"Ten Non-commandments" - A First Pass

I recently purchased and read my old friend/classmate John Figdor's book, "Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Re-Writing the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-First Century." It was very exciting to read, especially insofar as John has served as a "no-god-father" to my atheist identity.

In the book, Figdor (and co-author Lex Bayer) set out to create a secular, logical framework for creating humanist ethics. This project was very different from what I expected, which was the production of the actual humanist ethics. For a book about ethics, there is very little talk about love, justice, or otherness, and much about the nature of reality and goodness (in general). I found this very frustrating at first, but once I recognized the preliminary nature of the project, I came to appreciate the authors' respect for the individual need to discover one's own ethics.

The book ends fantastically, by challenging the reader to create their own "ten non-commandments," with guidelines to follow Figdor and Bayer's model-- that is, with about 5 non-commandments regarding the nature of reality, and 5 non-commandments regarding the nature of goodness. They also held a contest on their website for new non-commandments, and shared the winning responses in this Time article.

At some point when I have more time, I hope to do the philosophical legwork to answer their challenge. In the meantime, I had an interesting experience over vacation (involving attending an Orthodox weekday afternoon prayer service), and I've been thinking a lot about how the Amidah prayer has a lot of sentiments that can be re-worked into humanist ethics.

So, here's my first version (very rough, very plagiarized from the Jewish prayer book) of humanist commandments:

1. Be sensitive to your sense of the sacred.
2. Seek learning and wisdom for life.
3. Commit to personal growth and healing, for yourself and others.
4. Forgive yourself and others.
5. Work towards the betterment of the world.
6. Respect the Earth.
7. Love (social) justice.
8. Cultivate humility.
9. Be thankful.
10. Pursue peace.

Cultivating Personal Relationships with Impersonal Elements

          There are two usual kinds of relationships, and one special kind that I want to talk about. The first usual kind is identity, which is one’s relationship with oneself. While other people and things are inextricably involved in one’s identity, the identity relationship could still be considered intrasubjective-- it’s just me and how I go about being me.

The other usual kind of relationship is intersubjective, which takes place between two people. I want to highlight three modes of intersubjective interaction in decreasing order of intensity:

• Reaching out: People can be proactive about the other, do things for them, think about them, and approach them to engage.
• Response: If addressed, people can respond.
• Regard: If addressed, people can be present and aware. This last category might seem negligible, but regard is important enough that we strongly prefer to share our thoughts with people (even when we’re not looking for their feedback) rather than with walls.

          

          These categories would seem to exhaust all possible types of relationships, but I have been finding myself more and more wanting a third category, to refer to the relationships I have with non-subjects. For now I’ll call these relationships without regard (would love something catchier).

I do not believe that any of these entities know that I exist, and many of them don’t know anything at all. None of them reach out, respond, or regard. And yet, here are some things I find myself in relationship with:

• Time
• Death
• Chance
• Love
• Nature
• Earth
• Life
• The Whole
• Judaism
• People no longer alive
• Fictional characters
• Celebrities

          

          All but the last three I would label “Abstract/Institutional” and the last three are labeled “People out of reach.” Here is what I get from them that I want to think of as the basis of relationship:

• Relativity: My identity and intersubjective relationships all exist relative to the more abstract/institutional elements. I find/explore/expand my identity and relationships through them.
• Resonance: I feel a connection with these people, and I continue to find my life enriched or living in response to them. While I am not an active presence for them, they are still an active presence for me.

          

          With the abstract/institutional elements, I’m finding myself wanting to build a richer relationship with them. They are major elements in my life, and so I feel… compelled to relate to them directly, to address them. I don’t feel satisfied simply experiencing the relativity and the resonance. I want to use “Thou” (or, less archaically, You) with them. And I want to do so in a way in which it’s clear that I don’t expect an intersubjective relationship. It’s for this reason that I don’t call any of them “God.”

          I think that’s all for now, but it feels like an important step. This third category of relationship creates an opportunity for secular spirituality that isn’t personal reflection or interpersonal dialogue but rather, a reaching out to larger elements.

A short prayer to the Sometimes-Good Lord Chance

All hail the sometimes good lord chance!  Random be his name.
Chaos be his game.  A child playing at draughts is my savior, also my destroyer.

Fickle, thy name is holy!  Let no one touch the altar of pure possibility and little guarantee.

A Prayer to Time

Time! You kill me and I love you.
You isolate me and show me myself.
You cannot be hurried. You cannot be stopped.
Time, I'm yours, and I trust you, though you kill me.
Time, I relinquish everything to you, and when I search for anything, I will always search for it in you. 
Time, I wait for you lovingly as you wait for me.

Calling Myself a Negative Theologian

            Over the summer, I got sick of using the term “atheist” for describing myself. Since Spring 2010, it felt like the most accurate term I could use to describe my theological position, but it never felt right, and it always gave people the wrong impression regarding my relationship with the divine.

            I’d prefer to call myself a negative theologian, although I still think I’ll probably avoid this term too, since it’s so damn obscure. But here it is anyhow—see if you can tell the difference between this and atheism:

• I’m not saying that there isn’t a God.
• I am saying that, if there is God, then God is not the kind of being/phenomena that human terms can capture. I think God is mysterious / transcendent in a manner beyond language, such that any language, even your precious metaphors, only serves to obscure God further.
• I especially think that it is presumptuous to ascribe any kind of human will onto God—thoughts, emotion, agency, etc. To me, any person making claims about the will of God is just telling me what they want God to will.

            In other words, it’s not that I don’t believe in God, I just don’t believe in your God. Or again—I’m not saying there isn’t a God, I’m just saying that every positive statement (meaning, one which adds content to our understanding) about God is inaccurate and misled. This is called negative theology.

            I can claim some religious backing for this move, although every person I’m about to name would likely be insulted by my use of them. This is because, unlike these folks, I don’t yet believe in a specific revelation/incarnation, which allows them to talk about God’s actions (though still not God’s essence) and to have a sense of liturgical legitimacy:

•  Maimonides
• Pseudo-Dionysius
• Meister Eckhart

 There are plenty more negative theologians, but the three above are my particular atheological role models.

            In practice, negative theology is indistinguishable from atheism. To me, the prayer book is full of people’s projections about God. It’s full of idolatrous images of what they want God to be. I sometimes daydream about what negative theological spirituality (and even liturgy) would look like, but so far there’s just “Silence is praise to Thee.” (Ps. 65:2)

This post doesn’t feel like my most systematic or careful, but it’s been awhile since this change occurred, and it’s also been awhile since I posted anything. I hope to write more on this topic soon, and also to write something about some positive beliefs I do hold.

Blessings for friends from a Jewish Humanist

**Last spring I had the opportunity to give a blessing at the wedding celebration of my good friend Adam Joseph Lyons and his partner. The whole thing was quite an honor, because I gave this blessing at Harvard Divinity School in the Center for the Study of World Religions, with a quite a few religion scholars present.


            When inviting me to share some words with you today, Adam graciously allowed me to represent both Judaism and secular Humanism. In order to fulfill both of these identities at once, I’ve chosen to read some quotations from Jews that are famous for their secularism and maybe even their humanism.

            Sigmund Freud was the father of psychoanalysis and an assimilated Viennese Jew. On love, he has said:

“Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.” He also tells us that “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity.”

These wise words I offer to you today. Freud believed he knew a thing or two about the self, and here he admires those who love another at the cost of some of their own narcissistic self-love, claiming that this exchange is one which humanizes us.

            Next up is Karl Marx. Both of Marx’s grandfathers were Rabbis. His father converted to Christianity, but married a Jew. Marx himself had some choice words for the Jews and their relationship with money. Self-hating Jew? Anti-semite? You decide!

            Anyhow, Marx tells us that:

“If you love with­out evoking love in return, i.e., if you are not able, by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune.”

These wise words I offer to you today. Marx is telling us that it’s not enough to love; we also need to strive to be lovable. I believe one accomplishes this through working to be one’s best self and through loving attention to one’s partner.

            My last secular Jew is Woody Allen, born Allen Konigsburg. In his movie “Love and Death,” Allen has a character tell us this:

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”

These wise words I offer to you today. Perhaps Allen was sharing his understanding of the Buddha’s teachings, reminding us that love and suffering can go hand in hand, but that this is the cost of happiness.

            I’ll leave you with this: I find it very disturbing when secular Jews bring up Freud, Marx, and Woody Allen as their heroes. But maybe there’s wisdom here too: Like Freud, you can be right about love but wrong about women. Like Marx, you can be right about love in theory, but your theory just won’t work when applied to insufficiently-developed industrial civilizations—that is to say, you can right in theory but wrong in practice. And like Woody Allen, you can be right about love, but also an abusive monster.

            So, my blessing to you is that you strive to understand love, but also don’t forget to be feminists, work hard to make your love work in practice, and don’t be monsters. 

Be Here Now… but which Now?

            About six months ago I started meditating** somewhat regularly. I am a pretty fidgety person with an equally fidgety mind, so meditating has been a challenge, but I’ve found the various moments or minutes during which I’ve truly remained in concentration to be very satisfying.

            Through meditation, I’ve become aware of three different senses of the “present” or the “now.”

1.   “Now” as a waypoint between the past and the future.

This is my usual mundane experience of any present moment. From this perspective, time is a linear continuum, composed of a series of “nows” which we move through (or which move through us). This present moment only makes sense in the larger context; in some sense, there is no present moment, just a long chain of cause-and-effect.

            To live with such a model means to be constantly looking behind and ahead—meaning is all about feeling connected across time. As individuals, our sense of self and our mood at any given moment is often based on dis/satisfaction with whatever just happened in our lives or whatever we are anticipating coming soon. Cultures, peoples, families, and individuals make meaning and locate ourselves in the present through the stories we tell ourselves about our past and future.

2.      “Now” as whatever I am immediately perceiving/doing

This is the meditative experience. From this perspective, “now” is just now—it’s this breath, this step, this awareness. Now is whatever is in one’s immediate experience.

            In this model, the self as we know it is greatly reduced, radically filtered, perhaps not even there. If I am aware of just this moment now, then who am I in that moment of awareness? Just this awareness. I am this perspective. I am the observer.

            This can be a strange or even disconcerting feeling—because when I isolate my experience to simply the present moment, meaning also seems to disappear. If meaning is about connection, then being simply present in the moment is meaningless, because being simply present involves only one point. There’s no story, no progression, no purpose. There’s just being here.

            So that can be scary. And yet… it can be such a relief too. While resting in the immediate, I feel liberated from the pressures of time-as-continuum and self-as-narrative.

3.      “Now” in some cosmic sense—eternity

I’ve never experienced this and don’t have much to say about it. It appears to be a kind of timeless time, seeing the whole span of time as a single moment. Of course, in the cosmic Now, the self also disappears, perhaps replaced by some cosmic Self.

So what? Well… I think this variety of Presents raises some questions:

• How should we value or prioritize each kind of Now? Is one the most important? Are there specific occasions in which we should sacrifice one kind of Now for another?
• What is the relationship between the Self-as-narrative, Self-as-observer, and cosmic-Self? Does each have a kind of wisdom for the others?
• Is there a lesson in these varieties that could be applied towards the questions of how we should comport ourselves towards the past or the future?

**By the way, if you’re looking to start meditating, I recommend the following items: a pillow you really like, a designated place for meditating, a timer, and some inspiration from this great website.