Tag Archives: AC Grayling

In defence of humanism

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Humanism is a philosophical outlook, but in itself is a minimalist one, deliberately so because a key requirement of it is that individuals should think for themselves about what they are and how they should live. Standardly, a philosophy is a fully fleshed-out affair, consisting in a detailed view of the world, of humanity in it, of the relationship between human beings and the world, and of human beings with each other. All the great philosophies have a metaphysics that underwrites the ethics they urge. But humanism requires no commitment to teachings beyond its two fundamental premises, and it imposes no obligations on people other than to think for themselves. Because it does not consist in a body of doctrines and prescriptions, backed by sanctions for not believing in the former and not obeying the latter, it is as far from being like a religion as anything could be.

…[I]t remains that each humanist, starting from the shared premises that frame an overall humanistic attitude to life and the world, must work out what that means given his or her own talents for creating a life truly worth living, in both the following respects: that it feels good to live it, and that it is beneficial in its impact on others. In the pages to follow, one version of a humanist ethics is sketched. It is not intended as prescriptive, or as closing debate on any of the topics it touches; it is illustrative of a humanist endeavour which proceeds from its chooser’s own efforts to fulfil the one humanist obligation: to think.

AC Grayling, The God Argument, p.148

The other week, a commenter suggested that humanism presented an alternative belief system to the one(s) presented by religion. I knew then that this was not so, as I explained in the subsequent post; but the question troubled me. I knew that I recalled something in Grayling’s book that addressed this concern, but I couldn’t at the time find it. I have now reproduced it above!

This whole question has been on my mind the past week, in between working on another, related, project, and some thoughts occur to me. One of the problems with religion – any religion, but acutely the Abrahamic ones – is that they rest upon authority: the authority of holy scripture, of tradition, and of those contemporary representatives (priests, imams, pastors, elders, rabbis) on whom the ancient authority, or some proportion of it, has devolved, inasmuch as they have been ordained, appointed, to mediate it to their congregations. The whole edifice of religion rests on tiered authority, ultimately underpinned by a reward and punishment system with some kind of assumed metaphysical origin. (Even the religious traditions of Buddhism fall under this stricture, though in a typically more nuanced way.)

Now, spirituality is one of the most intimate, personal and sensitive areas of human life; it seems wholly wrong that any external authority should seek to impose control upon a person’s spiritual life. The result, so often, is more or less visible religious trauma. It is illuminating to consider that perhaps the next most intimate, personal and sensitive area of a person’s life is their sexuality; it is no coincidence that most, if not all, religions seek to control that also.

Humanism, as Grayling points out in The God Argument (above and passim), is nothing like this. It has no authority, nor does it seek authority. Like the very earliest “atheist” strands of Buddhism, humanism states that each humanist must work out their path for themselves. Others, directly and through their writings, may give assistance and advice, but each of us must do it for ourselves. To require anyone to accept beliefs on external authority is not only not necessary: it is an abuse of human freedom; and besides, it is the deepest unkindness.

Contemplative practice is just exactly “finding out for oneself”, unmediated by the authority of scripture or tradition; perhaps that is why so many contemplatives, from Meister Eckhart and Al-Hallaj to Thomas Keating and Richard Rohr, though they would never have considered themselves humanists, have faced anything from severe criticism to murderous supression from the authorities of their respective religions. To remain free to tread our own way with diligence – what more could anyone ask?

Belief systems?

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A commenter on yesterday’s post reminded me that perhaps I hadn’t made it sufficiently clear that I am not advancing humanism – or anything else come to that – as an alternative belief system to take the place of organised religion. For some this may be case – although I don’t think that’s what AC Grayling was recommending in the passage I quoted yesterday – but it emphatically isn’t my own approach at all.

The Einsamkeit of yesterday’s title is a German term usually translated as either loneliness or solitude; its alternative translations, seclusion or solitariness, are the ones that interest me, (Like so many German philosophical terms, it has its own resonance which doesn’t seem to have a one for one equivalent in English.) I was using it to indicate following the course that appears, spiritually – I’m reminded of the Taoist phrase “to accord with the way” – not adopting a ready-made spirituality from either organised religion or academic philosophy. (People like Eckhart Tolle, or Jiddu Krishnamurti, are exemplars of this kind of contemplative path.)

It is of course hard to find words for all this, which is one reason that the Christian tradition of apophatic theology developed among the Early Church Fathers – although something similar already existed among the Neo-Platonists – and from the opposite direction, perhaps, Buddhist (especially Zen) philosophy and teachings often emphasise Śūnyatā, emptiness of inherent existence. The ground of being, the Tao, Istigkeit, is no thing. It cannot be described; it isn’t really possible truthfully to construct a sentence with it as its object. Awareness seems to be irresistibly identified with it: we are aware with its awareness. At the end, it is all we are; but it is all we have ever been. Our practice is really nothing more than a means of stripping away whatever stops us seeing that. To construct, or to adopt, belief systems is massively to miss the point – and that is what I was, perhaps clumsily, trying to get at yesterday.

Einsamkeit

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Despite my recent flirtations with religious language on this blog, I still remain unconvinced that organised religion is at all good for me. More than that, I’m honestly unsure that it is in fact a good way for people, in general, to conduct themselves.

The spiritual impulse, I am certain, is a deep and true inclination of the heart; it seems to be an essential part of what it means to be human. But, as I have often suggested here, spirituality does not necessarily imply religion – in many ways they are quite different things. Wikipedia defines religion as “a social-cultural system of designated behaviours and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements.” When I remember what it was like to be an active part of such a “social-cultural system of designated behaviours…” I keep coming back to AC Grayling’s remarks:

To move from the Babel of religions and their claims, and from the too often appalling effects of religious belief and practice on humankind, to the life-enhancing insights of the humanist tradition which most of the world’s educated and creative minds have embraced, is like escaping from a furnace to cool waters and green groves…

Humanism, accordingly, is the answer to the question often asked amidst the acerbic debates between proponents and opponents of religion: what alternative can the non-religious offer to religion as the focus for expression of those spiritual yearnings, that nostalgia for the absolute, the profound bass-note of emotion that underlies the best and deepest parts of ourselves? Often this question is asked rhetorically, as if there is no answer to it, the assumption being that by default religion is the only thing that speaks to these aspects of human experience, even if religion is false and merely symbolic. The symbolism, some views have it, is enough to do the work.

Humanism is the emphatic answer to the request for an alternative… [T]he most wonderful resources for good and flourishing lives lie in the intelligence, the experience, the wisdom and insight of our fellows in the human story; and it is from these resources that the humanist outlook derives.

The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, p.7 – but q.v. my own post In defence of humanism above.

Having escaped to “cool waters and green groves”, why do I find myself sometimes tempted to at least go back and look at the furnace door again?

Sociologist Nancy Nason-Clark has researched the parallels between abusive religious environments and abuse in intimate partnerships. She has determined that individuals—women in particular—who have been in high-control religious environments are more likely to be in abusive partnerships. These individuals have internalized that their voice doesn’t matter, that someone else is allowed to control them, that they are supposed to forgive, and that it would be a sin to leave. The systems are the same whether they are in a marriage, in a church, on a team, or in a workplace. And when our sense of self is eroded or devalued, or when someone who has control over us tells us they represent the will of the creator of the universe, it makes sense that we wouldn’t recognize the dynamic happening in another context.

Hillary McBride, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing p.80

I would simply suggest here that perhaps the dangers Dr McBride outlines aren’t restricted to what she refers to as “high-control religious environments”; perhaps it is simply in the nature of organised religion – even in such apparently benign forms as a Quaker meeting or an Anglican parish – to set up these control systems, often quite unconsciously. It is not necessary to set out to devalue a worshipper’s own intelligence and their own voice: with the best will in the world, that is just what happens in religious systems, merely by virtue of what they are.

It seems that my own instinct – and it is an instinct far more than a decision – for Einsamkeit, for walking my own path of practice, feels like a healthy instinct for a wholeness, a completion, that I have far too often neglected. The inwardly eremitic life doesn’t, it appears, have necessarily to involve physical isolation or any experiment in extreme living: it is a solitude of the heart, a calling to a necessary quiet.

Under the hood

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The Socratic Question, ‘What sort of person should I be?’ – and its variants, ‘What kind of life should I lead?’ ‘What values shall I live by?’ ‘What shall I aim for?’ – asks any reflective person, at any point in life, to pause and consider what really matters, and as far as practically possible to live according to the answers. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus pointed out that a person might be struck by the force of this Socratic challenge even in the last hours of advanced old age, and at that moment ‘begin’, as he put it, ‘to be wise’. It is never too late.

It might strain optimism to think that a philosophy of life could be arrived at early, in the sense that a youth might consider Socrates’ question, come to a decision, and thereafter live in conformity with that decision. Yet although it is never too late to consider one’s philosophy of life, neither is it ever too soon.

AC Grayling, Philosophy and Life: Exploring the Great Questions of How to Live

As I’ve mentioned here before, I came to my interest in philosophy very young – probably between the ages of 14 and 15 – during an extended spell in hospital. I don’t suppose it would have occurred to me then to frame my growing interest in terms of the Socratic Question as explained by Grayling in the quote above; but I was acutely conscious of a need to find out for myself what went on under life’s engine cover. There must, I was certain, be something that made it all go, some intrinsic power or energy behind everything; something that made sense of my earlier – for want of a better term – mystical experiences as a child recovering from a long illness. Academic philosophy, I soon discovered, was not the way to find out.

This longing to look “under the hood” – AKA metaphysical inquiry – has stayed with me all my life. It was the reason for my early interest in Buddhism and Taoism; for my tentative experiments with psychedelics. It was the reason I turned for some years to writing poetry. It was most certainly what drew me – apart from the felt need for a context, and a justification, for practice – to religion; and, paradoxically perhaps, it is what – out of a need to remain close to my own inner experience – has led me out of formal religion altogether.

My life has perhaps been a sequence of beginning again. Some might see this – as I have myself, often enough – as indecisiveness, or even faithlessness. But actually it has been, I now see, anything but either of those things; it has been a process of trying to be true to what I have actually encountered in practice – in stillness, in looking under the outward appearance of things, under the surface of my own apprehensions.

Now that I am getting close to the age of Epictetus’ imaginary example, I am just beginning to realise that just beginning is the necessary condition of insight. I first read Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind many years ago; it seems to have taken me more than fifty years to start to get a handle on what the title means. Now, perhaps, I have learnt to sit still.

Nothing to practice

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Do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Relax. There is nothing to practice.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is fatally easy to make a career out of the contemplative life. Monastics have been doing it since at least the Buddha’s day – probably far longer ago than that. It isn’t a career. The Taoist and Chan Buddhist traditions are full of stories of those who wandered “cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown” (Chia Tao), away from the politics, and the academic and religious structures of their day, simply to remain still and quiet, among the comings and goings of natural things, the flow of what simply is.

Part of the trouble, it seems to me, is no more than the nature of mind itself. The self is not a settled thing, not a captain on the bridge of the mind; thoughts, feelings, longings, identities even, come and go according to circumstances, or else merely according to the restless patterns of internal weather. Nothing is fixed; intention is only a word, a flickering across unsteady waters.

To sit still enough to see this, to see that at the centre of all that calls itself the self is no thing at all, is far easier and more possible outside of the structures and expectations imposed by institutions, whether spiritual or academic. Of course, there were many contemplatives who subsisted in the cracks and crevices of the religious life, just as there are many today who find places to shelter within contemporary scholarship; the AC Graylings and Susan Blackmores, perhaps. But it seems to me that they survive – and even thrive – often in spite of, rather than because of, where they find themselves.

To live as a small shopkeeper, like Nisargadatta Maharaj, or to follow various disparate semi-careers as I have done in the past – or simply to live quietly in a retirement community as I do now, or as Joan Tollifson does these days – seems to me in most cases an easier, even sometimes a more honest, way to carry on. There is no task anyway: no goal to achieve, no position to maintain. There is only the falling away of purposeful action; the light through the trees behind the garden, the robin trying out his spring song in the chill evening air of early March. Only remain still, and quiet. All that is is given.

A life apart?

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I sometimes find myself wondering whether some of the features and patterns to which we have grown all too used in religion – the othering of those who are not our co-religionists, the setting up of purity tests (shibboleths, affirmations of doctrinal correctness, various sexual, even racial, barriers to full inclusion), the requirement of obedience to spiritual authority, seen most clearly in a monastic or “third order” context – are not perversions of things rooted in legitimate contemplative practice.

When we seek to control, or codify, experiences which in themselves lie outside the processes of discursive thought, when we seek to make them susceptible of teaching and regulation in a community context, things can go, often over many years, badly astray. Examples could be found in the accounts of those involved in institutions ranging from Eihei-ji to the Magdalene laundries, not to mention innumerable more recent and less formal cults and sects.

It is in our nature, it seems, to try to possess for ourselves things that are received by gift alone. In our fear of losing that which was received only by not seeking, we try to cage the bird of grace; worse, we seek to control each other’s “experimental faith“, each other’s access to the paths of awakening.

What is to be done? Surely, problems arise when we try, as I did myself too often in the past, to constrain or legitimise our own spiritual journey, to fit into approved and well-mapped ways. It doesn’t work; or perhaps it does, but so rarely and adventitiously as to be not worth the risk.

As I recently quoted from Rodney Smith (in an excellent article in Tricycle Magazine a few years back):

For a few people, a full lifetime as a monastic or living many years on retreat is a wise direction. Each of us has a unique spiritual design that pulls us toward freedom. The problem arises when we listen to others for our direction, or think we “should” do something because others have done it in the past. Spiritual growth is a fine-tuning of our ear to the needs of our heart.

For myself, I seem to have found that the only way to walk is outside of any institution, or formal membership of any church or meeting, or indeed the particular relationship of personal discipleship; that only in some such way can I be true to my “unique spiritual design”. The last thing I would want would be for anyone to follow me – that way lies madness at best. For us each to find our own way may be scary, and at times lonely, but as AC Grayling writes,

To move from the Babel of religions and their claims, and from the too often appalling effects of religious belief and practice on humankind, to the life-enhancing insights of the humanist tradition which most of the world’s educated and creative minds have embraced, is like escaping from a furnace to cool waters and green groves…

Humanism, accordingly, is the answer to the question often asked amidst the acerbic debates between proponents and opponents of religion: what alternative can the non-religious offer to religion as the focus for expression of those spiritual yearnings, that nostalgia for the absolute, the profound bass-note of emotion that underlies the best and deepest parts of ourselves? Often this question is asked rhetorically, as if there is no answer to it, the assumption being that by default religion is the only thing that speaks to these aspects of human experience, even if religion is false and merely symbolic. The symbolism, some views have it, is enough to do the work.

Humanism is the emphatic answer to the request for an alternative… [T]he most wonderful resources for good and flourishing lives lie in the intelligence, the experience, the wisdom and insight of our fellows in the human story; and it is from these resources that the humanist outlook derives.

Second best?

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Occasionally I find myself wondering if living the contemplative life outside of a community, be that a monastic community of some kind, or merely a community of faith – a sangha, or a eucharistic community of some kind – is somehow second best; if, in effect, I am missing out on a vital component of the spiritual life. After all, one is continually reminded in every other email newsletter that the sangha is the third of the Three Jewels, or that “there is no such thing as a freelance Christian.”

But for some time now I have been convinced that, for me at least, however reassuring a framework formal religion can provide for contemplative practice, the stifling effects of  dogma and the scriptural imperative can seem to weigh on the spirit like a heavy woollen hood. Of course there is always the strong, and conventionally approved, temptation to declare oneself a member of some religion or other, and even of some tradition within that religion, but AC Grayling uncannily nails my own experience when he describes the humanist as one escaping to “cool waters and green groves.”

As I recently quoted from Rodney Smith (in an excellent article in Tricycle Magazine a few years back):

For a few people, a full lifetime as a monastic or living many years on retreat is a wise direction. Each of us has a unique spiritual design that pulls us toward freedom. The problem arises when we listen to others for our direction, or think we “should” do something because others have done it in the past. Spiritual growth is a fine-tuning of our ear to the needs of our heart.

Hardening of the oughteries – the sense that one life, one’s actions, are never enough, that one “must try harder” in the words of the old school reports – is a well-known occupational illness in the spiritual life. To truly pay attention in practice will, sooner or later, reveal our own iteration of Smith’s “unique spiritual design”; and open awareness will lay bare the treacherous thoughts of inadequacy and weakness that give rise to the oughteries, and they can be left be the roadside like any other thoughts.

It sounds easy; it isn’t. Millennia of conformity and obedience, centuries of misdirected authority vested in the structures of religion, stand in our way, muttering of heresy and disobedience, exclusion and damnation. Who are we to question such “thrones and dominions”? Each of us must find the path our own feet were built for; but the way of the “cat who walks by himself” is an ancient and honourable way, whatever the guardians of the faiths may say. As I said once before here, I think perhaps we should recognise the Einzelgänger or Einzelgängerin as a distinct and proper calling in themselves. I don’t mean by this literal loners, nor hermits in either the religious or the colloquial sense; but contemplatives who find that they are temperamentally unsuited either for formal membership of some church or meeting, or for the particular relationship of personal discipleship; those, in fact, who can only thus be true to their “unique spiritual design”.

Escaping to cool waters

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Too often, seen from the point of view of mystical religion, with its sometimes mesmerisingly beautiful symbolisms and occasionally heroic asceticism, humanism can seem a grey, if worthy, doctrine – more suitable to university departments of sociology and politics than to contemplative experience. But that would be a mistaken view. So often, things – like love or pain – look very different from the outside than they are, lived, on the inside. AC Grayling describes humanism as,

an account of the better alternative to religion, the humane and positive outlook of an ethics free from religious or superstitious aspects, an outlook that has its roots in rich philosophical traditions, yet is far more attuned to our contemporary world, and far more sensitive to the realities of human experience, than religion is.

This is an outlook that the general term ‘humanism’ now denotes. It is an outlook of great beauty and depth, premised on kindness and common sense, drawing its principles from a conversation about the good whose roots lie in the philosophical debates of classical antiquity, continually enriched by the insights and experience of thinkers, poets, historians and scientists ever since. To move from the Babel of religions and their claims, and from the too often appalling effects of religious belief and practice on humankind, to the life-enhancing insights of the humanist tradition which most of the world’s educated and creative minds have embraced, is like escaping from a furnace to cool waters and green groves. I hope the latter is the destination of all humanity, as more people come to understand this ethical outlook as far the better alternative…

[It] is a beautiful and life-enhancing alternative outlook that offers insight, consolation, inspiration and meaning, which has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the best, most generous, most sympathetic understanding of human reality.

However reassuring a framework formal religion can provide for contemplative practice, the stifling effects of  dogma and the scriptural imperative can seem to weigh on the spirit like a heavy woollen hood. Grayling uncannily nails my own experience when he describes escaping to “cool waters and green groves.” Set free in this way, spirituality does not risk becoming the New Age pick’n’mix feared by the proponents of religious mysticism, but instead, as Sam Harris writes,

Spirituality begins with a reverence for the ordinary that can lead us to insights and experiences that are anything but ordinary… Yes, the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound. In subjective terms, each of us is identical to the very principle that brings value to the universe. Experiencing this directly—not merely thinking about it—is the true beginning of spiritual life.

Road songs

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Since my teens I’ve loved the idea of the road song – music that you play to accompany driving, that somehow measures out the miles in bars and choruses, but is not (probably) about the travelling in itself.

I’ve been blogging on one platform or another since 2005; for four or five years before that I kept a website where I regularly published something like this kind of episodic writing. At one point, and I honestly can’t remember when, it occurred to me that all these bits of (mainly) prose were something like my own road songs, much more than considered accounts of anything. Consequently, they’re not autobiographical as such; they don’t tell a connected story, but are more in the nature of snatches of music heard in passing.

Lately I’ve been trying harder to be honest about some of the tentative conclusions I come across along the way, but I know that knowing is not as easy as that. AC Grayling:

One can believe a true proposition and have a justification for doing so, but the justification can be the wrong one for holding that belief. For example: suppose you believe that Fred is in the next room because you heard Fred’s favourite tune being strummed on Fred’s peculiar-sounding guitar. Fred is indeed in the next room, so your belief is true; but he has taught a friend to strum his favourite tune on his peculiar guitar, and it is the friend strumming. Your justification for holding this true belief is therefore not the right justification in the circumstances. So if you claim to know that Fred is in the next room on the basis of the evidence you employ to justify that claim, you cannot be said to know that Fred is there; you only or merely believe that he is. And very often, indeed, our beliefs are merely beliefs because the justification for them is insufficient to make that belief amount to knowledge.

Human consciousness is not – well, mine isn’t, anyway – so coherent a thing, or so independent of the objects of its perceptions, as to allow me to say, “This is what I think,” and have done with it. Susan Blackmore, in her luminous and heartwarming book Zen and the Art of Consciousness, writes:

At any time in a human brain there are multiple parallel processes going on, conjuring up perceptions, thoughts, opinions, sensations and volitions. None of these is either in or out of consciousness for there is no such place. Most of the time there is no observer: if consciousness is involved at all it is an attribution made later, on the basis of remembering events and assuming that someone must have been experiencing them in the past, when in fact no one was…

Even more interesting will be to understand the basis of those special moments in which one asks ‘Am I conscious now?’ or ‘Who am I?’ I suspect that these entail a massive integration of processes all over the brain and a corresponding sense of richer awareness. These probably occur only rarely in most people, but contribute disproportionately to our idea of ‘what it’s like to be me’. This kind of rich self-awareness may happen more of the time, and more continuously, for those who practise mindfulness. Does it completely disappear in those who transcend it?

To be still, not interfering – not even to ask Blackmore’s questions – allows something odd to happen, it seems to me. The “multiple parallel processes” appear to settle out, like sediment in a disturbed pond. Some sort of clarity supervenes: the layers of the mind rearrange themselves, perhaps, to continue with the metaphor, and the sense of a sequence, or progress, of events is replaced with something else, that is like the patterning of sunlight on the wavelets across the pond. Jiddu Krishnamurti:

When there is no illusion the “what is” is most sacred. Now let’s look at what actually is. At a given moment the “what is” may be fear, or utter despair, or a fleeting joy. These things are constantly changing. And also there is the observer who says, “These things all change around me, but I remain permanent”. Is that a fact, is that what really is? Is he not also changing, adding to and taking away from himself, modifying, adjusting himself, becoming or not becoming? So both the observer and the observed are constantly changing. What is is change. That is a fact. That is what is.

All that happens is that the stillness allows what is to appear, that’s all. The road disappears; the road songs go on changing, and yet somewhere there is something steady. Wieland Samolak:

When I was a teenager I used to sit on an empty field listening for hours to the sounds of distant cars, railroads, helicopters, and other motorized objects. These sounds, which are very rough and noisy when they are near, attracted me from the distance because they had merged and diffused into a continuum when they reached my ears. By this experience it came to my mind that it is more satisfying for me to listen to continuous changes within one sound than to the combinations of discrete sonic events usually found in music.

Just noticing what is – whatever appears in the field of consciousness, without having to label it or evaluate it, without having to either focus one’s attention on it or wrench one’s attention away from it – is perhaps the freshest, most peaceful thing one can do. There is no technique to adhere to, no doctrine to conform to: what is, is, and there’s nothing that needs to be done about it.