DEAN'S LETTER

First, some word on the state of the Institute. Class 8 is now in its second year with 13 students. Carol Wintermute and I are mentors. Class 9 will start next month. There is still room for more students, and your recruiting help is needed. Do this through Jean Kotkin who will be back in New York (212 873-0918) on the 23rd. Mentors are Calvin Chatlos and David Schafer. When I became Dean, the Board approved designation of more than one mentor, allowing better balancing of gender, ideology, and institutional background. David and Calvin are both graduates of the Institute.

The Blau Library, which was essentially unusable in its past location, has now been moved to the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, NY. There, at last, it will be accessible, and available to scholars around the world via OCLC indexing and interlibrary loan. Half of my professional library is already there also, under the same contractual arrangements.

As indicated in our new brochure, several new scholars have joined our adjunct faculty. Last year’s topic was Globalization, and papers will appear soon in Humanism Today volume 12. The current topic addresses what beyond reason might be at the core of modern humanism.

For the Institute to flourish and expand upon its mission, we need massive infusion of funding. As graduates, you know what we are doing and should be doing. Please help in this, personally and through those you know who have sufficient resources. The NACH Board and the Institute’s Board of Governors will be meeting jointly to discuss finances on April 7.

Let me shift from those necessary but bureaucratic matters to several issues that in the long run are much more important, matters that are very central in our articulation of a vibrant and viable modern humanism.

1. Spirituality and the spiritual. Many of us exhibit allergy symptoms with such words. And with consider provocation and reason. The number one bestseller ("non-fiction") is James Van Praagh’s Talking to Heaven! A stroll through one of the book superstores shows shelves of "spirituality" plus shelves of "alternative spirituality." A much-heard phrase at all levels of US society is "I’m not religious, but I AM spiritual." Nontheistic humanists may not engage in godtalk themselves but they would be foolish to fail to see the deep human needs from which it springs in most of our neighbors. Whether humanism can or should satisfy any or all of such needs is part of the question; the other part is which needs need to be transcended if human maturity is to occur.

While I am reminded of Emerson’s rejection of Daniel Webster ("The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan"), I think a gentler approach may be in order. Just what does this or that neighbor mean by "spiritual." Does it connote rarity, or depth, or mystery, or transcendence or what? Until we know this, serious understanding or dialogue is impossible. A fascinating start on decoding some of this is in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36:4 (Dec 1977) entitled "Religiousness and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy." The authors explored definitions of these terms with samples of 12 religious groups and asked respondents to rate themselves on each term. For all but one group, spirituality was rated higher. But the self-rating of religiousness was lowest for the New Age subsample, mental health workers, nontraditional Episcopalians, Unitarians, and mainstream college students. At the other end of the spectrum, Roman Catholics were the group where the self-ratings were identical. The moral? Never assume that you know definitionally or in advance what someone means by "spiritual."

What have our own usages been? When the Unitarians and Universalists produced Hymns of the Spirit, they certainly were not referring to the third person of the Christian trinity! Nor was Yervant Krikorian when he edited the valuable Naturalism and the Human Spirit in 1944. Our varied traditions once used this word with considerable frequency and clarity to connote that part of the human that could soar, that could transcend the limitations of the present in creative moments. We would do well to recall Ludwig Feuerbach’s insight that the alleged attributes of deity are projections of our best attributes and values. Periodically coupling "human" with "spirit" serves us well. That way we start with the more-or-less known and move outward. If we use terms like wonder, depth, mystery, we are referring to some "not yet" and not some "never here." Concepts such as "authenticity," creativity," "self-actualization," "maturity" come to mind. All of these lend specificity to the otherwise-vague umbrella-term spirituality. Or (I can seldom quit without a bow toward John Dewey) why not compare spirituality and spiritual to religion and religious. Avoid the nouns; they suggest static reifications. Stress instead the attitudinal and active. And remember, Emerson did not cease speaking of liberty because of Daniel Webster!

I am urging us here to recapture and re-precision some of the poetic language that once moved us: soul, spirit, heart, guts, perfectibility, progress, evolution, truth, universality, justice, goodness, excellence, maturity, dignity, worth. The rhetoric that moves people piles metaphor upon metaphor. Well and good, if we remember that effective metaphor must start from something concrete. And there is the humanist difference. In today’s paper Billy Graham, citing Jesus and referring to President Clinton, claims that it is equally sinful to think about something and to do it! This either makes "sin" inevitable or so universal that calling it sin is gratuitous. Theodore Parker, gibing an earlier Calvinist divine, said he didn’t know anything about such a pervasive "sin," but did perceive a number of quite specific sins. It is this kind of concreteness that makes ideas and concepts come alive, become singable.

2. The free markets mantram. The triumphant economic ideology , especially in the US today, argues that the most efficient way to meet human wants is to free the marketplaces of all interference in order that consumers and producers can bargain realistically. Rational consumers will presumably make rational choices among the goods being offered, and the prices of such goods will vary accordingly on a supply-and-demand basis, which in turn will create profit/rewards for the suppliers and encourage others to join in supplying more goods.

Particularly in the twentieth century, advertising has entered this picture, creating new consumer wants and adding to the price of products by encouraging consumers to want brand-x over brand-y even when the products are identical.

Much recent discussion revolves around the morality of consumption. A small group argue that ethical persons should live simply, minimizing their wants regardless of the overall economic constriction. Many more argue that consumption stimulates production and reduces costs. Extending this argument, many say that the import of cheap goods produced by cheap labor in poor countries increases the productivity of those poor countries and puts them on the road to economic growth which will produce the "tide that lifts all boats."

In all this, I find almost absent any consideration of the restraints upon producer-freedom that many industrialized countries have come to take for granted. Environmental protection, workplace and consumer health and safety, contract honesty, product liability, all come to mind. The list is, and should be much longer. This makes the "no government interference" rhetoric very deceptive. The current problems with penalizing "big tobacco" come to mind (particularly since the trial here in Minnesota has exposed such corporate deception and chicanery).

Humanists have been saying too little about economic theories and practices, and we need much more dialogue here.

3. Tensions between realpolitik and national ideals. No simple answers here, and the list is long. Is China simply too big to be criticized for miserable human rights practices? Is Cuba simply not far enough away or economically important, to cite a small nation. Has Saddam Hussein changed significantly since we armed him against Iran, to deserve his present demonization?

During the Cold War, many justifications were claimed to support a host of unsavory dictators against the "evil empire." Now that the US is "the only remaining superpower," matters seem relatively little better.

Humanists in this debate need to keep alive those ideals that the Enlightenment tradition nurtures&endash;human rights, specifically freedom of conscience (i.e. for and from religions), reproductive freedom, gender equality, free information access, the liberative power of scientific knowledge. And that specifically humanist emphasis&endash;consequence-based morality&endash;in this our only known world.

Robert Tapp