Defend Your Right to Think

 The 4th century Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and astronomer, Hypatia of Alexandria, once wrote, "Defend your right to think. Thinking and being wrong is better than not thinking."

She was a prominent philosopher and teacher of astronomy in 4th century Alexandria, who was eventually murdered by a Christian mob, who believed she was preventing the Roman prefect, Orestes, from reconciling with the new Christian bishop, Cyril. She has become a feminist icon.

I totally agree with her belief that "thinking and being wrong is better than not thinking." It is when we don't stop and think about what is going on, in our lives and in the world, when we act without thinking, incited by fear, anger and other negative emotions, that bad things happen. Even if our thinking leads to the wrong conclusion, at least we have paused for thought before leaping into action. Which may stop our action being extreme.

And the right to think is fundamental to human existence. It is the one thing that no-one can take away from us (unless they fry our brains with electric shock). The body can be starved, beaten, tortured, but the mind inside the body cannot be touched.... Except, through persuasion, misdirection, propaganda. Which is why it is so important that we do think about what we read and hear, rather than accepting it uncritically, that we question what others say and write, and bring our own faculties of thought and reason to bear on those statements.

As a Unitarian, I believe this also applies to religious belief. We were originally called 'Rational Dissenters', because of the emphasis we place on applying our reason to what we read in the Bible, hear from the pulpit, read in the newspaper or social media, rather than accepting it uncritically. We also refuse to have any kind of creed, which people must assent to, before being able to name themselves "Unitarian", believing rather that we are all spiritual seekers on a journey, and that questioning and doubts are part of that journey. The only authorities we accept are those of our reason and conscience. So we would absolutely defend anyone's right to think, as Hypatia suggests. Otherwise, how are we going to learn, and to grow into our best selves?

Our Senses as Touchstones of Reality

The Italian Renaissance polymath, Leonardo da Vinci, once wrote, "The spiritual things which have not passed through the senses are vain, and they produce no truth except harmful ones."

Which takes a bit of thinking about... I think he means that our senses provide a kind of touchstone of reality, against which to measure spiritual truths. Ideas are infinite and can be quite nebulous, coming out of who knows where, and striking us with their brilliance. Yet we should not follow them blindly, without testing their truth against the wisdom of our senses. Do our senses include common sense? In which case, I would agree with him.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines common sense as "the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way." Which is another way of describing the Unitarian tenet of reason. I think that most Unitarians would agree that our beliefs evolve, and are tested, through a process of rational enquiry, rather than relying on any external authority to tell us what we should believe. We accept that these beliefs may change over time, in the light of new understandings and insights, and that the best tools for formulating our beliefs are our own reason, conscience, intuitions and life experiences.

Nevertheless, we also accept that some beliefs are not susceptible to rational thought, that there are limits to how far reason can take us on our spiritual journeys. So it is up to each of us to decide what we believe about such mysteries as life after death, the existence (or not) of any divine being, or the nature of good and evil.

So while in most cases, our senses, including common sense and reason, are incredibly useful tools for discerning spiritual truths, they are not always enough. And the truths we perceive through means other than rational thought can sometimes be helpful, not harmful. It is vital that we bounce these new ideas off other people, to provide some checks or balances, but in the end, they can sometimes ring true. 

So, sorry, Leonardo... I have to disagree with you, at least partly.

Wanting What We Don't Have

I believe that this week's quote, by 17th century French writer and moralist, Francois de la Rochefoucauld, is advice which, if taken by the world's governments, by all of us, would transform the world for the better. It reads, "Before you ardently desire something, you should check the happiness of the one who already owns it."

We seem to be driven by a base desire for wanting more - more of everything. I have blogged before about the wonderful concept of Enoughness - of recognising that (at least in the West) we already have more than enough of everything. As John Naish wrote, "There is no 'more'. We have to learn to live 'post-more'."

So why this seemingly bottomless desire to have what the other person has? Perhaps if we learned to pause, and to check "the happiness of the one who already owns it", we might realise that actually, they are not that much better off than we are. And, perhaps more importantly, if we only paid attention to what we already have, we would be far more content, far less acquisitive.

It's hard - we live in a world in which the advertising and marketing industries batter our minds ceaselessly - "You need this", "Your life will be incomplete without that", and, worst of all, the more subliminal, nasty message, "Everyone else is having a better time than you are." I am already weary of the wall-to-wall Christmas adverts on Channel 4 - painting a picture of the "perfect Christmas", which is ours for the getting, so long as we lay out our hard-earned cash on X, Y, and Z. Top of my "non-essentials" list this year is a cocktail-making machine (£100 off!!) and the ubiquitous Quooker. 

This year, our immediate family (me, my husband, my son and his partner, and my daughter and her partner) have decided to do a Secret Santa between us, and only get presents for the children. Which we've done in the wider Ellis family for years, thanks to the wisdom of my sister. Because Christmas is (or should be) about giving pleasure, rather than driving ourselves into debt to buy presents they don't really want for people we only see a couple of times a year. We are opting out of the Christmas rat race and concentrating on spending quality time together instead. Which I believe is far more conducive to long-term happiness than that cocktail maker.

On a national level, the "ardent desire" for something is driven by lust for power and land, and fear of the other. But wouldn't it be wonderful if governments said to themselves, "Are we really going to be happier if we destroy the lives of the people of this other nation? Should we stand back a little before jumping into the familiar pattern of violence, and really think about other ways we could improve the qualities of our own lives, here in our country?" 

Which I'm sure are questions which are never, ever asked. Sadly...

Holding on to our Dreams

There's a wonderful post doing the rounds on Facebook at present, in the wake of the US election result, written by environmentalist, Chris Packham. It reads, "Things have just got a lot more difficult. Here's what I think. I had no control over what just happened. None. But I do have control over how I will react to it. And I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter."

Thank you, Chris. This is such a timely reminder, when the world seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket (incidentally, *why* in a hand basket? - I've never understood that!). Yes, we will need time to grieve, to mourn what might have been. And no emotion is wrong - if we need to scream our woes to the skies, that is fine, or weep quietly in a corner.

But we must not allow this election result to destroy our dreams of a better, fairer, more peaceful and equitable world. A world based around the values of love and compassion, justice and peace. Working towards those dreams, witnessing for those values, is under our control, is in our gift. People like Tr*mp will ultimately only win if everyone else gives up fighting.

Another quote doing the rounds comes from JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: 

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

"I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter." "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." 

Different words, same message. In the hard, dark days ahead, may we all be given the strength, the passion, to hold onto our dreams.

The Importance of Self-Love

When I read this week's quotation, by the 13th / 14th century German theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, I had a strong reaction to it. It reads, "All the love in this world is built on self-love."

No, I thought, surely the point of love is that it is self-less, concentrated on the other. Then I remembered something Brene Brown once wrote, in The Gifts of Imperfection. Part of her definition of love, gleaned from her extensive qualitative research, reads, "Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow; a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them - we can only love others as much as we love ourselves." (emphasis mine)

She admits how hard this is to hear, let alone put into practice, because most of us tend to be harder on ourselves than we are on the people we love. She says, "I know I can talk to myself in ways that I would never consider talking to another person. How many of us are quick to think, God, I'm so stupid and Man, I'm such an idiot?"

She opened the question on her blog in 2009 which, perhaps not surprisingly, sparked quite a fierce debate. And in her book, she shares one wise comment by Renae Cobb: "Certainly, the people we love inspire us to heights of love and compassion that we might never have achieved otherwise, but to really scale those heights, we often have to go to the depths of who we are, light/shadow, good/evil, loving/destructive, and figure out our own stuff in order to love them better. So I'm not sure it's an either/or but a both/and. We love others fiercely, maybe more than we think we love ourselves, but that fierce love should drive us to the depths of our selves so that we can learn to be compassionate with ourselves."

So maybe Meister Eckhart and Brene Brown are both right: self-compassion is a vital component of being able to love others well. Because when we are continually down on ourselves, even if only inside our heads, it will inevitably affect how well we are able to respond to, love, others.