Written by schuftan@gmai.com   

Human rights: Food for a non-dogmatic thought   ‘Religion and HR’

 

Human Rights Reader 518

 

-Reality has three levels: objective, subjective and inter-subjective. The first is bulletproof, the second disappears when the person that believes in it passes, and the third one persists for centuries even if the subjective components of reality disappear. This is how religions, dogmas, Gods, myths and ideologies subsist. (Yuval Noah Harari)

 

Money, empire and religions are the powers that unite (govern?) the world (Y. Harari)

 

1. Undeniably, through the ages, religions have played a major role in justifying or excusing the existence of poverty and other human rights-violating systems in their respective societies (promising a going to heaven or reincarnation?). Religions based on the ancestral teachings of their founders did often in history give birth to governments and politicians who, one time too much, institutionalized oppressive human right (HR) conditions including class and caste systems, warfare, colonialism, apartheid, racism, sexism and slavery. You have heard governments and religious leaders referring to their ‘sacred teachings’ and publicly declaring them the will of their manmade gods for the poor to always be with us …and other such self-fulfilling prophecies. (Ruben Botello)

 

Marx

2. In his1843 essay “Toward a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right” Marx wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions, it is the opium of the people”. (By only quoting the last part of the sentence, injustice has been done to Marx for over a century).

3. In 1844, Marx actually showed a more nuanced and sympathetic understanding of the social role of religion. He wrote: “There is a sense that religion is what the workers turn-to as a way to gain some solace from the harshness of capitalism”.  His earlier powerful and famous statement “religion is the opium of the people” was one that sought to understand why it is that people turned to religion. [Today, however, this question is not adequate. More is needed. We need to understand how some of these religious organizations focus on the psycho-social problems that keep escalating among the working-class. They provide services --however limited-- to heal the great stresses of our time, including those caused by HR violations. Such practices of therapy draw-in workers, eager for community and for the social welfare delivered through these organizations]. (Vijay Prashad)

4. Structurally speaking (and not being facetious), a somewhat rudimentary contemporary argument goes like follows: Marxism was a simple substitution for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party, and the form and purpose of the journey remains similar. So, “Sinners, you are the sinned against! You are the victims, not the perpetrators”.  (Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things)

 

Other thinkers

 

5. French philosopher Auguste Comte held to a theory of history in which societies pass through three stages --religious, metaphysical and scientific (or ‘positive’). Comte coined the term ‘sociology’ and he wanted to diminish the social influence of religion and replace it with a new science of society. [So why does the science/religion controversy persist? The answer is political. Just look at the widespread fear of Islamic fundamentalism, the exasperation with creationism, the aversion to make alliances between the religious Right and climate-change-denial, and worries about the erosion of scientific authority…]. (Peter Harrison)

 

6. Angry at the Church during the French Revolution, Robespierre, uttered: “They invoke the heavens to plunder the earth”.

 

7. A more contemporary view of Christianity argues that politics being a very ambiguous word, there are three fundamental aspects to consider:

a) Partisan politics; the Church is not directly involved, but it cooperates so that political parties may accomplish their tasks.

b) There is politics-as-the-search-for-the-common-good; in this sense, the Church must be political. and

c) There is politics-in-the search-to-transform-the-structure-of-society where the rich get richer at the cost of those rendered poor who grow ever poorer --and this is not a casual phenomenon. [In the Church, we do not want a political party, but we do intend to commit ourselves politically as Christians, conduct political education sessions, meet and discuss the problems, talk about why these problems exist (including HR violations), what is behind them and how to judge this in the light of faith. (Cardinal Lorscheider, Brasil)].

 

8. Albert Einstein believed in a God who reveals him/herself in the lawful harmony of the universe, not in a God who concerns him/herself with the fate and the doings of mankind. Einstein’s esoteric remark “God does not play dice”* is often quoted when describing the laws of nature and the origin of the cosmos. Einstein believed this origin could not involve chance intrinsically. “The word God is for me,” Einstein wrote, “nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness; the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends.** No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me.” (cited by Brian Gallagher)

*: The consensus now among physicists though is that he was wrong. “God is indeterminate; all evidence points to him being an inveterate gambler who does throw the dice on every possible occasion,” Stephen Hawking once said. (B. Gallagher)

**: In the Vatican, the Christian faith practiced in Ethiopia is considered ‘primitive Christianity’. In reality, is it not fair to ask if there is any religion that is not primitive…? (Fernando Ayala)]

 

9. “We say man is created in the image of God. I refuse to imagine a God who is miserable, poor, ignorant, oppressed, wretched --which is the lot of the majority of those who he created in his image”. (Julius Nyerere)

 

A couple asides

 

10. An example of religious cultural hegemony is the use of schools and other institutions to preach and spread ‘a specific point-of-view’. Many religious institutions that do not support the sciences***, advocate a non-evolutionary origin of life on earth and promote belief in the sudden miraculous emergence of intelligent life forms due to the efforts of a deity. (Komal B. Patil)

***: But the importance of scientific research (and of bioethics) is that it must be free of religious dogma! As an extension, development work must focus on results and ethical and HR values, and not on new packages based on dogma.

 

Ah, and then there is Mindfulness…

 

-Mindfulness has depoliticized stress. (Ronald Purser)

 

11. Mindfulness advocates, perhaps unwittingly, are providing support for the status-quo: mindfulness is indeed political.  Mindfulness is said to be a $4bn industry. With its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism. But anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary --it just helps people cope. In fact, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, mindfulness says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live.

 

12. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world: It is magical thinking on steroids. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their problems. A truly revolutionary movement would seek to overturn this dysfunctional system.

 

13. Teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress also has societal causes. By failing to address collective suffering, and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its real revolutionary potential. They sell us solutions that make us contented, mindful capitalists. There just is not such a thing as ‘compassionate conservatism’. Most teachers of mindfulness rule out a curriculum that critically engages with causes of suffering in the structures of power and economic systems of capitalist society.

 

14. The commodification of mindfulness keeps it anchored in the ethos of the market. It is simply assumed that ethical behavior will arise ‘naturally’ from practice. Individualistic spirituality is perfectly accommodated to dominant cultural values and requires no substantive change.

 

15. Individualistic spirituality is clearly linked with the neoliberal agenda. Indeed, mindfulness thrives on doublespeak about freedom, celebrating self-centered ‘freedoms’ while paying no attention to civic responsibility. By deflecting attention from the social structures and material conditions in a capitalist culture, mindfulness is easily co-opted. (R. Purser) Wither HR…

 

Bottom line

 

-The churches that have followed the theology of prosperity have become powerful backers of the status-quo. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)

 

16. Conveniently, religion has been made the enemy of rationality; so it is now consumerism that has helpfully stepped-in to take its place and shore us all up against our insecurities. So, instead, consumerism’s message is: ‘You are not enough, you are not loved, there is no reason to have faith but --lucky for you-- here are some things you can buy to make you feel better’. But none of these things can or will ever meet our unmet needs for love, connection or trust in the world, so we continue consuming, throwing more things into the bottomless pit of our non-needs. A system built on a disconnection from our true needs is one that can never leave you satisfied with who you are and with the world around you. (Max St John) Wither HR…

 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

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Postscript/Marginalia

-Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

-Heaven is a creation inconceivable to man, Earth the creation conceivable to him. (Karl Barth)