: they don’t believe that corporations should be
regulated or restricted, they don’t believe in stricter gun laws, and they don’t
think that giant sodas should be eliminated; but they do believe in restricting
a woman’s choices when she’s pregnant, restricting people’s choices in marital
partners, and restricting people’s choices in entertainment and recreation.
There
are non-believers who think the religious support restrictive morality laws out
of fear that they will be punished if they don't. Allowing others to commit
sins, after all, might be seen as tantamount to telling God that even if you
personally don't want to commit sins, you're pretty much okay with other people
sinning. Doesn't that mean you're supporting the sin?
Well,
no. It means that you're supporting their right to decide to sin or not, to
subject themselves to God's judgment or not. You're allowing them the autonomy
God gave them in the first place, when they were born on this planet.
As
a former Mormon, I don't think fear is the primary motivation. I think most
religious people genuinely believe they're doing others a favor by removing the
option to commit certain grievous sins. It's like putting up a caution fence to
protect people from dangers to their spirituality, and to spare them the painful
punishments that follow violations of spiritual law. It's an extension of
evangelism, of trying to help others be happy by sharing the truth with them.
But a fence, even a fence designed to protect (like a baby gate, like a fenced
backyard for a dog) is a restriction of autonomy. Fear or protectiveness,
you're still treating your fellow adults like babies or dogs, creatures
incapable of making good decisions on their own.
Take
a look at the message you send by restricting autonomy based on personally
perceived spiritual dangers but not universally recognized physical dangers:
Public
shootings all over America don't merit even the slightest loss of autonomy on
the part of gun owners. Evidence (and common sense) suggest that making guns
harder to get hold of makes it harder for mentally unstable people to kill lots
of innocent people at once. But innocent lives at risk do not merit restriction
of autonomy.
What
merits a loss of autonomy is two adults who love each other a lot and want to
make a lifelong commitment to one another. Why? Because children might see them
expressing that autonomy and express their own autonomy. The possibility of
further autonomy being exercised to think and act differently than you do is enough
grounds to restrict autonomy.
If
someone refuses to give his workers adequate healthcare and they die left and
right, he's just exercising his autonomy (and business acumen.) Making people
pay a fair minimum wage, or put safety features in their factories to make sure
workers won't get burned alive if there's ever a fire, making them pay
compensation if they didn't take proper precautions to prevent injury to their
workers--these kinds of things are unjustifiable restrictions of autonomy.
But
if a woman believes the clump of cells in her belly has yet to pluck a soul
from the great cosmic plasma, if this woman does something to make sure the
cells don't someday become a real, live, person, who might someday be burned to
death in a factory, this merits a loss of autonomy. We need to stop her from
hurting her own child because we know better and we want to prevent her from
suffering. We need to save that baby that she doesn't believe is a baby yet
because we believe it and our belief is stronger and more worthy than her
autonomy.
There
is a very clear difference between protecting actual human beings from
immediate harm, and protecting potential souls (or actual beings) from
potential harm (or spiritual harm). Yes, as non-believers we fully understand that
religious people don't think the souls or the harm are potential or imaginary.
That’s fine. I applaud your conviction. But once again: a conviction is
something that isn’t generally agreed upon, or it would be a fact, not a
belief.
When
believers create legal consequences to their own spiritual laws, it's like
they're saying, "You know what? We'll just skip the whole 'You make the
choice, God punishes you for the choice after you die' part of God's plan. If
we let you take the risk, others might think it's okay to take the risk, and
then you'll all go to hell!"
To
which bewildered non-believers reply: "Well…isn't that why you're always
trying to tell other people about your religion? So they can come to realize
what a wonderful thing it is, and how right you are, and want to choose your
lifestyle for themselves? Isn't the other way of trying to keep the country
moral kind of like kidnapping someone and hoping they'll get Stockholm
Syndrome?”
It
should be clear to the Christian right by now that it's not working…people
still just want to be free.
What Freedom of
Religion Looks Like
Freedom
of religion, carried to its logical conclusion, is Iraq. It's Iran. Such
countries represent freedom of religion unfettered by humanism, by the
protection of minority groups. If your religion happens to be prevalent, you
can live all of your beliefs, all the time. Even if one of your beliefs is that
it's okay to rape women. Even if one of your beliefs is that it's okay to force
other people to follow your god's laws. If your god says that women should
cover up their entire bodies lest they make a man unable to stop himself from
raping you, which he'd probably feel sort of bad about that later, which would
suck (for him)…women, you'd better cover up. Disagree? Too bad. Your autonomy
is not as important as the majority's complete religious freedom.
Be
careful when you're trying to defend religious freedom that you mean "the
freedom to believe whatever you like," rather than "the freedom to
show God how much we believe in him by making his laws our country's
laws." Make sure you don't mean "the freedom to remove the autonomy
of others so that they won't commit sins against my God."
The
fear of religious people that marriage equality would restrict their autonomy
is not unfounded. Right now their autonomy not only allows them to believe that
homosexuals are dirty and inferior, it allows them by law to treat these individuals as though they
are lesser in the sight of God. But just as civil rights removed people's
autonomy to treat African Americans
as though they were animals with no souls,
(but not their autonomy to believe
it despite all evidence to the contrary), marriage equality may, in fact,
remove some of their autonomy to act out their belief in the public arena, to
harm or restrict other people according to that belief. Yes, it will take away
the "right" of religious people to determine which segments of the
population deserve less autonomy and dignity than they do.
But
this doesn’t mean the downfall of society is on the way. Didn’t happen when we
allowed interracial marriage, won’t happen when we allow homosexual marriage.
If you look at nearly any religious text, if you look at nearly any moment in history,
or any country ruled by a religious tyrant, you’ll find that God (and/or the
end of the world, as brought about by disobeying Him) can be claimed to endorse
all kinds of practices that involve harming or restricting the autonomy of
others. People justify all kinds of crimes against humanity using God's will and
God's law. This is part of the reason we use the constitution, not the Bible,
to make decisions about which laws are just.
I'm
not saying all organized religion is bad. Although the idea of God's will is a
powerful force and many members of organized religion would enthusiastically
advocate theocratic government (according to their personal God, of course--not
just any god), many other adherents do choose to prioritize treating others
better over using the laws to punish people they don't agree with. The core message of most of these texts is
Love and Service. Many members of organized religions do a really good job of
remembering that.
But
there are those who believe that the best type of discipleship is the kind
which declares itself constantly at all times without discretion, respect, or
diplomacy, the kind which seeks to understand others only to show them how they
are wrong; which listens only to see how to persuade. This type of disciple of
God represents a real and present danger to the harmony of communities, because
such people are far more interested in a homogenous community than a peaceful
or just one. They would rather the community reflect their own personal values
than that it embrace everyone's personal values all at once. Such ideology can
easily lead to coercion or force, as it is already dangerously close to the
edge of that slippery slope, “the ends justify the means.”
In Conclusion
Preventing
the cruel or unfair treatment of others, and striving always to protect their
autonomy and good health and ensure they have the same range of opportunities
and options we would want--these should be our guiding principles in deciding
which removals of autonomy are necessary and justified. It is not the job of a
country's civil laws to codify a particular idea of morality. It is the job of
a country's laws to protect the ability of each individual to practice his/her
own idea of morality--weighing that autonomy always against clear and immediate
costs to autonomy and safety of others.
To
all readers, but my Christian friends especially, I ask you to please remember
the true reason for this country's religious freedom, and to stop pushing for
more freedom to restrict the moral autonomy of others. Maybe atheists,
agnostics, gays, and pro-choicers are wrong, but that's between us and God,
your God, if you like—He gave us our autonomy for the same reason he gave you
yours. Stop trying to shepherd and parent us. Stop trying to make everybody else live by your personal ideals of right and wrong. We're more likely to see the merits of your morality if you stop
acting like the only way to get people to agree is through force.