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Universal Creativity and Human Liberation
The Three Self-correcting Orientations
Required for Human Survival
Glen T. Martin
t the dawn of the 21st Century, the fate of mankind and the
meaning of the human project hang in the balance. Caught in the powerful
current of the immense river of history, we are being swept headlong
toward disaster for both our planet and humanity. It appears as though
solutions to our immense problems are nowhere to be found. Nowhere do
there appear possibilities that might save us a nightmarish future. The
traditional ideals of every human religion and culture pointing toward a
world of peace, freedom, and justice appear to have disappeared from our
spiritual and intellectual horizon.
Some thinkers have asked whether we are “unteachable,” for we have not
even learned the lessons of the first 50 years of the 20th
century, let alone the lessons of the past 50 years. We have not
understood the disastrous dead ends of nationalism, nation-state
sovereignty, racism, religious bigotry, global capitalism, or the
worship of technology. All six of these idolatrous and dehumanizing
phenomena have proved absolute disasters.
They have turned human beings into indoctrinated, utterly fragmented
national collectivities, into psychopathic creatures of mass hatred,
into bigoted denizens of some idolatrously held absolute truth, into
economic cogs enslaved for the wealth of others or egoistic monsters
seeking personal wealth and power at the expense of others, or, finally,
into robotic machines themselves, compulsively jerking to electronic
flashes on computer screens or video monitors, pushing buttons on
screens from naval ships or fighter aircraft, burning people alive and
destroying their life-supports systems, without remorse, compassion, or
intelligence.
Where, today, do we find a sense of the immense dignity of our humanity
that animated the poets, religious prophets, mystics, philosophers, and
creative thinkers of every culture and every century? Where do we find a
sense of the higher possibilities of our common human project? How is it
that the inner human being, the inner life of reflective thought,
conscience, self-awareness and personal integrity, seems to have
disappeared from culture, literature, and the public media?
Many of those interested in “spirituality” in our day live apart in
ashrams, monasteries, cloisters, or small religious enclaves. They cling
to their awareness of the sacred value of the inner life and its
connections with deeper meaning of our cosmos while ignoring – or
despairing – over the immense river of history sweeping our entire
planet toward implacable disaster. They live apart free of the
nationalism, nation-statism, racism, religious bigotry, capitalism,
egoism, or worship of technology that corrupt and pollute the higher
meaning of our humanity and portend the end of history. Yet they see no
public path beyond that end, no way to the future except a blind
clinging to the sacred inner life in the face of the immense chaos of
the outer world.
However, pubic, universal, and non-dogmatic paths of thinking and acting
have emerged in human history that are available to every human being
and together form the a very real hope and possibility for human beings
to free themselves from their pathological cultural or personal
fixations and move into a future that is liberating, peaceful, just, and
ecologically sustainable. These paths of creativity and openness I will
call these the scientific spirit, the Buddhist spirit, and the
democratic spirit.
Each of these three encompasses a different and essential aspect of our
human project. Each is necessary
to authentic human life, and therefore each is inherently universal.
But only together are they fully sufficient for human
transformation from our present nightmare world to a world of peace,
justice, and ecological sustainability.
The spirit of science is well-known for its freedom from dogmatism.
All ideas about the world in science function as hypotheses that
are more or less probable, more or less supported by empirical and
experimental evidence.
Scientists communicate with one another in a language of hypotheses,
evidence, degrees of support, and probability that leaves open the
possibility of future transformation of inadequate ideas into ever-more
adequate understandings of the structure and intelligibility of the
universe.
One tragedy of the past 60 years is that much of science has been
colonized by the industrial-military complexes of imperial nations,
placing a large portion of the non-dogmatic, exploratory and creative
nature of the scientific spirit in the service of dogmatic and
pathological nation-state agendas.
But this does not invalidate the creatively open nature of the
scientific spirit that progressively unlocks the secrets of nature, and
the interrelationship of the diverse phenomena of nature, through a
non-dogmatic, hypothetical openness to its conceptual frameworks.
Human beings need science, and the results and applications of science,
not only for the power of science to heal disease, protect the
environment, house, clothe, and feed the people of Earth, but also human
beings need the lessons of the creative, open, and non-dogmatic approach
to ideas to empower the process of liberation. But they need something
comparable for their spiritual life.
The second creative and non-dogmatic approach to human life is what I
call the Buddhist spirit. Buddhism emerged 2600 years ago through the
teaching of the Lord Buddha, revolutionizing and repudiating the
dogmatic aspects of its Hindu context. What the Buddha taught was not a
new set of concepts about ultimate reality, about God or the soul.
Indeed, the Buddha refused to discuss these subjects with his followers.
What he taught was a spirit of self-discovery, a practical orientation
through recognition of the four noble truths by which suffering and its
causes can be overcome by treading the noble eightfold path of
self-exploration, concrete practice, systematic meditation, and daily
mindfulness. For this
reason, Buddhism is often said to be the one major world religion that
is not incompatible with the spirit of science (see Jacobson 1983).
Buddhism clings to no dogmas that need defending as an ultimate
“truth.” The vast body of literature that comprise Buddhist sutras and
teachings offers a network of concepts and analyses that are themselves
a creative and practical approach to freeing human beings from their
habit ridden compulsions, fears, anxieties, and dogmatisms that
perpetuate psychic and physical suffering everywhere on Earth.
The second-century Buddhist sage Nāgārjuna in south India offers his
Mūlamadhyamikakārikā as a deconstruction of “conceptual proliferation”
intended to free human beings from their dogmatic clinging to the
illusion of substantial entities (svabhava)
and illuminate the interrelatedness of all things (their dependent
co-origination or
pratītya-samutpāda) (see Martin 1989).
The function of concepts in the Buddhist spirit emerges as
pedagogical, non-dogmatic, deconstructive, and spiritually suggestive.
Never do we find a set of beliefs required of a person to
practice Buddhism in the Buddhist spirit.
The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, they say in
Zen-Buddhism. When a person
is hit by a poisoned arrow, the Lord Buddha asserts, this is no time to
speculate about the true nature of the arrow, the poison, the marksman,
or immortality of his soul. Creative practical action to realize for
oneself the path to liberation is the very essence of the Buddhist
spirit.
In this sense, the Buddhist spirit is very much in accord with science.
Science encourages a hypothetical and non-dogmatic mode of
discourse directed to illuminating the structures and interrelatedness
of the universe. Buddhism
focuses specifically on the suffering individual, on the human spiritual
dimension, and through a similar non-dogmatic and experiential approach
illuminates the creative roots of the human spirit emerging out of the
fullness-emptiness (Śūnyatā)
at the creative ground of the universe itself.
The scientific spirit is necessary for us to progressively
comprehend the universe we live in. The Buddhist spirit is necessary for
each of us to free his or her self from the traps of name and form, the
dogmatic and often pathological clinging to conceptual forms in order to
cover over the emptiness and anxiety at the root of our uncreative and
unfulfilled lives.
It is appropriate that this similarity between the open attitude of
science and that of Buddhism be affirmed, here in
In the history of Buddhism, there have been no disputes between
religious beliefs and scientific knowledge, since Buddhism is not
contradictory to science. There is no point at which science comes into
conflict with Buddhism, which is fully in accord with reason. Buddhism
does not ask its followers to believe in anything outside the normal
order of nature. Thus, the rationality of Buddhism is required most in
our age. Einstein himself wrote that if there is any religion which is
acceptable to the modern scientific mind, it is Buddhism, because it
applies to all times and to all men without regard to race, nation, or
faith. (In Jacobson 1983,
p. 119).
The third spirit necessary to human liberation is the spirit of
democracy. The scientific
spirit is said to be inherently democratic, since what counts in
scientific dialogue is ideas, evidence, arguments, and creative
hypotheses, not rank, race, class, power, or military might.
The same is often said of Buddhism. Buddhism recognizes the
interrelatedness of all persons, the mutual interpenetration and
communal formation of personhood understood not to be structured as
mutually exclusive ego substances. In this spirit decision-making
involves dialogue, debate, recognition of differing point of views and a
communal striving for consensus or collective decision-making.
But neither science nor the Buddhist spirit institutionalizes this
spirit of democracy into formal
structures officially recognizing the dignity, freedom, rights, and
duties of human beings with regard to one another in the process of
collective decision making. The true democratic spirit does just this.
Knowing full well the tendency of human beings to usurp one another’s
rights; knowing full well the tendency of human beings to bigotry,
prejudice, manipulations and lies, democracy institutionalizes
procedures by which collective decision-making can take place through
the potentially equal participation of the entire community.
Both the scientific spirit and the Buddhist spirit can flourish
best within the framework of authentic democracy, for they both are
inherently non-dogmatic as is democracy.
In democracy, no political, ideological, religious or other ideas are
officially proffered.
Democracy opens up decision making to a universal public discourse in
which decisions are made through the equal right of participation of all
citizens. Democracy functions at the very heart of non-violent conflict
resolution, of non-violent decision making. The conflict of ideas, the
rage of passions, the dissemination of untruths are all subjected to the
winnowing effect of open public discourse and debate in which concepts
are sifted and filtered to the point where the majority can agree on how
to move into the future without violence and without repression of the
minority. In democracy, minorities rights are protected, including the
freedom to promote their views.
The promise of democracy, as it developed from its ancient beginnings
through the Enlightenment of the 18th century, involved
ending systems of privilege, domination, and exploitation that crushed
the spirit of humanity. It was the promise of recognizing the unique
value of each person as person – his or her human rights, dignity, and
humanity, and the right of each person to follow his or her own path
toward developing the potential, the possibilities, the creative value
of his or her life. The assumption behind democracy was that free
development of the inner potentialities of each person would become
manifest in creative service to humanity, forever enriching the quality
and dignity – along with the peace, freedom, and justice – of human life
on Earth.
The democratic ideal has never been realized and is becoming discredited
in our time because it was always conjoined with profoundly undemocratic
incompatibles: with the freedom of capital to exploit, with a
totalitarian imposition of a so-called Communist community, with the
attempt by some nation-states to command economic life, with the
nationalism and exclusivism of sovereign nation-states, with ethnic or
racial prejudices, or with the religious identity of certain intolerant
groups.
In each case the point of democracy – the inner dignity of persons and
the free development of their possibilities for self-realization – was
perverted by something exterior to personhood and destructive of it.
Capitalism dominates and exploits persons and makes the
self-development of the masses of persons impossible. Nationalism
suppresses human interiority with the ideological demand of conformity,
patriotism, and acquiescence to the imperial or cultural goals of the
nation. A religious identity colonizing governmental systems crushes
authentic human spirituality in the name of externally imposed systems
of morality and religious conformity.
It is only when we break the connection of democracy with any and all of
these phenomena that its ability to enliven our higher human
possibilities can be released. Democracy as a set of social institutions
is not itself the fullest actualization of our higher human
possibilities. Just as science is the universal non-dogmatic spirit for
unlocking the secrets of nature insofar as these are intelligible, and
the Buddhist spirit is the universal, non-dogmatic path toward blissful
and liberated spiritual life, so democracy is the universal set of
institutions that make possible moving into the future through creative,
non-violent decision-making and change.
That is why persons of compassion and intelligence must work diligently
to ratify the Constitution for
the Federation of Earth.
This Constitution, and
this one alone, was winnowed through a process of four world constituent
assemblies over a period of 33 years involving thousands of world
citizens. Ratifying this
Constitution for the people and nations of the world will go a long
way toward freeing people from their destructive compulsions and
self-defeating fragmentation. It will go a long way toward
universalizing both the scientific spirit and the Buddhist spirit, and
toward placing human beings on the road to true, universal liberation.
Sovereign
nation-states cannot be the proper locus of democracy, since their
undemocratic and arbitrary relations with one another inevitably brings
with it militarism, arms races, and internal repression for the sake of
national security. The
non-democratic autonomy of sovereign nations exacerbates racism, ethnic
prejudice, collective egoism, and religious intolerance worldwide, since
some nations are liked with their religions, their races, ethnicities,
or egoistic “manifest destinies.”
As the river of history implacably carries us toward impending disaster,
our rabid nationalistic, racist, dogmatic, or technocratic “solutions”
will only further inhibit the creative scientific, spiritual, and
democratic paths of action that are needed most. Our weapons of mass
destruction remain on alert for wiping out civilization due to some
terrible error in calculation or power politics.
Our environment moves toward total climate collapse and the
inability to sustain higher forms of life. Is there any hope at all
within this intolerable situation?
In his essay “Sovereignty Rests with Mankind,” Japanese Zen-Buddhist
philosopher Masao Abe
describes
this transcendence (1985, pp. 249-260). He recognizes the legitimacy of
the nation-states
in their historical development
as
a combination of political power and “ethical or moral force.” But today
the power of these nations, based on the individual egoism and “national
egoism” of their peoples, is submerging the ethical justification, for
“the state is now developing a demonic character as it destroys the
balance of moral restraint and controlling power which should be the
rationale of the state.”
Sovereignty now rests with humankind, and the idea of nations must be
returned to a cultural and historical one that no longer dominates human
destiny:
“I would like to maintain, therefore, that the term ‘world’ should now
be grasped qualitatively rather than quantitatively – that is, not as a
mere gathering of various nations but as one single human community
participating in a common life and sharing the same fate” (ibid. p.
268). We have reached the point where “the age of nation states as the
bearers of history must proclaim its end, and the age of mankind must
begin.”
The egoistic level of
individual and collective selfhood in which we are mired “alienates the
individual from mankind and does not truly enliven either the individual
or mankind.” In our age, where we are now in a position to understand
the inseparability of individual fulfillment and well-being from that of
the human community,
we must engage in the “self-negation” that will move us to a higher
level of selfhood. Today, we live in an untranscended selfhood
characterized by “individual, race, class, and nation – endless
conflicts that have at their base ego and power.” Abe writes:
From what position is it possible to grasp mankind as a single, living,
self-aware entity? I believe that the foundation of this position is for
each of us to awaken to his or her true Self, that is, each individual
must break through his or her ego structure, thereby realizing original
Self. At the same time that this is a thoroughly individual ‘Subjective’
manner, it is also a thoroughly universal objective one. Why is this so?
It is so because to overcome the ego is to overcome the very standpoint
wherein one distinguishes between self and other. (Ibid. p. 251)
It is precisely this oneness of humanity that the
Constitution for the Federation
of Earth recognizes – in the principle of unity in diversity that is
emphasized in its Prologue – that is at the heart of all non-dogmatic
and creative orientations to life.
Article two of the Earth
Constitution affirms the sovereignty of humankind as the only
legitimate form of sovereignty.
To overcome dogmatism, conceptual proliferation, hatred, division
and fragmentation on the Earth we need the scientific spirit, the
Buddhist spirit, and the spirit of democracy, the latter
institutionalized for all of humankind.
Once democracy is institutionalized on the Earth, the differences of
nations, races, religions, etc., then become precious cultural
differences that lose their power to destroy. They lose their power to
colonize the democratic idea and subvert it through turning diversity
into collectivized “isms” of imposed sameness. Nationalisms exacerbated
by the system of autonomous, sovereign nation-states lose their absolute
character. Their diversity then becomes essential and beautiful as long
as it is encompassed within the unity of universal democracy respecting
the dignity and autonomy of each person on Earth.
Dogmatism, prejudice, hatred, and compulsive clinging to
fragmented forms begin to vanish within a framework affirming the
equality, freedom, and unity in diversity of all nations, peoples, and
individuals. The universal realization of Original Self that constitutes
human spiritual liberation then becomes a possibility.
Our choice today is absolute. We no longer have the luxury of
postponement. We can allow ourselves to be swept to disaster within the
currents of history premised on nationalism, racism, bigotry,
exploitation, or technocracy. Or we can foster a new Renaissance for the
Earth, giving birth to our real human possibilities and premised on
liberty, equality, and community for our entire planet. We are at high
noon – a time of absolute decision when the shadows of ambiguity have
disappeared.
We choose either to do nothing and be swept toward our pending death,
possible extinction, and coming perdition or we can embrace the fullness
of life, a fullness that is intrinsically creative: simultaneously
scientific, spiritual, and democratic. We can embrace integrity of
personhood for all human beings and precious natural environment that we
share with the Earth’s other living creatures. Or we can be swept to
perdition as we duck beneath the storm to preserve our private security
and selfish personal and national interests. We can act to realize our
higher human possibilities and create a human and planetary renaissance
for the 21st century. That planetary renaissance will
universalize, for the first time in history, the scientific spirit, the
Buddhist spirit, and the spirit of democracy.
The framework that will make this possible is worldwide
ratification of the Constitution
for the Federation of Earth.
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