Category: Andrew Fiala Blog

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Shared values of dignity and human rights at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

Parliament of World Religion’s confirms every person has dignity & rights

Fresno Bee, August 20, 2023

I attended the Parliament of the World’s Religions last week in Chicago. It is the largest interfaith gathering in the world. It featured participants from 80 nations and more than 200 different religious traditions. There were also a few nonreligious people, like myself.

My interest in the Parliament is connected to its idea of a global ethic. In 1993, the parliament adopted a declaration, “Toward a Global Ethic,” stating that the world’s religious and ethical traditions agree that “every individual has intrinsic dignity and inalienable rights.” This unifying idea is found in other important international agreements. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states: “Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

The good news is that there is broad consensus about human dignity and human rights. But we still face challenges. And we disagree about the particulars.

One ongoing challenge is bad actors who reject the general idea of dignity and human rights. Tyrants and psychopaths are not committed to these ideals. In religious language, we might speak here of sin and evil. The challenge of evil is real. How should those who believe in human rights respond to bad guys?

We disagree about this. The debate about retributive justice and restorative justice reflects this disagreement. Defenders of retributivism think evil-doers ought to suffer and pay for their crimes. But advocates of restorative justice think that mercy, forgiveness, and rehabilitation are more important. We also disagree about how to create resilient and humane institutions that can limit the harm done by bad actors.

This disagreement is not about the shared ideal of human dignity. Rather, it is about how we ought to apply that idea. This kind of conflict is typical of the ongoing challenge of what to do when good people disagree about the meaning and application of shared universal values.

There are many examples of this kind of challenge, seen in our disagreements about social justice and social welfare. Consider, for example, the question of abortion. The anti-abortion camp thinks that prenatal human life has dignity and value, and deserves protection. The pro-choice camp thinks that women have the right to choose to control their own reproductive lives.

In cases like these, when good people disagree, we should avoid villainizing and stigmatizing those with whom we disagree. Defenders of retributivism are not evil; nor are advocates of restorative justice. The same is true of the pro-choice vs. pro-life argument. These are not disputes involving goodness on one side and wickedness on the other. Rather, they are disputes in which good people disagree about the meaning and application of dignity and human rights.

Which brings me back to the importance of organizations like the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and documents like the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights. It is important to remind ourselves that common ground does exist. Good people can and do agree about basic principles of ethics. There is agreement about values that are important for living well. These shared values include honesty, respect, justice, fairness, integrity, compassion and love.

In our polarized era, it is easy to view others as evil, sinful or delusional. This is not to deny that there are wicked people in the world. But not every ethical dispute is a matter of good vs. evil.

Once we acknowledge that good people can disagree about the application of basic ethical principles, we have an incentive to be more humble and more hospitable. The way forward is to celebrate core values that we can all affirm. And then, with that shared foundation, we can work together to figure out why we continue to disagree, and how we might negotiate and compromise with other good people.

The good news is that there is broad consensus about basic ethical principles. But that is not the end of the story. Rather, these shared values provide a starting point for further dialogue. The remaining work is to explore what these values mean, how we apply them in specific cases, and how we can live together despite our disagreements.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article278379244.html#storylink=cpy

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Anxiety is the spice of life

Tranquility is often viewed as the goal of spiritual training. But serenity is not the only thing that matters in life. Conflict is productive. Struggle is exciting. And anxiety is the spice of life.

Arthur Brooks wrote an essay recently pointing out that suffering, unhappiness, and anxiety are unavoidable experiences. He was responding to the apparent growth of mental health disorders, including a recent increase in depression and anxiety. This is alarming. And I don’t intend to minimize the problem.

But there is some wisdom to be learned from the world’s wisdom traditions, and from how we imagine a good life. Here’s the point: life is difficult. The key to living well is not to find a peace place and to avoid conflict and struggle. Rather, the goal is to manage conflict and create a harmonious whole.

Dialing in the virtues

In his essay, Brooks asks us to see that our emotions are not regulated by simple on-off switches. Rather, they are like dials. They can be adjusted upward or downward. The goal of living well is to adjust these dials and to balance our emotions with one another.

I would add that this is also true of the virtues. The four Platonic virtues—justice, courage, moderation, and wisdom—are not binary switches. Rather, they are like dials that are adjusted in relation to the world. The virtues must also be balanced with each other. Aristotle reminds us that the key to happiness is to find the right amount of a virtue, at the right time, and in the right way.

A familiar example involves courage. Would we say that a criminal is couragous when he robs a bank? Not really. Courage does not occur in isolation. It must be connected to the other virtues. Sometimes courage needs to be dialed up: say when you need to defend what’s good and what’s true. But at other times, it needs to be dialed down: when you are selfish, resentful, and mean.

In the Greek tradition, wisdom helps us adjust the dials. But there is no recipe or rule that helps us figure out how best to adjust these dials. This is more art than science, which leads us to a culinary and aesthetic metaphor.

Cooking up wisdom

The challenge—and the fun—of adjusting our dials is obvious for anyone who is familiar with music or with cooking. Consider the process of cooking, eating, and drinking. The pleasures of dining involve contrasts and balance. Red wine is good with pungent cheeses. Hot chilis pair well with lime and sweets. A delicious meal involves the interplay of lots of flavors, textures, and smells. And these unfold over time—from the appetizer to desert.

Life is like a complex meal. There are spicy parts, and mellow times, salt and vinegar, sweetness and light. The key is balance. But also play and innovation.

So too with music. A single note is boring, as is a simple rhythm. Symphonic music and jazz demonstrate the joy and beauty of complex harmonizing. The bass line runs in contrast to the melody. The chords change. Those changes include dissonance, odd little grace notes, and tonic resolution. There are slow movements, staccato outbursts, and groovy backbeats. Sometimes there is a key change. Other times the bridge introduces a whole new concept.

What if we viewed our lives as musical compositions? We would strive for a complex balance of fast and slow, resolution and dissonance. Sometimes life is marked by sad blue notes. Other times it rings like a bold major chord. The goal is to weave it all together with a sense of harmony.

Harmony v. tranquility

The goal of life is not, then, to rest quietly, serenely, and in peace. Some spiritual traditions do seem to point in that direction. We might imagine a monk alone on a mountaintop, sitting in quiet contemplation.

But that vision is other-worldly, and inhuman. It takes us to a summit far removed from the joys and the sorrows, the anxieties and loves of real human life. A life well-lived includes fear, sorrow, and grief. Those are necessarily components of a life that includes ambition, love, and compassion. The key is to dial these things up in the right way and in the right amounts.

If you love others and yourself, there will be anxiety and sadness. Love exposes us. When others hurt, you hurt as well. This is appropriate, and real. If you love yourself, there will also be anxiety. Our goals and ambitions matter. It is good to feel proud of what you’ve achieved and who you are. It is also right to feel resentful when the world turns against you. And it is appropriate to feel sad, when the world disappoints.

The challenge of a life well-lived is to weave anxiety and sadness into a harmonious whole. Life includes a variety of ingredients: joy and worry, sorrow and pride, love and grief. We don’t control everything that life gives us. But we can adjust the dials. Every life will include substantial amounts of bitter seasoning.  The goal is not to stop eating, or to live in quiet serenity. Rather, we ought to aim to create a symphony of the sweet and the spicy.

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Beyond the Bud Light Boycott and the Great Food Divide

You are what you eat, and what you drink—and who you eat and drink with. Food and drink are indicators of identity that link us to a peer group. Our food choices connect us to other people. They can also divide us.

Waffle House vs. Trader Joes

Could it be that the polarization in our country has something to do with the proliferation of food choices, and the tribal nature of our patterns of consumption?

When I was a kid, growing up in the Midwest, Americans ate “meat and potatoes.” There were far fewer choices of restaurants and commodities. White people in middle America in the 1970’s had never heard of a burrito (as shown to comedic effect in the new film Flamin’ Hot). But these days, we’ve got lots of choices, especially in big cities.

Our food options reflect certain dividing lines. Red-state America is a place of Cracker Barrels and Waffle Houses. The blue states have Trader Joe’s. The states with the most Cracker Barrels are Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. The states with the most Waffle Houses are Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina. Meanwhile, Trader Joe’s stores are primarily concentrated in California and the Northeast.

Red state people know what it means to say you want something “scattered, smothered, and covered” (a Waffle House recipe). Meanwhile, blue state folks joke about the fact that “Two Buck Chuck” (a Trader Joes staple) now costs more than two dollars. Neither understands what the other is saying.

These markers of identity can be benign, so long as we treat our differences with a sense of toleration. It’s a big country. And it’s kind of cool that there are still regional differences. Cheers to that!

Bud Light or IPA?

But things get ugly when taste becomes tribal.

Which leads us to the Bud Light boycott. The story begins with Bud Light trying to be inclusive. The company used a trans woman as a marketing ploy, trying to lure LGBTQ folks onto the Bud Light bandwagon. This angered the anti-LGBTQ crowd, who called for a Bud Light boycott. Apparently, some angry Bud Light fans even blasted cases of the beer with guns.

Bud Light lost market share, as right-wingers stopped drinking it. Costco is indicating that it might stop carrying Bud Light.

As this story was unfolding, I found it amusing. Who cares, I thought? And who drinks Bud Light anyway? In my peer group, no one drinks light beer. So, I was surprised to learn that before the boycott, Bud Light was the most popular beer in America. Who knew?

My response shows the problem. I’m an IPA guy. I like them dank and hoppy. Most of my peers share that taste.

But apparently, there is a whole world of people out there who do not share my tastes at all. Those folks live in a different eco-system than I do. The Bud Light crowd no doubt views me and my IPA loving friends as strangers. And the feeling is mutual.

Food and Personality

I’m not sure what the solution is. It’s not really possible to convince an IPA guy to love light beer, or the other way round. But it is interesting, from a philosophical perspective, to think about the role of food and drink in our lives.

All animals eat. But we are the only animals that make a ritual out of food. We establish prohibitions, rules of etiquette, and all kinds of cultural norms around food. Most of this is entirely arbitrary. It really does not matter whether you eat with a fork or chopsticks. But our rules and practices give shape to our lives. And as we become adults, we develop certain tastes.

These tastes are mostly the contingent result of environmental and cultural factors. My friends drink IPA, and so I’ve learned to love it. Or did it go the other way round? Maybe I have a taste for dank beverages and so tend to make friends with folks who share my taste? We don’t have to solve this chicken-or-egg problem in order to see that taste, identity, and culture are deeply intertwined.

Now some psychologists suggest a deeper kind of link. Some studies purport to show that “sweet” people prefer sweet foods, and that bitter food is preferred by people with bitter personalities. The link between food and personality has been remarked throughout history. Porphyry, a philosopher of the 3rd Century, suggested that simple, light, vegetarian food helped to liberate the soul from the body. He warned that tyrants are produced by “those who feed upon flesh.” He cited the teachings of the ancient Pythagoreans, who held that a vegetarian diet tended to produce gentleness, kindness, and philanthropy.

Tolerating our Differences

But this reductive focus on cuisine is silly. Hitler was a vegetarian—as the anti-veg crowd likes to say. And meat-eaters can be kind. And it’s just dumb to claim that people who prefer sweet food are somehow sweeter than those who prefer bitter. Our personalities, cultures, and tastes are way more complicated than that.

Friedrich Nietzsche once blamed the heaviness of German culture on the overconsumption of beer. He said that beer caused the spirit to fall into “soft degeneracy.” One wonders what Nietzsche might say about the difference between Bud Light and IPA. Does light beer tend to make you politically conservative? Does IPA turn you into a liberal hipster? These questions are silly, of course. Human life cannot be reduced to any single choice or taste.

And if we realize that, maybe we can develop a bit more tolerance. The Trader Joe’s tribe is not superior to the Cracker Barrel crowd. We eat what we have learned to eat. Taste is determined to a large extent by our peers. We don’t choose our food, our politics, or our personalities out of the blue. We are influenced by culture, marketing, and economics.

So, it is wise to stop judging others. We find ourselves thrown into a world beyond our control. Our tastes differ. So what? As long as a person is kind, who cares what they eat? If a person is a jerk, it doesn’t matter what they drink. This is a big complicated country. So let’s toast our differences, with the beverage of our choice.

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The Wisdom of Secular Education

School of Athens

Right-wing commentator Dennis Prager said at a recent “Moms for Liberty” conference: “There is no such thing as a secular institution with wisdom… That is why the stupidest institutions are the most secular: the universities.”

He’s wrong. The wisdom of secular universities is found in their reluctance to teach wisdom. That may sound like a paradox. But it is an approach to teaching that is as old as Socrates.

I am a professor of philosophy—a “lover of wisdom.” But I don’t teach wisdom. I think that what I teach may help students develop wisdom. But I would never presume to teach wisdom. I can teach about the world’s wisdom traditions. But I do not have the right to teach wisdom in my role as a secular professor.

Prager’s critique of secular education

Prager is a frequent critic of secularism, and of public education. He is not happy with what secular schools teach about racism, gender, and religion. Prager wrote, in a column in July 2022: “When America was more religious, wisdom was taught to young people. This is another reason to fear a thoroughly secularized America—we are producing a nation of fools. The proof lies in our universities. The most secularized institution in America is the most foolish institution in America.”

Really? American universities lead the world in research and creativity. People come here to study from across the globe. American universities are not stupid or foolish.

But Prager is right that secular universities do not teach wisdom, in his sense. He thinks that wisdom implies the specific content of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But it is not the job of a secular university to instill the values of a specific religious tradition. This does not make universities foolish or stupid. Rather, secular universities refrain from teaching wisdom because in a diverse society grounded on liberty, we leave wisdom to the private sphere. If you want wisdom, go to a church or temple. But if you want knowledge, go to a secular school.

Secular universities should be neutral, inclusive, and pluralistic. They ought to disseminate knowledge, without staking a claim about wisdom. They ought to train students in the art of sifting and winnowing. They should teach skills in scientific method, critical thinking, and hermeneutics. But knowledge and critical thinking skills do not produce wisdom.

Wisdom vs. knowledge

Wisdom is about meaning, value, and purpose. It is a matter of the soul, the conscience, and our fundamental beliefs. Universities can and should include courses that teach about the varieties of opinion about wisdom and the meaning of life. But no secular university professor should presume to grade and evaluate students based upon the condition of their soul. That would be obnoxious, and it would violate the spirit of open inquiry that is essential to the secular pursuit of knowledge.

The pursuit of wisdom is different from the pursuit of knowledge. In religious traditions, teachers of wisdom provide definitive answers about meaning, value, and purpose. The teachers of religious wisdom aim to transform the souls of their disciples. They inspire, admonish, and guide their pupils toward a vision of the good life.

This is not what university professors should be doing. University professors teach knowledge, and methods for discovering it. But they should avoid any attempt to peer into the soul of a student. They may inspire students to seek knowledge. But they should not pick sides in cultural, religious, or spiritual struggles.

The pursuit of knowledge is, of course, part of wisdom. Wisdom requires knowledge. Ignorant and stupid people are not wise. But wisdom is not simply the accumulation of knowledge. And there are knowledgeable people who lack wisdom. Wisdom is a virtue or character trait. It is more a way of being than a pile of facts.

Wisdom involves judgement, discernment, and a sense of justice. Wisdom is about what we do with our knowledge, how we apply it to solve problems, and how we construct a life of meaning and value.

The Socratic model

An important model for the contemporary secular approach is Socrates. Socrates never claimed to be wise. He was a questioner, and a gadfly. He did not pontificate about the meaning of life, apart from suggesting that to be fully human is to think. This what he meant when he said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Socratic wisdom is a lifelong commitment to the ongoing labor of thinking. But this is an open-ended kind of wisdom that avoids picking sides in cultural or religious squabbles.

And now, finally, let’s return to Prager’s contention that when America was more religious, wisdom was taught to young people. He’s probably right. In a homogeneous world young people are often trained to conform and identify with a specific answer to life’s questions. Some may call that training wisdom. But it is narrow and limiting.

Such a narrow training in wisdom is not appropriate for a world that values liberty, free inquiry, and diversity. For that world—our world—we need a secular, Socratic approach. The secular approach is oriented around the Socratic “love of wisdom,” and a process of arguing and inquiring that is open-ended. Secular universities do not teach wisdom. Rather, they teach us how to decide for ourselves what is wise.

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The Illusion of Nostalgia

Fresno Bee, June 25, 2023

A new study called “The Illusion of Moral Decline” suggests that we are morally better than our ancestors, even though we think we are worse. The study by psychologists Adam Mastroianni and Dan Gilbert maintains, “On average, modern humans treat each other far better than their forebears ever did.” Their focus is on kindness, honesty and similar personal virtues.

We might add that political and social life is also better. Slavery was abolished. Women were liberated. And science, medicine, and technology have improved.

Despite this, a recent survey from the Pew Center concludes that most Americans think the past was better, with 58% of us saying that life is worse today than 50 years ago. In response, columnist Jonah Goldberg argued that nostalgia is a “terrible guide” for social and political judgment. He reminds us that crime is down, people are generally richer, infant mortality rates are better, and workplace safety has improved.

So why are we so fond of what we see in the rear-view mirror? If things are better, why do we think they are worse? Mastroianni and Gilbert explain that psychological biases cloud our judgment. We have limited information and selective memories.

I suspect religion, politics, and marketing also play a part. Religions emphasize the holiness of their founders. Americans also celebrate the wisdom of the founding fathers. And political parties promise to return us to past greatness. Nostalgia is often used to sell us a product.

Poets and artists also tend to paint yesteryear in sepia tones that reek of longing. Herman Melville wrote, “How lovely was the light of heaven, what angels leaned from out the sky, in years when youth was more than wine, and man and nature felt divine.”

Nostalgia and a sense of decline are common throughout history. The Taoists of ancient China spoke of a prior generation of “true men,” who lived in harmony with heaven. And Plato and the ancient Greeks spoke of a Golden Age, and the lost utopia of Atlantis.

Nostalgia makes sense when the present is chaotic. The Athenians of Plato’s era lived in a time of war, plague, and political turmoil. They imagined the Golden Age as an ideal alternative to a tumultuous present.

Perhaps that explains our present moment. We’re suffering through the aftereffects of the pandemic and the polarization of the Trump years. There is war in Europe. The Earth’s climate is changing. There have been rapid shifts in cultural identity. It is not surprising that folks think it would be nice to go back to a simpler, more stable time.

But no such simpler time has ever existed. Nor will the future be stable. The world is built of crooked timber. It has never been perfect. Nor can we expect it to be.

A Woody Allen film called “Midnight in Paris” is worth watching in this regard. In the film, a modern American is transported back to the 1920s, where he hangs out with the heroes of the Jazz Age. There he meets a woman who fantasizes about the “Belle Epoque” of the 19th century. They jump back in time and discover that in the 19th century, artists were nostalgic for the Renaissance.

We might note that the Renaissance was based on admiration for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Each generation is afflicted by nostalgia.

The truth is that we cannot go back. We cannot recreate what is lost to time. We should learn from history. But we should also learn to let it go. What’s past is past. Life unfolds in the present.

And if you think things are worse today, despite the evidence, that really means there is work to do. Rather than lamenting the lost angels of youth, and the heroes of the Golden Age, we should embrace the challenge of improving ourselves and creating a better future.

Nostalgia is misplaced idealism. In seeing the imperfections of the present, we pine for the past. But the past was never perfect. And if the present is better, it can still be further improved. Once we stop gazing in the mirror, we should get to work to build a future that is a bit less crooked, and a bit closer to the ideal.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article276697551.html#storylink=cpy