The Outdated Question of Our Survival

Well, statistically we are. I’m sure many of you have raised a wagging finger, “But what about the millions of poor–starving and dying of malaria–or the constant wars broadcast 24 hours on cable news?” I’m certainly not ignoring this. I’ve seen starvation with my own eyes in Uganda where a boiled egg was a treat for the students of our school when the school chickens produced enough eggs. I saw it with my own eyes in Guatemala where people dig through the city dump looking for items to recycle and leftovers to eat. I’ve seen it in the US where soup kitchens have lines around the corner.

But there can be no doubt we are making progress on these fronts. Even in the poorest areas of the world, life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last century. Countries with the worst life expectancy now, have higher life expectancy than countries with the highest did decades ago. Since we have solved the problem of producing enough food for everyone, the question we face now is how to distribute that food justly. The fact of the matter is violence has declined. Don’t believe me? Ask Steven Pinker. The situation is improving, but we are, unquestionably, still dealing with violence and hunger and disease.

The problem is that species survival does not require survival of every individual. A certain amount of individual selfishness by the strong regarding resources benefits the species as a whole because it ensures that at least some will survive. This tendency, even if unconscious, makes sense in an age where humanity’s survival was not certain. But we no longer live in that age. Yet we act as if we do. That is why a too many of the resources are being squandered by the powerful, when they could easily be shared.

Species Survival to Individual Happiness

From a species perspective, we’ve come to a point in history when it is no longer necessary to struggle to survive. But at an individual level, so many do struggle. Too many don’t survive.

How do we address this discrepancy? If species survival is no longer our main objective, how do we refocus our survival energy? Shouldn’t that energy now go to the survival and happiness of all members of our species–to addressing systematic violence, hunger, and preventable disease. None of these problems are going to be solved if we remain in individual survival mode. We can and should reorientate ourselves from survival of the species to survival and happiness of the individual.

Human Rights: A Cornerstone of Humanism

This is fundamental to humanism. When people ask me what humanism is, and I get asked a lot, I tell them that fundamentally humanism is about happiness. Humanism tells us that we, every one of us, has the right to be happy and to pursue what makes us happy, assuming of course, that that pursuit does not impede the happiness of others. Beyond our own happiness, it is our responsibility to aid others in pursuing their happiness.

Currently, there is catch. The catch is, it’s hard to pursue happiness when you are too busy pursuing clean water, nutritious food, and adequate shelter. Securing basic survival needs is fundamental to fostering happiness. So our first step as humanists is to secure basic human rights for every member of our species. Then we have the foundation for happiness for every member.

This a call to reorient ourselves–from pursuing survival to pursing happiness, for every single human on this planet. This is by no means a call to requiring people take up the label “humanist”. I am not proselytizing. The idea to reorient to survival of all comes to me from my humanist foundations, but it is not exclusively humanist. Nor should it be. But I do want people to switch off survival of the species mode.

Survival is outdated. We have survived. It is time to thrive.

The more people who reorient to survival of all the easier it will become. The obstacles that hinder global clean water initiatives and systems to get food to the people that need it will become less steep.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not think this is an easy utopia. It will be difficult. It might be impossible. But there no chance unless a few of the brave embrace the switch in the beginning. Then others will not be so afraid in the future.

This piece was originally published with Applied Sentience. You can read it here.

Traveling across town provided similar obstacles. To get anywhere Ana would hop on a bus, any bus. She couldn’t read the signs that told the routes and destinations. Her only option was to ask the driver if he was going where she was going. The driver would almost always say yes. They wanted her money. She would ride to the end of the line where she would be kicked off in a strange place. Then she would find another bus and try again. She would ride bus after bus until she recognized something from the window. Guatemala City is not a small city. This process would take hours every time she needed to go somewhere.

Ana moved to Guatemala City because her mother couldn’t adequately support Ana and her brothers after their father died. Ana could make a better living as a nanny in the city than as a farmhand in the village. She looked for work as a nanny because she had already been taking care of her younger brothers for years. Nannying was a job she could do easily. But language was a barrier so she quit when she found a job at a laundry, a job she didn’t need to speak Spanish to do.

Drying laundry in the basurero neighborhood in Guatemala city.

Ana worked there for many years. She got married and had two kids. But her husband spent all their money on alcohol. She had to leave him. She was a single mother living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. A neighborhood that sprung up around the city basurero (dump) and is populated by people who make their living by gathering objects from the basurero to sell or recycle. Ana did not work in the basurero regularly, but in a pinch, when an emergency arose, she would scavenge there to supplement her laundry income.

Ana never had access to education. While she helping raise her brothers she watched them go to school every day and wished she could join them. As an adult it was very important to Ana that her kids get an education, but she simply could not afford it.

Ana was able to get by, but her income was not enough to pay for school for her kids. School is free in Guatemala, but books, uniforms, pencils, notebooks, and other school supplies are not. And if you can’t acquire them, you can’t go to school.

Some moms from the basurero community, who are part of Camino’s newest social entrepreneurship program, at their sewing machines.

So Ana turned to Camino Seguro. Camino is an after school, education support program. In addition to getting help with homework and other educational issues, the students who attend participate in art, English, sports, and health classes. Importantly for Ana, Camino provides school supplies and uniforms for its students. This was the only way her kids could possibly get an education. But when her boys were old enough to go to school there was not room for them in the program. Ana was persistent. Every year she tried, but year after year the program was full. Finally there was room and finally her kids got to go to school. They were ten and eight when they started. The younger one now graduated and was hired by Camino to be a sports coach. Her older son is still in the program but close to graduating himself. They are quite the success stories. They are why Camino Seguro exists.

But I am telling Ana’s story. When Ana first enrolled her sons at Camino she had learned to speak Spanish, but was still unable to sign her name on the forms. She did not know the letters. She signed with a finger print. The receptionist who helped Ana fill out the forms told her about Camino’s adult literacy program for Camino parents. The same year that her kids started school Ana also started school. Currently she is in third grade.

In addition to the adult literacy program, Camino has also started a social entrepreneurship program for the parents of the students at the school. Ana was one of the first moms to join the program, Creamos, which teaches the moms how make paper bead jewelry to sell. Most of the moms at Creamos used to work in the basurero. Now they, including Ana, make their money by making and selling jewelry. They don’t have to work in the basurero anymore and they make more money than when they did.

Ana spends a lot of time at Camino. She has her classes and jewelry meetings. She comes to teach interested Camino volunteers how to make the paper beads and simple K’iche’ words and phrases. But she also just likes to hang out at the project. I have never seen her without a smile on her face, which is even bigger when she talks about her boys.

Camino Seguro has transformed Ana’s life and given her sons opportunities that their circumstances wouldn’t predict. And they are just one family in this community that used to exit solely because of the basurero. Now, their community is, with Camino’s help, slowly moving beyond the necessity of living off it.

This year traveling with Pathfinders Project has provided a stark reminder of just how uncommon my experience is. Unlike my experience in the US, these days I am usually the only nonreligious person in a group. More importantly, I am positive that most assume that I am religious almost without exception. Blessings are bestowed upon me without thought. My Sunday activities have often been directed by the closures of certain businesses due to religious services.

Yet, even with Pathfinders Project, which is an expressly humanist endeavor, this year I have rarely felt even the slightest inkling that maybe I should hide or spin the nature of my true beliefs. This was the case in Cambodia where we were working at a Buddhist pagoda everyday. This was the case in Uganda where even the public schools are parochial and built on Christian or Muslim foundations. This was the case in Ghana where we talked to alleged witches who affirmed the validity of witchcraft, even as they faithfully covered their hair for their Islamic faith. This was the case in Haiti where we didn’t work on Saturdays because the mason for our project was Seventh-Day Adventist. This was the case in Ecuador where we were stopped on the street regularly by evangelical Christians looking to add another member to their flock. This was the case in Colombia where we had trouble finding restaurants that were open for dinner on Sundays. This has been the case in Guatemala where we are working currently.

Being in Antigua, Guatemala during Lent, we were regularly waylaid bystreet processions carrying figures of Jesus during different parts of the passion. We could not walk around town on the weekends without encountering hundreds of men and boys dressed in royal purple robes. In the mornings many streets were closed so thatalfombras (rugs) depicting Lenten scenes could be made in the middle of the street from sawdust and flowers.

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe revealing our humanist foundations was dangerous on any number of occasions on this journey and I just didn’t feel it. And there certainly have been moments I have hesitated before answering. But it wasn’t until here in Guatemala that I truly worried that the answer might have troubling consequences.

We are doing a home-stay in Antigua. The home where we are staying has angels and crosses decorating the walls. Jesus figurines and Bibles lie about the house. Every meal begins with a prayer. Here, for the first time on this trip, I honestly thought our lack of religion might be an issue. When the issue came up, I did feel it was a definite possibility that we might be sent packing.

It came up, as it often does, in a discussion about my degree, a Masters of Art in Religion. When the inevitable question arose and I answered that I am not religious, a long discussion about religious beliefs commenced. Thankfully, we were not immediately asked to leave. Our hosts started by explaining where they were coming from. Unsurprisingly, in Guatemala, they were raised Catholic. But they are not religious. They wanted to be very clear, they believe in God, they are just not religious. Though they didn’t use the term, it sounded very “spiritual-but-not-religious” to me.

At this point I was no longer worried about being kicked out. We were having a discussion. And it turned out to be one of the best interbelief discussions I’ve ever had in my life.

In my experience, which I cannot claim to be representative, those who fall in the spiritual-but-not-religious category tend toward liberal theology. Not our hosts. They don’t believe in evolution. They generally find faith in the mystery more compelling than scientific explanations. We spent a long time discussing how one can understand how the world began. They described the mystery of creation. We described the growing scientific knowledge of the big bang. I want to emphasize that I am not trying to put down their beliefs or evangelize my own. I want to emphasize how incredibly unexpected a friendly conversation between people who hold these points-of-view is.

But this was friendly. It ended with affirmations of respect for each other’s beliefs on both sides. Our hosts told us that they care only about good hearts. It was clear from their emphatic repetitions of this sentiment that they were worried that we might no longer feel welcome following this conversation.

I started by saying that I am lucky in my circumstances. I generally don’t even feel a moment’s hesitation to hide my beliefs, which is certainly not the case for many nonreligious people and religious minorities in the US and around the world. And while I’ve experienced being a minority on this trip in ways I never have before, the sum total of my experiences have been positive. If I, a nonbeliever, can have an easy and nonjudgmental conversation with people whose beliefs are so diametrically opposed to mine, perhaps there is hope.

This was originally published at State of Formation.