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"Toward a Unifying Theory of Religion and Humanism --- against Empire"


Alan MacDonald
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Within my last essay on a possible "Instruction Manual for De-fusing the Nuclear-Economic "Doomsday Machine'", I used the short-hand of "analogy-thinking', and at one point employed, I hoped, an attention-getting analogy between Flip Wilson's humorous line "The devil made me do it", and the suggestion that Obama apologize to the world for our setting-off that global economic/financial "Doomsday Machine' WMD of derivatives, and saying "The Empire made us (US) do it".

Initially, I had thought that such an analogy would merely be humorous and grab readers' attention, but the miracle of analogy-thinking (thank God, and thank humanism) has now grabbed me like the song, "Fooled around and fell in love" --- and I can't let go.

Yes, my playful "fooling around" with the magic of "analogy-thinking' has me in love with the seriousness of the analogy between "the devil made me do it" and "the Empire made US do it", which opens up much more in the way of further "analogy-thinking'.

Actually, the "devil' making or "causing' us (the US) to do something bad precisely parallels (and is analogous to) "Empire' in its deception, guile, untruth, and "divide and conquer' methods of causing bad things to happen to countries, people, and the world --- which started me thinking about more analogies in history, philosophy, economics, politics, and war that are commonly viewed as "bad things' by both religion and humanism.

I vaguely remembered an old quote from college about the Renaissance, Reformation, humanism, scientific inquiry, enlightenment, and rational thought "breaking off one of the poles of eternal duality", and thus purportedly challenging religious thought (or at least the dogma that passed for thought) by the Roman church-centric imperial power that pre-dated modern nation-state empires. I remember, at the time, being concerned that it seemed to suggest that religion and enlightened scientific humanism were at odds.

However, when we look at the actual religious constructs of all major religions, their founding prophets, and their genuine teachings regarding the economic, political, and militarist tendencies and actions about the concentrated power and hierarchy of the empires they grew out of and often confronted (certainly Jesus v. Roman Empire), it is clear that the teachings and truth of religions have always been distinctly "anti-Empire".

Certainly within contemporary thinking and writing on the topic of religions being supportive or antithetical to the hierarchical, hypocritical, and non-egalitarian powers and practices of empire, the position of religion against Empire is strong both historically and now.

Recently, Simon Johnson and James Kwak in "13 Bankers" as well as Joseph Stiglitz in "FreeFall" are aligned and note that all major religions have prohibitions against excessive or abusive financial/economic power over people, such as usury. The theologically trained and political-economic critic, Christopher Hedges, comes down very strongly on the side of all religions being anti-Empire in nature. Likewise, most modern writers from William Sloan Coffin to Dr. Martin Luther King who have seriously addressed the question of religion, judge it to be decidedly anti-imperial.

Naturally, some perversion of religion has been effected by many supposedly religious leaders to position, place, and rationalize the religion they claim to speak for as being some entrenched fundamentalism in the service of a temporal empire, which they more guilefully represent --- such as imperial religious leaders blessing crusades, or Calvinism endorsing unrestrained capitalism.

Post-Renaissance science and humanism while often being accused of being anti-religious and of "lopping off one of the poles of eternal duality" has much more often in its non-perverted forms been entirely supportive of true religious tenants --- with a long history of moral and religious believers among scientists and humanists like Einstein, Jacob Bronowski, Norbert Weiner and many others going out of their way to openly discuss, praise, and defend their spiritual and intellectually informed vision of a higher power within the vast complexity, beauty, and elegance of the systems and philosophies in which they are leaders. Such world-class scientists and humanists in every field are strongly suspicious of the underserved power of imperial elites and hierarchical thinking (or rather perversion of thinking to the desires of Empire).

Like the perversion of true religious precepts to serve the "will to power' of Empire, the division and distortion of scientific and humanist "worldly philosophies" into the service of Empire for explosive weapons or economic advantage, or to tyrannize with mis-applied social sciences of deceit, represents a constant and dangerous threat to science and the humanities from physics and biology to economics, psychology and social sciences that can be abused to propagandize.

The common device of Empire, and those entrenched ruling-elites who choose to practice the deceit of "empire-thinking' in distracting and abusing both genuinely "anti-empire' religious influence and "anti-empire' humanist influences is to misapply the influence which each have --- by "dividing and conquering". Then through perverse money-power incentives and deceit, the honest strength, integrity, and truth of both the eternal poles of religion and humanism are tricked into harnessing these positive, progressive, and lively goals, values, and faith into nothing but extending the grip and death-spiral of Empire against our fellow citizens of the earth.

The greatest and gravest "divide and conquer' technique of Empire has been precisely to drive a wedge and seed division between those "eternal poles of duality' that are represented by the "Worldly Philosophers" (Heilbroner's description of humanists) and what are sometimes inaccurately referred to as the "other-worldly philosophers' (of the world's great religions). As is clearly revealed on closer and truthful examination, the humanists are not only "worldly', but also typically strongly religious, and the religious, like Christ himself, are not only "other-worldly' but strongly concerned with social justice here on earth. Instead of the false and contrived "divisions' claimed by Empire separating religions and scientific humanism, the two poles of eternal faith and truth are actually strongly linked by a broad and common distaste and distrust of Empire --- as shown by the 80% of Americans that Pew proved distrust the disguised corporate/financial/militarist empire behind their own government (and media).

Religion, science, and humanism are inherently "democracy-oriented' and practice "democracy-thinking' in the best sense of free-will, liberty, intellectual integrity and equality --- whereas, Empire practices the opposite (although it obviously likes to disguise that fact).

Empire (by whatever name it hides) is inherently elitist, seeks ever greater entrenched inequality, and thinks in authoritarian terms. However, like the injustice and elitism that Empire seeks to disguise (particularly in America, which has the highest GINI Coefficient of Income Inequality in the world) Empire has recently shifted its tyrannical and oppressive strategy of authoritarianism from the older and more obvious and overtly hard "Orwellian' techniques that can now only be used in the territories, to the far more subtle, sophisticated, and softer shackles of "inverted totalitarianism' (as defined by Sheldon Wolin).

Recently, I was rereading Jacob Bronowski's amazingly humanist and religious faith in "The Ascent of Man" (1973), and it struck me in a speeding "analogy-thinking" moment that religious belief, faith, and informed scientific and humanist conviction in the "ascent of man' seems strongly to be exactly the opposite analogy to Francis Fukuyama's epochal "The End of History and the last man" (1992), which details the collapse of the Soviet "evil Empire", and seems to be suggesting that all history and any ascent of man would stop with the entrenchment of a penultimate form of political-economic end-game he calls "capitalist liberal democracy".

However, Fukuyama's sophisticated reasoning and terminology fell victim to a cabal (or evolving political-economic Empire) of neocons and their future "Emperor-President' (which is what Andrew Bacevich aptly calls the selected George W. Bush). In a dark ironic twist, the famously "incurious" student took to repeating only the phrase "capitalist democracy' (whatever that moron meant by that oxymoron), and thus the perversion of humanist intellectual effort was placed in the service of a new "evil Empire' --- because all empire is evil.

The boy-emperor parroting the phrase "capitalist democracy' has long caused me to think of another analogy to the great John Maynard Keynes (of whom the incurious emperor probably never studied at the imperial Harvard Business School, when he passed through on the way to the White House), but Keynes famously said, "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

Fortunately, a decade and a half later Fukuyama, like all honest humanists with intellectual integrity carefully revised his thinking and published "America at the Crossroads Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy". Hopefully, at today's crossroads, America will turn back from the road to Empire, and get back on the road to democracy. But it is clear that great damage has already been done.

Ron Suskind famously reports in his fabulous, honest and revealing "One Percent Doctrine" about the Cheney imperialist regime, that Bush attended, that:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Such absolute contempt about cutting off the very humanist principles of intellectual enlightenment that have lead the "ascent of man' (and History) since the Renaissance, merely to substitute a hubristic and non-democratic Global Empire is breath-taking in its arrogance --- and runs diametrically opposite to the eternal pole of reason, rationally moral thought, and the anti-Empire posture of humanism.

But it is also diametrically opposed and dangerous as arrogant Empire to the genuine religious principles and beliefs of all major religions --- including the millions of multiple religions abroad and here at home that Empire is always willing to slaughter, tyrannize, and economically oppress to maintain the Empire.

Thus both cooperative poles of eternal duality, religion and scientific humanism, have strong reason to unify and ally themselves in solidarity with the progressively evolving history and people of our world in a Global "anti-Empire' People's Movement against the ruling-elite Global corporate/financial/militarist Empire which still (after Cheney) controls our country by hiding behind the faà �ade of a Two-Party "Vichy' sham of democracy and equally "Vichy' media deceit ---- that would bring tears of admiration to the now dead eyes of Hitler's fascist Empire, Stalin's "evil Empire', and Caesar's thousand year Empire.

Neither religion nor scientific humanism has any stake with Empire, but rather with each other.

Alan MacDonald

Sanford, Maine

Note; If this scat and initial draft about the hopeful prospects of defining a religious and humanist coherence and co-operation in assuring and educating each essential duality; religion and scientific humanism, that there is no conflict between us and amply reason to join our causes against Empire, then I will hope that others, more skilled than I, will further develop ideas, examples, and more understandable explanations of how the great common aspects of our historical ascent of religious faith and humanist knowledge and progress can be enhanced and combined in a unifying theory against the certain dead-end of global Empire.

Copyright 2010

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Retired Director of Product Strategy NEC now teaching HS part time.
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