Homo Ethicus Self-Regulating Individuals By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof February 14, 2016

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1 Self-Regulating Individuals By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof February 14, 2016 Among the things I most appreciate about Spokane are all the uncontrolled intersections. Although I must admit, I was pretty confused the first time I drove through a neighborhood without any stop signs in it and was lucky not to have caused an accident. I thought, Wow, this really is the Wild West! But once I learned to simply yield to those coming from my right and I have the right-of-way when approached from the left, it all made perfect sense. I beamed with pride over the faith my new community placed in my intelligence, in my ability to determine for myself how fast I should be driving, without the need for those red and white octagonal reminders at every turn. For the first time ever I considered how much it must cost, how many billions of dollars worth of stops signs taxpayers throughout our nation waste littering their neighborhoods with unnecessary signage, when all our municipalities have to do is trust that we re smart enough to figure it out for ourselves. Before long I noticed my new found freedom was making me a safer driver all around. Instead of heading down the streets looking for signs indicating when it s time to stop, I began paying a lot more attention to what s going on around me, watching out for other drivers, as well as bicyclists and pedestrians, which seems especially important in Spokane. Now, even on the main arterials where there are stops signs and traffic lights, I still make sure I know what s coming at me before going through an intersection. Now, instead of stopping because I ve been instinctively conditioned to respond to lights and signs like Pavlov s salivating dogs, I stop of my own volition, because I m evaluating what s happening around me, not mindlessly waiting for a signal to prompt my behavior. More importantly, as far as I m concerned, this one example reflects a more general attitude of many people living in our uncontrolled corner of the Wild West; we don t want or need authorities micromanaging our lives. Maybe this is why Washington is the only state in the U.S. where assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, and marijuana are all legal. We don t need anyone telling us how to die, whom to marry, or what to smoke! This isn t because we re lawless. Quite the opposite, just as we re smart enough to navigate through our neighborhoods without stop signs, we don t need rules telling us how to live, how to love, or when we ve reached our final destination. These are personal matters and we ought to be free to decide them for ourselves. Yet the authorities, the powers that be, those who feel compelled to control others, have a very different view of human nature. They seem to think that if most people aren t kept under tight control they d be out of control that human nature is fundamentally unethical, selfish, immoral, violent, and dangerous. I had a coworker

2 many years ago who wasn t a very religious person, yet he believed society needs religion to keep people from abandoning all morals and raging out of control. Without religion, he thought, society would fall into utter chaos. I argued the opposite; that religion has often been selfish, immoral, and violent, and has led to some of the worst atrocities in human history. It reminds me of a conversation John Adams once had with Thomas Jefferson. Adams, who was embarrassed by a Massachusetts law that made it illegal to question the Bible, said he found himself at a breaking point and wondered if, This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!! 1 (Punctuated with three exclamation marks.) But then he second-guessed himself, saying he realized that without it, this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company. I mean Hell. 2 As a Deist, Adams didn t believe in Original Sin, in what he called, the total and universal depravity of human nature, 3 but he did believe that human Conscience is imbued with certain immutable laws of God and Nature, innate moral precepts, and that these principles are expressed in Christianity. So, without religion, he reasoned, humanity would be without its conscience, leading to a situation of Hell on Earth. But here we are, two hundred years later and there is still plenty of religion in the world, yet, for millions, if not billions, of people, not to mention billions of other species, it has not prevented Hell on Earth. Today I am suggesting this is so because religion too often functions like stop signs. Our society as whole, in fact, too often requires us to shut off our minds and conditions us to respond in certain ways whenever we hear its commands; rather than relying upon the innate wisdom and goodness in each of us that leads us to naturally watch out for others. This is why I ve entitled this sermon, Homo Ethicus, because I don t believe in the total depravity of human nature either. I believe, rather, that we are all born with an innate tendency to care for others, and that such care is what it means to be good. We are Homo ethicus because we don t need laws telling us how to treat each other, telling us not to murder, or steal, or destroy, or to oppress and exploit others. We know these behaviors are immoral because they go against our own nature. As Archbishop Oscar Romero once said, No child is born evil We have all been born for goodness: no one is born with inclinations to kidnap, no one is born with inclinations to be a criminal, no one is born to be a torturer, no one is born to be a murderer. We have all been born to be good, to love one another, to understand one another. 4 Father Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, gunned down in his pulpit for speaking out against poverty, torture, and injustice, proves the question of human nature isn t 1 Adams to Jefferson, April 19, Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Romero, Oscar, The Violence of Love, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 1987, 2007, p. 65f. 2

3 settled, even within religion. The Hebrew Scriptures, for example, written and altered over a period of a thousand years by numerous authors, is full of disagreements. Despite being bound together as one book that Christians call the Old Testament, the various works contained therein reflect a hodgepodge of different traditions and peoples struggling to merge together. This is why Genesis begins with two very different origin myths, and why the Hebrews argued over whether they should be led by a prophet or ruled by a King, and why there was a Northern Kingdom of Israel, and a Southern kingdom called, Judea, from which we get the term, Jew. The chief disagreement within the Hebrew Scriptures, however, has to do with human nature, with how much, that is, religion has to do with following puritanical, arbitrary laws, and how much it has to do with creating justice for all; how much, if you will, it s about planting stop signs, and how much its about watching out for others. Thus the Hebrew prophets, who believed religion ought to be about watching out for others, constantly railed against those blindly following the law while doing nothing against injustice. Isaiah asks, for example, Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see them naked, to cover them, and do not hide yourself from your own kin? 5 And Amos said similarly, I hate and reject your festivals; and your religious ceremonies stink! I cannot accept your burnt offerings and refuse to look at your animal sacrifices. I can t stand that noise you call singing and music. Instead of all that, let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 6 These sentiments are not unlike those of Jesus who is reported to have said, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was in prison and you visited me. 7 He also said, the law was made for humans, not humans for the law. But my favorite such saying comes from the prophet Ezekiel, stating, I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. 8 In this single sentence Ezekiel blatantly rejects the Ten Commandments, the heart of stone, in favor of human nature, the heart of flesh. For we don t need external laws engraved in stone, he argues, when we are born knowing how to treat each other already within us. This is precisely the reason for psychologist Erich Fromm s distinction between priests and prophets. For Fromm, prophets occasionally emerge in human history to leave us with authentic ideas about justice. When their ideas become revered by the 5 Isaiah 58:6-7 6 Amos 5: Matt. 25: Ezekiel 11:

4 masses, however, the priests move in to exploit the situation by turning these revolutionary ideas into precise formulas that must be stated, like magical incantations, in only the strictest way. The priests usually confuse the people because they claim they are the successors of the prophet, and that they live what they preach, Fromm says, Yet, while a child could see they live precisely the opposite of what they teach, the great mass of the people are brainwashed effectively 9 And so genuine justice is usurped by dogma, by ideas set in stone and planted in concrete at every corner. In other words, instead of naturally watching out for others, the way these prophetic figures must remind us to do from time to time, we barrel ahead looking for the signs and signals planted by priests. Yet, when blindly following the laws and mores the lawgivers in our society have cemented everywhere, we go about our lives like conditioned automatons, obeying laws imbedded in concrete rather than authentically following the precepts of our own hearts. As Fromm puts it, [W]hen the laws of the country contradict the laws of humanity, a true [person] must choose the laws of humanity, 10 Or, citing the words of one of Fromm s own favorite prophets, Humanist philosopher Bertrand Russell, I appeal, as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest. 11 Remembering our humanity is a return to our heart of flesh, to what I like to call our biological ethic. It s a pretty simple concept. Human beings innately seek pleasure and avoid pain. Human beings are innately social and empathic. Therefore human beings seek the welfare of others and avoid behaviors that cause others pain. We know what feels good to us and what hurts us, and, as the basis of our ethical behavior, we must make sure others have the same pleasures and are not subject the things we dislike. We know it feels good to live in nice homes and safe neighborhoods, to have good jobs and medical care when we need it, to receive good educations for ourselves and our kids, to have access to healthy food and clean water, to walk or drive down the street and not be afraid of being singled out by the authorities, and to be treated equal to everyone else. We know these things make our lives pleasurable, and, as ethical beings, we know we must create a community that provides the same opportunities for everyone else and that we mustn t do anything that causes others to lack them. Certainly, as very young children, under the age of five, completely dependent upon others to care for us, we are necessarily demanding and preoccupied by our own needs and desires. But just as soon as we start to become truly social, as early as kindergarten when we begin relating to our own peers, the first thing we lean is to share and take turns. The first thing we learn, that is, is to look out for others. 9 Fromm, Erich, On Obedience, Harper Perennial, New York, NY, 1963, 2010, p Ibid., p Ibid., p

5 But if this is so, if such benevolence is human nature, if we are Homo ethicus, why is there still so much Hell on Earth? The answer, as far as I m concerned, is because too many of us have been conditioned to look for stop signs instead of looking out for each other; conditioned to believe humans exist to benefit the law, not the law to benefit us. We ve even been conditioned to feel ashamed of wanting pleasure and to be afraid of pleasure. And since the pleasure principle is our most basic biological instinct seeking pleasure and avoiding pain we are too often ashamed and afraid of our own bodies. We can t trust ourselves, we can t trust the law of the heart, so we ignore others and look instead for the signs and signals the priests have embedded in the concrete jungle all around us. There are priest not only in religion, Fromm says, There are priests in philosophy and priests in politics it is their business to administer the idea of the original thinker [the prophet], to impart it, to interpret it, to make it into a museum object and thus to guard it. 12 Just yesterday, for example, Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia passed away and was immediately remembered for introducing his, so-called, Doctrine of Originalism into constitutional law. In brief, he believed the U.S. Constitution to be a dead document that is not subject to change with the times, but must only be interpreted in terms of its original intent. And, as a high priest of the highest court, he believed it was somehow within his divine power to know and interpret the minds of its original authors. It is the perfect example of what Fromm means by turning an original idea into a museum object to be carefully guarded by our priests, be they secular or religious. In our culture disobeying these old laws is the epitome of sin, and we are made to feel afraid and ashamed if we break them. Yet in our age of nuclear weapons and global warming, it isn t likely to be an act of disobedience that destroys us, of running the stop signs, but an act of obedience, like pushing the button when commanded to do so, or maintaining the status quo by doing what s expected. And it is precisely because our destructive behavior has the potential for being so utterly devastating that we need now, more than ever, to return to the heart of flesh, to the biological ethic, and remember that we are Homo ethicus and must watch out for each other. From the authoritarian perspective, humanity is depraved, powerless, and insignificant, but from this humanistic view, we are naturally compassionate, capable, and what we do can be very significant. The humanistic view owns our power to love others as well as ourselves, and to experience our solidarity and unity with all beings, and that life ought to be filled with joy and beauty and pleasure, not sacrifice and suffering and shame. In contrast to the Doctrine of Originality, which sees the law as a permanent, dead thing engraved in stone or embedded in concrete, the Doctrine of Humanity, as John Dietrich, the father of religious humanism, and a former minister of this very church, called it, is an end and not a means toward something else. In other words, goodness begins with people, not with laws. Laws were made for people, not people 12 Ibid., p

6 for the laws. When we understand this point, which prophets have repeated throughout history, from the great Hebrew prophets to Jesus, from Bertrand Russell to John Dietrich, that we are Homo ethicus, that there is innate goodness in us, then we realize and trust that what we do matters, that we are not powerless, that we can make life better and have the strength to transform the world. If we don t realize this, Dietrich said, then humanity is hopelessly doomed 13 He also said, It is not faith in dogmas and creeds that the world demands today, it is faith in oneself and in one s fellows. 14 I m not suggesting we don t need laws or that we should ignore them. What I am suggesting is the next time you re driving through your neighborhood, making sure you have the right of way and carefully looking out for others, remember that doing so is your nature, and that we ought to be making sure we have the right of way and show concern for others in all we do. For we may have been conditioned to lookout for stops signs, but we have evolved to lookout for each other. We are Homo ethicus. Caring for each other is who we are; it s what we do. 13 Dietrich, John H., What if the World Went Humanist? Ten Pulpit Addresses by John H. Dietrich, The HUUmanists Association, Hamden, CT., 2010, p Ibid., p