ON RELIGION

Religion is the answer to man's humanity.  The two great sources of suffering are loneliness and death, the perception of the end of existence of self.  Religion,  Marx's "opiate of the masses" is offered as the cure for these.  It offers a strong group affiliation that will not be overcome by other group or individual values,  with a morality to protect the integrity of the community.  And in one form or another,  it promises eternal life,  the end of death.   Each major religion embodies the words and insights of some wise person who thought about life and proposed guides on how it might be lived successfully.  Every religion has evolutionary survival as its basic value, though few acknowledge evolution as a reality! 

The great irony is that as groups coalesce around a specific body of wisdom,  t become hostile to groups that embody another wisdom,  and this often leads to violence and death.  The insight that is meant to ease the fear of death only makes it that much more likely to occur!  And this is not the result of any particular teaching,  but, across humanity,  wars between religious groups have been frequent and violent.  The "cure" for death has lethal side effects.

Is there no solution to this?  After centuries of religious wars,  and two world wars,  Europeans seem to be reducing their commitment to religious institutions,  and becoming more secular.   The Islamic countries,  unified by Ottoman imperial power,  have fragmented into traditional religious subgroups,  and ignited a series of wars,  with the help of western nations that reflect their religious differences.  The belief that you get to heaven sooner by dying in battle only allows the escape from intolerable features of earthly life.  War as a solution to human suffering is a cruel solution indeed.  And the world is moving toward it.

One answer is to make everyday human life pleasant enough to be worth living.  This is a social and economic challenge to society,  not simply a religious one,  but there is a morality to social and economic decisions.  The marxist solution to a fair society has proven no more valid than the capitalist model it intended to replace.  The problem is not in the theory,  but in the human capacity to find balance in life.   

How do you create a society in which each person is fairly valued for her ability to contribute to the community,  and still recognize that some persons are more gifted than others?  And who can be trusted to decide?  This is the social challenge of living effectively in groups that manage the loneliness of human life.  This is the morality of economic planning and the intersection of religion and economics.  The current Pope Francis is noteworthy for his efforts to address the issues of social inequality within the confines of Catholicism.  The wealth inequality gap that has ballooned in the US,  and in the world at large,  indicates that the process for valuing people is totally out of balance at this time.  The political pressure of the wealthy to preserve and expand their relative wealth in current US society,  with notable exceptions like Warren Buffett,  are clear signs that our society does not understand the moral basis of economics,  and will cause more suffering as a result until the process is re-balanced.

This will not come by praying.  And it will not come by returning to a traditional patriarchal religious system,  as is clear from the current battles in the Islamic world.   The notion of right-livelihood,  and respect for the environment,  and the ability to value others who are different without needing to make them join your tribe ----these are the skills that are needed to create a livable human society.

The challenge of dealing with death is always the same: acceptance.  Acceptance of the reality of being a living thing,  and human and therefore bound by death.  Illusions of immortality only devalue the importance of the present moment.   When living everyday is meaningful enough for each person,  then there will be no hurry to escape the present,  and no need to be afraid of doing so when the time comes. 

The French Take a VACATION

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(I wrote this back in 2004 or 5.  It captured my sense that the US was going off in the wrong direction,  though the French had their own strange ideas.  14 years have exaggerated the differences and complicated the picture with the role of immigration in both countries.)

A recent NPR piece gives a significantly different perspective on human values.  It seems, according to the reporter, that France guarantees each citizen a month of vacation every year.  This includes every working citizen, and even extends to those who are unemployed.  This surely exceeds the social tolerance of American culture.  But wait, there is more:  it seems, according to the reporter, that not all French citizens are accepting this right (or is it a responsibility?) and going on vacation.  So the French government has assigned counselors the task of identifying why certain families do not choose to go, and then counseling or educating them so that they will begin to enjoy this benefit. To the average American,  this seems truly “over the top”:  it typifies the peculiar French culture and its seeming deviance from any rational course of action.  How can we make sense of this culture, with its concern for art, fine food and wine, and this apparent obsession for the relaxation of its citizens?

While still nominally a capitalist economy, France shows an unusual concern for the well being and lifestyle of its citizens.  According to capitalist principles, the primary concern for the individual or the state should be the return on expended capital, ie money or its equivalent.  As Marx eloquently pointed out, humans are equivalent to “labor”, and represent a cost (or, more recently, a “consumer”).   It is the job of the human consumer to allocate his/her capital for whatever vacation he or she may choose.  For the French government to encourage or demand that the citizen choose vacation is to reverse the capitalist flow.   Perhaps the wily French have calculated that the increased consumption, which occurs during the vacations of the French, helps pay for the cost of encouraging this, or even covers the cost of lost production to the economy.  (Probably not.)   Surely there are other ways to stimulate consumer demand that are more product specific and not so geared to improving the lives of the citizens.

France is not REALLY a dedicated capitalist system.  As a country they put far too much emphasis on quality of life, REGARDLESS OF THE PROVEN ECONOMIC RETURN.  A country that is so concerned about culture, or the preservation of language, or  the careful preparation of food, even to the point of being too expensive to create truly “profitable restaurant chains” cannot claim to really be capitalist.  While its social welfare system is extensive,  it is not so extensive to justify being considered Socialist.   And what’s more, many of the cultural concerns of the French are not part of the social welfare system.

In the end we must conclude that the French are concerned about some other value, not directly related to return on capital,  and therefore not readily translated into American language or culture.   It is no wonder that they remain such a mystery.