A HUMANIST'S DOGMA

Our most cherished beliefs may reach further than the facts can take us.

 

I am a professional leader in the Ethical Culture movement, a 147-year-old denomination that espouses a humanistic philosophy of life for many years. In its organizational expressions, humanism broadly places itself within the realm of free thought, and, as such, in opposition to religion, or what it assumes religion to be.

With regard to belief, organized humanism has preoccupied itself with the authoritarian character of religious doctrine and dogma. Dogma lays down absolute truths with correlative certainty. Such truths, authored by supreme religious authorities (think the pope), are formulated with little or no concern for empirical facts or evidence. Often faith, despite the evidence, lies in their origins. Humanism, by contrast, asserts an epistemology that is fluid, open, characteristically provisional, and grounded in evidence. From the standpoint of humanist polemics, the religions and their dogmas are dark and often correlated to superstitious presumptions. They are not worthy of belief. They stand in opposition to the free mind. Humanism, by contrast, is responsive to evidence, embraces science and experimentalism, and, as such, is enlightened.

This dichotomy, as implied, is polemical but not readily dismissible. Yet, in their repudiation of dogma, humanists may readily overlook the sources of their own beliefs and convictions.

While I strongly concur with humanist presumptions that belief needs to be governed by facts and based on evidence and not the unalterable word of God (I personally see no evidence of a divine custodian), evidence can only lead us so far.

Take any belief we hold and submit it to interrogation. When asked why we hold such a belief, we can give a reasoned and justifying response. When asked “but why believe that?” we can ratchet down our thinking to an ulterior level and respond likewise with evidence controlled by reason. Questioned on, we find ourselves peeling away the proverbial skin of the onion. Probed long enough and we reach a point where reasoned response is exhausted. We throw up our hands in concession to the epistemic reality that we believe what we do simply because we believe it, because it seems or feels right. In short, our hardcore beliefs, sustained by the sturdy scaffolding of facts, evidence, science, reasoned analysis, and logical clarity, fade at their farthest reaches into a type of epistemic fog where feeling melds with thought. Perhaps that dark mysterium at the core of our beliefs opens the door to faith, to convictions and assertions that may not be so remote from the flimsy bases of belief held by those who embrace dogmatic “truths” that humanists find so utterly unacceptable.

Perhaps the best that humanists can do in the realm of certainty is humbly concede that there is none in the final analysis. Perhaps we need to fall back on some variant of pragmatism and embrace the notion that we accept certain beliefs and reject others simply because the former “work” better. When applied, they bring more satisfying results. As the philosopher John Dewey put it, there is no “truth.” There is only what he referred to as “warranted assertibility.” Such is probably one of the stronger arguments against the approach and claims of the dogmatist. I find them compelling. But, the weakness of the dogmatic position need not vouchsafe claims of certainty by those who oppose it.

I offer this exposition in order to open the door to a personal – and admittedly unprovable – conviction of my own. As a humanist, I admittedly have a dogma of my own. It is a belief that emerges from my temperament, no doubt augmented by my life experiences. My religion of “no dogma” entertains its own dogma.

At the center of my humanism is a conviction about the supreme value of human encounter. By human encounter I mean direct face-to-face engagement in real-time. Such engagement is among the experiences I cherish most, and I eagerly seek them out. What I affirm most is illuminated by what I reject.

I am sensitive to, and remain critical of, what I feel is the increased corporatization of American life. It increasingly colonizes the professional realm and our private lives. It reflects a mechanization of life that threatens the humanistic sensibilities I highly value.

As I have noted in previous essays, there is a radical difference between market and non-market values. We are excessively consumed by the former; I feel the need to rescue the latter. My real-time engagement with people in general, and my friends and loved ones most of all, comprise experiences I value most.

As I grow older and my time shorter, how I wish to spend what remains becomes a weightier question. It raises the profile of the primary importance of human relations, not as pixels on a screen, not as squares in a Zoom montage, but in personal meeting. I want my world, as much as possible, to be a human one.

Two pressing phenomena bring this concern to the forefront. One is the isolation we have endured issuing from the Covid pandemic. The second is the ubiquity of social media in our lives. There is a proliferation of literature debating the virtues and harms of spending time with our digital devices. Much is gained. We retrieve relationships lost since kindergarten. We can readily stay in touch with those we know and love. While shut in during the pandemic, people retained contact with loved ones, often at regularly scheduled times. It enabled us to mitigate isolation, and for many it still does. I cannot argue that this is not a very good thing, brought to us by the wizardry of modern technology.

Needless to say, social media is a phenomenally efficient organizing tool. We are reminded that the Arab Spring was greatly put together via Facebook, and the courageous rebellion against the theocratic and corrupt Iranian regime makes ample use of the internet. Yet, as readily pointed out, its employment moves in both directions. Digital technologies have also been used by autocratic governments to quickly and efficiently track down dissidents, and by the government of Myanmar to facilitate genocide. Their Orwellian employments are exponential.

But more palpable is the powerful ability of social media to channel extremism and hate. Algorithmic programs seduce and ensnare users to narrow their range of information and intensify their prejudices. The virtues and vices of social media can be and need to be, soundly debated. But my own sense is that on balance they lead to more harm than good. Needless to say, the horse is long out of the barn and it won't be going back again. Going forward, the only salutary responses involve regulation. It is a crucial, fraught, and complicated issue. The debate is just beginning, and much lies ahead. It is beyond the scope of this essay.

What disturbs me more than the specific employment of social media and digital technology is its pervasiveness. I still find it strange as I pass people on the streets that a significant percentage are staring down at their phones. Human relations are conveyed most directly through the face of the other, most tellingly through the eyes. If faces are downcast, I feel that our social environment has grown thinner. On the street, we become increasingly disconnected, and we retreat even further into our solitary isolation.

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, in a prevailing decision that protected the contents of a suspect's cell phone from intrusion by the police without a warrant, drew what I find a compelling analogy. He wrote that if the proverbial man from Mars were to arrive on Earth and view people and their cell phones, he would conclude that they are a part of human anatomy. With this analogy, our Fourth Amendment rights are protected.

Though I own and use a cell phone, I have a personal rule that in social situations it remains in my pocket. Unless it's an emergency, I see no reason why the caller, who is not present, should have priority over the person who is. I have long found that its use in such circumstances interrupts the social ambiance and with it the flow of conversation. It changes the mood. It frankly also feels rude, as taking out a newspaper to read when in a social situation with others would be rude. After all, little will be lost in letting the call pass. This is why phones come with retrieval features. Yet, my sense is that the impulse to respond immediately to a ringing phone has become a social norm.

My pledge to myself at this stage of life is that, though I use digital technologies, I will not become ensnared or addicted to them. I will use them with discretion; they will not control me. I feel that in their allure and ubiquity, they have not enriched human relations but have thinned them out. I don't believe that Facebook “friends” are an adequate replacement for real friends. I have a Twitter account, but I ceased using it when it became apparent that I employed it primarily when I was angry about something. It did not bring out the best in me.

A critical question is whether the use of social media enriches human relations or depletes them. The answer perhaps rests with individual temperament. It is likely that one day, I suspect in the not-distant future, social science will deliver a compelling, objective verdict to this question. At the moment I veer toward the negative. We suffer from a plague of isolation and loneliness in American society. People are no longer involved in institutions and social organizations as they used to be. And I would draw a general conclusion that social media are not a remedy or an adequate substitute for what is lost. They may even be a propelling cause of the malaise.

My response is what I refer to as my humanist dogma. What matters most to me is direct, face-to-face relations with people whom I care about. I believe in the value, power, and importance of community. But even more, the experience I value most is being in the presence of a friend and feeling the intimacy and mutual caring that comes from the sharing of common concerns and of interiorities. It is to experience at those moments a feeling that I have touched the transcendent humanity of the other.

There is a sense of ultimacy in such human encounters. For me, they are the moments when I feel most alive and grateful for my existence. For me, the supreme importance of the experience speaks for itself. It is an experience whose centrality I affirm, yet admittedly cannot prove.