Over at the New Humanist blog, Caspar Melville writes:

That nice Dave Belden over at Tikkun magazine has paid me the compliment of disagreeing with a piece I wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, in which I argue against Dave’s notion that humanists need to organise themselves like religious communities, have services, rituals, build a community that sort of thing. Dave thinks I am too individualistic and we will never heal the world if we can’t build a strong ‘base’. He may well be right.

His perspective, I think, would be that being a humanist implies a desire to improve the world – for humans and other animals – it’s a commitment to a kind of activist attitude. (This is well expressed in Tikkun’s strapline, they want to ‘mend, repair and transform the world’). I wonder if my own humanism isn’t more of the “I don’t believe in God, I’m fascinated by what humans have done, do and might be capable of (good and bad), I want more peace and love, less war and greed, but life is short and full of sorrow (and plenty of laughs), most human endeavours and ambitions are fragile and misguided, if not ludicrous, and much harm is done by those with grand visions, so I don’t want to join a movement, any movement, and I will choose my friends and confreres from the weird and (often) wacky individuals I gather to myself, for possibly perverse and certainly unexamined reasons, along the way,” sort. Not a very snappy slogan, I grant you, but my own. I admire those with the courage to believe they can change the world and the drive to try – but they scare me too. So, good luck with your humanist religion, Dave, but include me out.

What about you?

Well the last line was irresistible, so of course I left a comment much longer than Caspar’s post–I’m the Dave on his site here. The next two comments side with Caspar. It’s fun to get out among the movement-phobic.

Caspar Melville

I am happy to find myself being quoted on the Guardian website by Casper Melville, editor of the New Humanist.

Belden (who is now managing editor at the non-denominational spiritual US magazine Tikkun), in a piece entitled Is it time for humanists to start holding services? wrote that while humanism had done well to meet the philosophical challenges set by religion, it did less well reproducing the kind of “vibrant social connections” that religion provides. He was rather stirring, in fact…

Caspar has a go at demolishing my argument–that humanists need to build congregations–in the kindest way, intelligently and entertainingly. (The New Humanist is full of English wit and irreverence and always a good read, with great cartoons.) Caspar’s main point is that any kind of ongoing community, with attendant meetings and formalized (gasp!) rituals, necessarily involves groupthink, and disapproval of outsiders.

As if unattached humanists don’t suffer from these traits themselves? They don’t look down their noses at the religious and judge them?

Caspar, it comes with our humanity. We’re tribal. We ALL have to struggle against groupthink, devaluation of outsiders, unhealthy reliance on charismatic leaders and so on. Those problems are not confined to formal associations, they just become more visible there, and therefore in some ways are easier to identify and guard against in communities, IF their members have their humanist and skeptical wits about them.

We need more humanists to help work out how to do this!