Way to Go, Supreme Court: Another #facepalm
A Primo #Facepalm Moment
To be a citizen of the United States is to experience many face palm moments. And recent Supreme Court decisions have provided some spectacular face palm moments.
Full disclosure: I take oppression of workers a bit personally. I escaped wage slavery only by luck. And my mother worked in the sort of retail store that Hobby Lobby is.
The Hobby Lobby decision this week by the US Supreme Court supplies one more example of why humanists often get irate and irrational about religion. After all, the scenario appears to be a no-brainer: an employer has a particular religious opinion. An employee has another or none. The employer sues, protesting a benefit the employee needs. Tough taco employer. right?
A no-brainer. But . . . #facepalm! . . . not in the United States. Here, individual liberty trumps the the public good a bit too often. Now, I know, the Supreme Court is that branch of government that brought you, oh, let’s see—#facepalm!—decisions such as Dred Scott and Citizens United. But still.
To the Manor Born
Most Supreme Court decisions are routine and uncontroversial. Those don’t make the news, so most citizens get a skewed picture of the court. But, reflect for a moment on the peculiarity that US citizens do not wonder about how our Supreme Court will reason their way through a politicized case to a just decision. We only have to look at the politics of most cases to know how most decisions will go. We only need to know the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties to forecast how “law” and “reason” will turn out.
Such was the case in the Hobby Lobby case. There was never any doubt of the decision. It’s just a matter of counting the judges who have a particular political opinion.
How many babies will be born into this nation of the brave and the free and the frayed social safety net? How much hope does a child born to a parent who works at Hobby Lobby have? Will any of those kids get lucky, like me?
It’s not likely. What’s the percentage of people who make it into the One Percent? #facepalm! (Or like lucky, lucky me, the Five Percent?) And how many of those weren’t born into the One Percent? Or Five Percent?
Cue (and Queue) the Crazies
Does this decision open the door for all kinds of religious objections to all sorts of things? Yes. For Christians, anyway. The unspoken law behind the decision is that Christianity is the only real and true religion, and the merits of others to be decided by whatever local powers there might be, in whatever courts may be nearby. (Read “Christian” jury.)
Humorist Will Rogers once said, “America has the best politicians money can buy.” Also, America has the best religion money can buy—to every citizen a religion custom- tailored to support our prejudices. Here’s the thing: whatever your religious beliefs, or lack thereof, if the top tenant of your religion is not fostering the wellbeing of your fellow human beings, it is bad religion.
As a humanist, I have no excuses for damaging the well being of another. The central focus of my ethics must be promoting the flourishing of my fellow humans, animals, and the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm#mediaviewer/File:Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg
As we enjoy the fireworks in the United States, we do well to meditate a bit on the difference between rights and responsibilities. Yes, we are a nation of laws. Often those rights and those laws are (facepalm!) irresponsible.
In Prayerful Solidarity with Dr. Ersula Ore
This morning I am sitting in prayer after watching a video of Dr. Ersula Ore, a Professor at Arizona State University, get thrown to the ground by a violent cop after he demands that she produce identification and she does not immediately do so. She was jaywalking.
Jaywalking Arrest for Professor in AZ
You can draw your own conclusions. Perhaps, like me, you will be struck by how much self-respect and calmness she displays, how she initially strives to remain a human being in relationship to another human being with this officer.
Perhaps, like a (white male) facebook friend, you will see it differently. You will think that she should have done exactly what the cop told her to do and handed over her ID to him without talking to him at all. Certainly that is what African Americans and other people of color are taught to do no matter how inappropriately cops behave.
As a white woman, I have had similar give and take with police officers to the kind that Dr. Ore begins with. Once, I said the exact words she said to the officer, in almost the exact same tone of voice. “Are you kidding me?” At worst, I’ve gotten ticketed in a manner that I consider unfair. But I have never felt at risk of violent assault from a police officer in such an interaction.
But this cop makes a different choice. Rather than speak back to Dr. Ore in a manner similar to the one with which she speaks to him, and take care of whatever he needs to take care of regarding jaywalking, he escalates the situation until, she is handcuffed and thrown to the ground. We don’t see her dress in the video, but according to witnesses, it is pulled up and ‘her anatomy is exposed’ on the street. Eventually, she kicks an officer who is reaching over to touch her skirt. She is now charged with assaulting an officer, a felony.
It’s not an insignificant point that this took place in Maricopa County, where Sherriff Joe Arpaio has been training his officers to humiliate and demean people of color for years. His legacy of abuse of people of color extends all the way to multiple deaths in his “Tent City,” which he has himself described as a “Concentration Camp.”
For Dr. Ore, there is now an investigation taking place about whether or not what happened to her was caused by “racial motivation.” One can only wonder what that means and how such an investigation would take place. What if thousands of white people testified that no cop has ever treated us this way, nor demanded ID when we are walking in the street to avoid road construction—could that help this be seen as racially motivated? What if thousands of people of color testified about how frightening it is to live in Maricopa County? Could the model that Sherriff Joe Arpaio sets for his officers create racial motivation? One shudders to think about the narrow definition of “racial motivation” that will be employed by officials.
Dr. Ore, you are in my prayers today. You and the thousands of other people of color who are forced to prove that you have a right to walk home, and upon whom the burden of proof always rests. Please know that you are not alone—that tens of thousands of white people, as well as the people of color who share your experience of being told you don’t matter—are with you and will be with you as you ask for what everyone wants: Respect for your worth and dignity.
Roadmaps for the Soul (or: Hunting, Gathering, Singing)
In “Tombstone Blues,” a song released in 1965, Bob Dylan sang, “The National Bank at a profit sells roadmaps for the soul / To the old folks home and the college.” In the context of the song, Bob clearly doesn’t think this is a good thing. Commodifying the meaning of life?
Yes, well . . .
Suppose for a moment that all the religious and philosophical speculation through time, and all the art and architecture to boot, have been about the same thing as the hunting and the fishing, the gathering and farming. Suppose that all human actions—from the sacred to the profane—have been and are still . . . ways to survive. Ways for us to adapt to our environment and, perhaps, thrive.
Sounds Reasonable, Doesn’t It?
Does such a supposition denigrate—or cheapen—all the blood and tears shed in service to the gods? Or in service to art? I don’t think so.
Is a symphony less because it’s an adaptive trait rather than a window onto absolute truth? What if the search for truth and meaning is itself an adaptive trait—a way of surviving.
Put this way, it’s hard not to say, “well, duh!” Yet we often don’t go quite far enough. Yes, human activities of all sorts are attempts at survival. But if our search for truth and meaning in all its manifestations, from fine art to fine dining to religion, is an adaptive trait, doesn’t it follow that the search for truth and meaning is an entirely human construct? It’s filling a need but has no larger purpose.
It’s Easy If You Try
Like most people, I searched for a “really true truth” for a long time. Hey, I’m a Baby Boomer, it’s what we did. It was a brilliant marketing ploy. Forget the gurus; the tax dollars you lose giving churches tax-exempt status is seventy-one billion dollars a year.
That’s a lot of moolah for Moloch. (And full disclosure: as a minister, I ride that particular gravy train.)
The search for truth and meaning puts a lot of food on the table and a lot of money into retirement accounts for various sorts of people. No, this isn’t about tax exemptions. It’s about the price we are willing to pay purveyors of truth and meaning. After all, yoga alone is a twenty-seven billion dollar a year industry.
The Fine Print
We pay a lot for truth and meaning, in bookstores, museums, churches, and storefront meditation centers. To repeat, I think that’s great. It’s an adaptive trait. Yet, it’s good remember that there is no one truth to find.
This particular survival trait only becomes problematic when we fall into the trap of thinking there’s a truth out there to find. It’s problematic when we begin paying a high price for one particular roadmap for the soul, or when those around us begin paying too high a price.
Until someone gets hurt.
Yes, it’s the search itself that is the answer. Not the answers. Or the roadmaps.
Got…a new and bigger question?
Young adults, myself on the right there, at a UU young adult spirituality conference (Opus) in 2005
Here’s the challenge: how to sum up a book which is about how faith communities can “bring young adults back” without carrying forward the assumption or premise on which the book begins — that that is a primary concern to our faith communities, how to “bring young people back?” That that should be what we are concerning ourselves with, how to bring young people back into “our” traditions?
I’ve really enjoyed and appreciated the insights of this book, Got Religion?, by Naomi Schaefer Riley. I’ve found myself telling people about Riley’s well-described conversations with young adults and sharing many of her rich insights, vivid accounts, and fascinating factoids (such as that Jesus never went beyond a forty-mile square area in his lifetime–how that single fact can convey so much about the differences between his time and most of our’s).
Yet I felt, at a number of points, that I wanted a larger, bigger-picture, broader conversation than one about how do we get young people to come…back. Is that what matters the most? As a parish minister in my late 30’s, of course, yes, I delight in seeing people in their twenties and thirties coming to church. But I long for something much more meaningful than just seeing younger faces in the group or crowd. I think lots of young people pass through or dip into spiritual communities throughout their twenties and thirties. What I want is for it to matter. What I want is for our spiritual lives to actually be rich and meaningful parts of our lives, not just about where we go once-in-a-while or whether or not we “join.”
Maybe it seems like a minor point, but it’s one I keep coming back to, over and over again throughout my experiences of ministry and congregational life: We all seem to get so focused on our particular setting or context or denomination and how to keep it alive, make it thrive. Too easily it seems we lose sight of the larger purpose that got us wanting to be a part of a community in the first place–to be there for one another, to be challenged and held and transformed ourselves and to be a part of that transformative experience for others. When we get mired in trying to keep the thing afloat, whether its form, we lose both our focus and our appeal.
That said, I can’t help but be a little frustrated that Riley does not include or even mention Unitarian Universalists in her study. I genuinely believe we create something unique in our congregations and gatherings–intergenerational community that is not concerned with everyone sharing the same understanding of God or needing to connect around shared God-language. I got excited about Riley’s chapter on a Charlotte-area collaborative of “forty or so” churches, but if its goal is truly to “reintroduce a generation to Christ and his bride, the church” (124), well, you’ve lost a whole lot of young people right there. That’s just too narrow of a goal for most of the thirty-somethings I know, and it sounds way too much like a Christianity 101 class.
There has to be some kind of middle path between trying to “get young people” to either join and support religious institutions the way they have been for decades or more, or throw our hands up and watch as “they” go off and form their own new kinds of communities and ways of connecting. I think part of the answer is, as always, looking at the initial questions we are asking, and at least rephrasing the question if not asking all new ones. Instead of “how do we get young people back?,” how about asking the young adults in our lives where they are finding community connection, how they/we are making new friends and figuring out ways to build community locally in our lives? Instead of “how can we get young people into leadership roles?,” how about asking young adults in our lives and communities what they/we would like to see happen in our larger city, state, country, or world, and how we can support them in doing that? Please share your questions to-be-asked in the “Comments” field. I’d love to read, ponder, and ask(!) them.
Making Sense of Life (or: Three Decorating Ideas for the Mind)
Wallace Stevens once said, “How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.” At first glance, this perhaps sounds like a Disneyesque reflection on the uses of a hearty imaginal life. Or—since Stevens was a poet—a reflection on the power of metaphor to set solid things flying.
At second glance—since Stevens was both a poet and an atheist—perhaps it is a reflection on what he saw as the most fruitful power in the universe—the human mind’s power to construct meaning as we go along in an otherwise material and un-human universe.
Most likely, Stevens meant all these things and more. After all, his poems sport beautiful and improbable and impermanent “furniture” such as peacocks, round jars in Tennessee, and Emperors of Ice-Cream. Stevens also wrote of “the palm at the end of the mind.” Yes, the palm is a tropical tree. It is also the human hand, our hands. We ourselves are the end of meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called meaning, at least something called “human meaning.”
Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? “It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room,” Stevens wrote, “with something more than furniture.” And it is only one’s thoughts that fill a universe full of furniture with meaning.
Religions (and the lack thereof) reflect the values of the cultures in which they develop. Religions (and their lack) serve as both a reflection of the aspirations of particular groups and also as guides for individuals within a group when we may be in doubt concerning what our culture and our religious belief or non-belief requires of us. They also fill the room with more than furniture. They help us make sense of our lives.
Pragmatist philosophers claim that labeling one “truth” as “false” and another as “true” doesn’t reveal much. It is more useful to see all views—religious and otherwise—as devices to get results. After all, if beliefs did not get results, they would not survive the test of time. The question—at least for those who are free enough of theocracy to have a choice—is which of the many ways of seeing produce the most desirable results,which make the most sense our of life.
Is it somehow useful for making sense of life, for instance, to believe that Fridays which fall on the 13th of the month have special properties?
Over time human beings have posited two very different views of how the world works. One view is that the order we see is the order that is: sure, we will keep discovering more and more about that order, but it’s all out there to observe, albeit some of it observable only with a large hadron collider.
The opposite view (the opposite “truth”) is that there is a higher order not discoverable by observation. This is usually accompanied by speculation concerning a god or gods, though it doesn’t have to. (For example, the Renaissance-era belief in alchemy did not require gods in order to function, even though that belief system existed in parallel to Christianity. )
These polar opposites are not always opposite in practice. Many otherwise “materialist” people leave room for “powers unseen,” as the Book of Common Prayer would have it. Be that as it may, there is a great gulf fixed between those who trust observation to reveal “truth” and those who depend up the revelation of sacred texts and seers of various sorts, be they prophets or gurus.
Wallace Stevens was on the side of observation. He found the most reliable way to get results was to posit a lack of meaning (at least human meaning) beyond the human mind.
Is there a difference between the words of Moses and the words of Wallace Stevens? Stevens thought not. Sure, some poets and some poems are better at filling rooms with more than furniture, and large hadron colliders can rewrite all we know about the room and the furniture. Yet, in essence, it’s all about the human imagination. It’s up to us to animate the room with sense and meaning.
We ourselves are the end of (human) meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called (human) meaning. Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? For some of us “truth” is our way of animating the furniture, and we assume our sense is not the sense of another. It is an entertaining place to live.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palm_tree_symbol.svg
As Stevens put it,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
Love is the Boss of Me
Recently an organizer asked for a meeting and I went to pull out my phone to check my calendar. “My calendar is the boss of me,” I joked. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. And in that nothing I heard the strangeness, the madness of what I had just said.
I am not sure what she was thinking, but here is what I have been thinking since that awkward moment. A calendar serves as the representation of and reminder about the commitments I have made for and with my life energy, with my love. Just as a glance at your checkbook or credit card statement can give you insight into where you commit your financial energy, a calendar can be a window of insight into life values.
What a calendar probably should not be, and should not be thought of as, is the boss. Just as my checkbook and my credit card – while requiring true mindfulness – should not be the boss of me. I do not serve as a minister in the name of a calendar or a bank account. Those are important tools for sustaining my ministry, no doubt. They cannot be the source of my call.
I serve in the name of love. Love for the world that is and the world that can be. Love for the wonder of creation and respect of destruction. Love for a faith community that meets us where we are and doesn’t leave us there. Love for you. Love for me.
It is easy in the days of overloaded calendars and underloaded bank accounts to forget. And it absolutely matters that we remember.
In 1951, Universalist mister Albert Ziegler wrote: “It may be that we have lost sight of our mission. Primarily, the church is not for social or political pronouncements, nor for the fashioning and dissemination of erudite philosophical doctrines. It is for the generation of love. The church is the only institution in society so purposed. We strike at the heart of our very purpose for existence when we neglect that major aim.”
Clearly, it is time for me to remember that love, not a calendar, is the boss of me.
Our Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations will be gathering in Providence, Rhode Island beginning June 25th for General Assembly, the annual meeting of UUs from around the world, with the theme “Love Reaches Out,” inviting congregations to reach out beyond their walls and to engage in new ways of sharing faith.
In the free church tradition of Unitarian Universalism, “we do not just go to church, we are the church.” Beloved, this faith is called to live in the name of love. Let us commit ourselves anew to this call. In the immortal words of poet Maya Angelou, “I know for sure that love saves me and that it is here to save us all.”
The Proof’s in the Pudding (or What’s Churchy about Church?)
Imagine
I’m sometimes asked how humanists can have “church” without invoking god. Here’s how I think about it:
Imagine this scenario: When Imhotep in ancient Egypt invoked the great god Ra, he was invoking the human consciousness, not Ra Almighty.
Imagine this: When Zadok, son of Ahitub, entered the holy of holies of Solomon’s brand new temple, perhaps he was talking to the greatest power on this earth—the human imagination.
Imagine this: When the evangelist Billy Graham made his vast alter calls in stadiums across North America, the Christ that thousands flocked to . . . was the human psyche. Whatever you think about powers beyond, imagine this for just a moment.
Entertain the thought for just a moment that every shaman, priest, and prophet who has ever lived . . . has created worship without god because . . . there never has been six or three or one to begin with.
Shared Subjective Reality
But wait! Isn’t there more to the question? Because, even granted the accuracy of my imaginings, didn’t Imhotep and Zadok and Billy Graham each have the advantage of speaking to people who shared a subjective reality?
Didn’t the Egyptians of Imhotep’s time have a mental image of Ra and the Hebrews of Zakok’s time have a notion of Yahweh and the Christians of Billy Graham’s time a common picture of Christ the Lord?
Good question. Did they really? Are people really like that? Or did the priests and preachers have, rather, the apparatus of worship embedded in a particular place and time—Ra’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, or the vast football stadiums of Jesus with great PA systems?
Could it be that what they all had is an apparatus for worship that individual psyches journeyed to . . . . Can we seriously argue that each ancient Egyptian had an identical psychological understanding of Ra? Not likely. But they did have a temple, didn’t they? Doesn’t the very fact of the rabbinic tradition argue that Hebrew worshipers exited Zadok’s services with very different views of ultimate reality? Still, they had that temple, didn’t they?
Weren’t there as many Christs as there were Christians in Billy Graham’s vast alter calls? Yet they came to that structure of power and fame called a stadium or an auditorium, didn’t they? They came to hear Billy.
All Churchy
What’s so churchy about church? The apparatuses of worship change with time, as do the words and the concepts. It is the human mind and human needs for purpose and meaning that remain that same and come to the temple, the stadium, or the storefront church. These are what remain the same. For humanists, that’s as holy as it gets. And that’s fine: the proof is in the pudding. Ra’s pudding doesn’t do much for many of us. But the pudding of gathering together into community is quite tasty.
Just imagine that the point of worship (humanists prefer “assembly”) is calling individuals into community. Imagine that a community created in this way agrees to agree—despite individual understandings—on particular values that sometimes—in the best-case scenario—lead to objective common actions that may be considered moral and ethical (actions better because they spring from a common purpose).
That’s what “worship”—uh, assembling—will or won’t do. Gathering to invoke Ra or any of the deities or no deity at all leads to the same thing. It’s the human mind imbued with meaning and purpose and communal action that matter.
Imagine . . .
Oops, Oh Well
Turns out there was another school shooting. Yeah, the one in Oregon, not the people who shot the cops in Las Vegas because they didn’t like the government – that was the day before, I think. No, in Portland, Oregon, at a high school, not the university one in Seattle. That’s been a few days ago.
Yeah, it’s a pity, really. The scared kids, the grieving families. It’s a shame. But what are you going to do? I mean, people have a right to have guns. You can’t take that away. It’s in the constitution. I mean, those Cliven Bundy fans who shot the cops and covered their bodies with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags were a militia of sorts, weren’t they? OK, maybe not the most “well ordered militia” in the world, but they had a right to their armed government protest.
And that guy in Seattle, well, sure, it was terrible, but you know he had psychological problems, right? You just can’t fix everything. And if you started taking guns out of the hands of people with psychologi
cal problems, where would it stop? I mean, if I go to a shrink because I’m feeling down, does that mean I should lose my guns? Really, over half of suicides are committed with guns? Yeah, I guess 20,000 a year or so seems like a lot, but what are you going to do? If you took away their guns those people would probably find a way to jump off a bridge or something.
It isn’t fair.
Some idiot is always wanting to take away gun owners’ rights every time a little kid finds a gun and shoots their sister or their friend or their uncle at a picnic. But you know what’s no picnic? A bunch of regulations that say what kind of gun you can have and where you can have it and who is or isn’t allowed to have it. If you want a gun you want it now, not after waiting around for a week while some paper-pusher pokes around in your private business to find out if you’re OK to carry. Why should responsible gun owners have to submit to a bunch of rules and regulations because of a few random events? Thousands of random events? Whatever.
Face it. You know what isn’t cool? The government getting up in your business. You know what is cool? People carrying guns in public. Did you see that picture of the guy carrying an AK-47 around the pharmacy aisle in Target? That’s a bad ass. Nobody is going to mess with anyone while that guy is around. Little children can feel safe when they see that guy with an assault rifle is in the store.
Yeah, I heard about the guy who stopped the shooter at Seattle Pacific University using nothing but pepper spray. Sure, I guess that’s pretty bad-ass in its own way. But then he wrote this pansy-ass letter about praying for everyone involved and how he wasn’t really a hero and how God helped him see that the shooter wasn’t a monster, but a sad and troubled man. What’s with that? Blow away the bad guys, I say. And for that, everyone should have a gun.
Disappear or Die: Southern Black Trans-Experience
Today we bless Tela La’Raine Love as she prepares for her gender reassignment surgery. Every day, Tela blesses this world with her courage, her determination, and her clear vision of a world where transwomen of color live safe, fulfilling, and long lives. Only in her 30’s, Tela serves as an elder, a mother, and a mentor to many young transwomen of color, struggling to survive in a culture that tells them to disappear or die.
Although we hope that “it gets better,” 2012 saw the 4th highest murder rate of LGBTQ and HIV-affected people (LGBTQH) in recorded history, according to the Hate Violence Report released annually by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP-http://www.avp.org/about-avp/coalitions-a-collaborations/82-national-coalition-of-anti-violence-programs ).
People of color, transgender people, and gender non-conforming people continue to experience disproportionately higher rates of homicide. Black and African-American people “were particularly overrepresented in the homicide rates: over half of reported hate murders had Black or African-American victims, even though Black and African American people made up only 15% of total survivors and victims of hate crimes overall.” In 2012, LGBTQH people of color represented 53% of total reported survivors and victims of all hate crimes, but 73.1% of homicide victims. Living at the intersections of racial, gender, economic, and sexual oppression, trans-women of color are told to disappear or die.
In the midst of a dominant cultural narrative of oppression and repression, Tela Love is living into her journey towards wholeness with a spirit fully grounded in her inherent worth and dignity. She is the co-founder of New Legacy Ministries (http://www.newlegacystartstoday.com/), a grassroots organization striving to raise the voices of marginalized communities, especially transgender women of color, and create a spiritually welcoming and sustaining community.
Disappear or Die: A Southern Black Trans-Experience, will be a documentary of her experience as a openly HIV Positive trans-women of color in the south undergoing gender reassignment surgery June 18,2014. In sharing this personal window into her life, she understands that she is taking a risk. Traditionally trans-women have disappeared into the constructs of a patriarchal society after their surgery, rather than remain targets for hate and fear.
Tela realizes that she is allowing herself to be a target for greater judgment and persecution than that of which she already endures. However, inspired by the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail that “silence is betrayal,” she has determined that she can be silent no more. She cannot be silent when waking from her nightmares of another young transgender woman being murdered or dying because she’s too ashamed to follow through with her HIV treatment after being diagnosed out of fear of being further alienated. Tela cannot be silent while there are little or no job opportunities for trans-women, while there are little or no housing opportunities (unless HIV infected), while black trans-women walk the streets in order to survive.
And neither, beloveds, can we. Our silence, too, is betrayal. Let us speak into the space of fear and hatred, ignorance and oppression. Let us bless Tela and every one of her sisters with the welcoming arms of beloved community. (https://www.facebook.com/Blacktranswomenarepowerful)
Please support the creation, production, and distribution of the documentary Disappear or Die: A Southern Black Trans-Experience. Together, let’s re-write the narrative of oppression into thriving, joyful beloved community.
Donations to support the creation of this documentary can be made via PayPal or sent to the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal marked “Designated Donation: New Legacy Ministries” 2903 Jefferson Ave, 2nd FL, New Orleans, LA 70115.)
#Development—It’s Nothing Personal
Pragmatic philosopher John Dewey once said, “Growth itself is the only moral end.” To philosophers a word like “only” means a lot more than it does to most of us. And here, in the Twenty-First Century, looking back on the wreckage and horror of the Twentieth, it’s easy to dismiss such a sentiment with a “meh” and move on to the next soundbite. And “self-help”? Fahgettaboudit!
After all, we’ve had it up to our ears with “growth,” haven’t we? Now we know something Dewey did not: that when “personal” met “growth,” sparks flew and wedding bells rang, and out of that union many fortunes and many suckers have been born. It’s easy at this point to cynically dismiss the whole enchilada.
“Development” is an even more problematic word. “Personal development.” Ugh. That’s the personal. And in the communal sphere, some of us live in the “developed world” where we have “developers” producing something called . . . “developments.” These developments have produced a great deal of sterile, ugly space.
Somewhere, sometime, in the last century many came to believe that the “onward and upward” march of humanity wasn’t such a sound formula for growth. Somewhere back there “onward” and “upward” and “developed” too often began it mean trodding on the heads of the poor, over the bodies of animals and plants, across the last bits of pristine earth.
(The spell check tries to prevent me from typing “trodding,” offering instead “trod” and “trodden.” Is there a grammatical conspiracy against admitting that we have trodden and we are trodding still?)
Somewhere in there humanists such as Dewey, who thought that it was all up to humanity itself, not a supernatural being, to do the growing and developing began to be dismissed as naive. Somewhere in there the neo-orthodox, such as theologian Karl Barth, began to say—can’t you see that Satan, or at the least humanity’s flawed nature, is in charge and must be handled with a chain?
When Dewey said “growth itself is the only moral end,” he meant we, us—he meant growing, developing, cultivating the human psyche and human interactions, not the wetlands or the aquifers. He meant our individual and communal selves. Dewey meant development and growth in such things as ethics and art and democracy, not in the grossness of the national product. Or the boundaries of empire.
In this, Dewey was joining a long line of non-Christian Western philosophers who taught that eudaimonia, “human flourishing,” arises through an “examined life” lived in pursuit of virtue. It isn’t about human perfection, but rather about being a bit better than we were born, a bit better than other primates such as we.
The human right to this pursuit may have been what Thomas Jefferson was talking about when he wrote that human beings have three “unalienable rights,” one of which is the “pursuit of happiness.”
That this curious and intriguing phrase gets discussed far less in the United States than what the Second Amendment means, and what it allows, perhaps tells us more than we want to know about the development of the US since that document declared independence. I suspect that Jefferson would have agreed with Dewey that democracy itself “begins in conversation.” That’s the communal aspect of growth.
As another fan of the pursuit of virtue, Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, put it, “I believe the process of understanding the problems is itself a good.” This is not about talk; it is about conversation—and you can’t converse alone. Conversation is democracy. It is communal. And it is growth, when we actually converse rather than pontificate—an ability based in individual growth.
If the pursuit of happiness were defined as the ability to pursue questions of virtue, isn’t it interesting to consider what it would mean for each US citizen to have the right to pursue happiness?
The pursuit of happiness . . . Should I head for the self-help section of my local bookstore to begin my pursuit? Uh, no. The pursuit of happiness—the pursuit of virtue, the pursuit of truth and meaning and democracy—exists as conversation for a good reason—it’s communal as well as personal. Perhaps that’s the biggest reason Jefferson’s line gets ignored—we have defined happiness as an individual pursuit in the United States, land of individualists and of self-help. That solipsism has had its logical outcome in mass murder and misery. 
The personal growth Dewey advocated was a personal growth within the larger communal whole. The pursuit of virtue, after all, is about how we treat others far more than it is about how we treat ourselves. Dewey had in mind the ideal of the Socratic dialogue, which isn’t easy to live up to. It can’t be found on TV. Or among pundits.
Growth itself is the only moral end because it is about striving to be a better human being for the good of the whole, for human flourishing. The gods can’t be much help with that. It is a profoundly human-ist thing to do.
