In This Issue:

Our November Guest Reverend Karen Stoyanoff.
Book review by Stuart Bechman of "Ethical People and How They Get to Be That Way" by Arthur Dobrin.
"Religion, Ethics and Relationships" by Dave Silva.
"What Can the Humanist Teach" by Victor Tanious.
"Really, Mr. Pascal, You Can't Be Serious!" by Juan Bernal, Ph.D
"Christians Blow It Again!" by Benito Franqui.
Humor …. "George and God" contributed by Paul Ricci. 

Quote of the Month

"The good person is one who is compassionate, benevolent and fair, who recognizes the humanity in other people, respects others, and works to protect them from harm."
-Arthur Dobrin.

OUR NOVEMBER GUEST
REVEREND KAREN STOYANOFF

The Rev. Dr. Karen Stoyanoff serves the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church as minister. Prior to moving to California, she was interim minister at Third Unitarian Church in Chicago, Illinois where she was active in interfaith work, serving on the metropolitan initiative of the Parliament of the World’s Religions and the Board of the Interfaith Council for the Homeless. She attended Meadville Theological School, which is affiliated with the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Reverend Stoyanoff lives in Huntington Beach, CA. with her husband, 3 dogs and 1 cat. She is Vice President of the Orange County Chapter of the ACLU, and is a Board Member of the Newport-Mesa-Irvine Interfaith Council. She was a presenter at the Religious Diversity Faire which was held at UC Irvine on November 7, 1999.

On November 2 1st, at 2pm, Reverend Stoyanoff will present a talk entitled, "Unitarian Universalism for Such a Time as This," which will explore the role of this faith tradition at the new century and millennium.

"ETHICAL PEOPLE AND HOW THEY GET TO BE THAT WAY"
BY ARTHUR DOBRIN
REVIEWED BY STUART BECHMAN

The talk is based on a book, "Ethical People: And How They Get To Be That Way," by Arthur Dobrin (1998, Hofstra University Press, NY). Dobrin starts with looking at the WWII Jewish rescuers as a baseline to determine the traits of an ideal ‘Ethical person’. Although the research discounts any traditional points of commonality among the rescuers such as nationality, social class, childhood upbringing methods, religious beliefs, education, political affiliation, profession or gender, nonetheless he does discover a surprising list of common traits: Growing up in a nurturing, loving family; Altruistic parents / caretakers; Exposure to tolerance towards those who were different from them; A childhood tragedy or loss that tested their resilience; Emphasis on independence; Discipline with explanations; and an overall environment of caring and compassion.

My partner Jeanie talked about the identified values of Dobrin’s survey and went over how the subject of ethics was taught in the past, from ‘moral stories’ during the Renaissance to development and recitation of lists of values in colonial and frontier times to ‘values clarification’ in the 1960’s when it became a bit clearer that values held by some segments of society were not shared by all other segments of the same society. In fact, by this time, many anthropologists were beginning to conclude that ethics and morality was quite relative based on the culture you were raised in, and that there are no ‘ultimate’ ethical values.

However, from this historical survey done by Dobrin, some consistent values of morality did start to come through. Dobrin developed this further by looking at two contemporary models of ethics: One based on William J. Bennett’s ‘The Book of Virtues’ (1993); the other based on Greer & Kohl’s 1995 book ‘A Call To Character’. Bennett’s book representing the conservative view of ethics, Greer & Kohl representing the ‘liberal/progressive’ view. Although the two views were quite different and emphasized different priorities, there were a handful of traits that were shared by both books: Self-Discipline; Loyalty; Courage; Responsibility; Compassion; and Honesty. This suggested that perhaps there were ethical values that transcended culture. Dobrin then reviewed another comparative study of ethics & culture done between Americans and Asian-Indians. Even though there existed a huge disparity of values between the two cultures, these common values were considered virtues in both cultures: 1) Keeping Promises; 2) Respecting private (personal) property; 3) Fairly allocating rewards & punishments; 4) Protection of the vulnerable; and 5) Reciprocating with Gratitude. Additionally, these common values were considered vices in both culture sets: 1) Incest; 2) Arbitrary Assault / Random Violence; 3) Nepotism & Bias; and 4) Biased classifications (negative prejudice).

Reviewing all of these studies and lining them up with the characteristics of the Jewish rescuers, Dobrin concluded that, indeed, there are a universal set of values that all people recognize as part of the makeup of an ethical person. It appeared that on a broader scale, such universal ethics fall into two basic categories: One is encouraging amicable relations by focusing upon equitable treatment of others; the other is preventing harm of the vulnerable. And these stand out as ‘core’ universal values because they address basic conditions necessary for humans to survive. Whatever else each culture may add to their own definitions of morality, these 'core' values remain as the bedrock from which all other ethics are derived.

So, how does one develop their own sense of ethics? Dobrin uncovered work done by Kohlberg in the 1950’s that built upon Piaget’s earlier work on child development. Kohlberg developed from his work a model of moral development that identified 5 stages of moral reasoning:

1) Punishment/Obedience (-4-8 yrs): Morality is understood to be that you do what someone else says you do, or you get punished. The world revolves around you; you are not aware of the needs of others, you simply are reacting to the stimulus presented to you.

2) Means & Ends (—6-13 yrs): You begin to understand that there are others around you to interact with; and to get what you want, you have to give them something that they want. ‘Tit-for-tat’ thinking: If you let me have your sandwich, I’ll let you play with my ball. If I eat my vegetables, I’ll get to have dessert. If I don’t clean my room, I’ll be sent to bed early. Fairness becomes an important value here: Why does Johnny get a bigger piece of pie than I do? It’s not fair!

3) Good-boy/Nice-girl (-42-18 yrs): You begin to recognize the value of being part of a group and begin to recognize the group’s values as yours in order to belong. Conformity becomes paramount: Morality is based on being accepted by the group, ostracism is the consequence for violating the groups’ standards. Loyalty becomes a very important value at this stage.

4) Law & Order (—46+ yrs): You realize that we live in a social community where there are lots of different people with varying needs & desires, and that some order needs to be imposed in order to keep society from collapsing into chaos. Morality becomes one of heeding laws set up to keep order in society. Patriotism and conservatism are promoted at this stage.

5) Social Contract: Your awareness of the world extends beyond just following laws, to the point that you recognize the responsibility we all have to take care of each and all of us. That times change, laws set in the past may no longer be (or perhaps never were) appropriate to support the needs of all. Your level of willingness to be responsible expands to the point that you may even challenge the status quo when your convictions tell you that the status quo is unjust; and you decide that the consequences you will incur by bucking the rules is worth the justice you are trying to right.

The earlier of these stages tend to take care of themselves, but it’s less common for people to move through the latter stages without some work. How is this done, what causes people to move through the latter stages? In the past, it’s been done by stating or providing a list of values through either rote learning or story-telling; then providing corrective measures to help individuals ‘stay the course’.

But there are a few obstacles that can get in the way of that development. One is the development of negative prejudices. Another are the ‘traditional’ corrections themselves that have been intended to promote moral growth.

Some people assert that ‘prejudice’ is a learned value, that if a child didn’t have prejudiced parents, he wouldn’t develop prejudices, either. This line of thinking has spurred the ‘political correctness’ fad of the 80’s. But Dobrin found that actually prejudice is a natural and valuable part of our human survival instinct. Prejudice starts with the survival skill of classifying and grouping things to help us put order to the chaos incur environment. Our brain naturally ‘chunks’ like things into groups to speed up our adaptation in new environments. We become adept at discriminating foods we can eat vs. those that could be poisonous; safe vs. unsafe animals; the best tools for a given purpose. Similarly, we classified people into categories, whether by gender, color, disposition, age, etc. Classification is a natural and healthy human process. It’s also important to note that the classifications we determine are entirely arbitrary, whatever serves the need best at the moment.

Classification develops into bias and prejudice when such arbitrary classifications are taken too seriously, that the similarities become the entire set of traits we recognize in the group and we ignore the distinctions between the individual group members. We develop a positive or negative bias towards our groupings. When this happens, the perceptions become ‘fixed’ and the generalities drawn from the group are applied without exception and without other consideration to all members lumped into that group.

The other obstacles to moral development are the ‘traditional’ methods of providing moral correction: Fear, Guilt, and Shame. Organizations such as the Armed Forces take great pride in their methodology of breaking down’ a person’s will and ‘rebuilding’ him into a good, courageous soldier. But does this process indeed create people of high ethical values? In fact, studies of soldiers and ex-soldiers seem to indicate that they are ‘good soldiers’ more out of fear of retribution from their superiors rather than because of any intrinsic conviction of right & wrong. Ironically, their sense of ethics and morality have been reduced to the first level of Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning.

Many conservatives argue that guilt & shame should be resurrected as methods of instilling morality, to reverse the ‘moral degradation’ and levels of crime that we are experiencing here in the U.S. They point to societies such as Japan and China where the levels of crime are extremely low. Indeed, these societies are instilled with long traditions of the importance of saving face’ and shame is an extremely powerful method of promoting conformity. However, these societies are also extremely rigid and have unusually high levels of suicide - presumably by those who didn’t feel that they ‘measured up’ to others’ expectations. In these societies, the group is all-important; individualism counts for very little.

That’s not the tradition that we have here in Western society. Since the Enlightenment, much emphasis has been placed on development of the individual, on intrinsic human ‘rights’, on self-esteem. In fact, in Dobrin’s research, it turns out that self-esteem is a key factor in moral development. Self-esteem turns out to be intrinsically linked with responsibility; and responsibility is a major piece of moral development. The more responsibility a person accepts, the higher the level of moral reasoning - and vice-versa. This goes against the mechanism of using guilt & shame: These attack and tear down a person’s self-esteem, promoting a ‘constricted’ personality that shuns risks and controversy. This is antithetical to the personalities of people like the Jewish rescuers who clearly had the courage and conviction to act as they did despite the very real dangers in doing so. The rescuers had very ‘expansive’ personalities grounded in high self-esteem. Those people who have been exposed to high levels of fear, guilt and shame in their development tend to be people who get stuck in lower levels of moral reasoning - either becoming obsessed with adhering to stated laws or being obsessively loyal to their group.

So what does work in development moral reasoning? Piaget & Kohlberg understood it to be an incremental, experiential process. It doesn’t work to teach it directly out of a book or memorize lists of virtues. It is best taught by example and practice. And it is best teamed when there is a compassion for others and a desire to treat them morally.

Social studies in the 80’s indicated that compassion and empathy could be dramatically increased when people were challenged to solve problems via cooperation. Conversely, people placed in competitive situations dramatically decreased their levels of compassion and empathy for others.

Piaget & Kohlberg also recognized that fictional literature appeared to have a positive impact in moral development. Apparently, putting oneself in the lives of the main character and considering the moral dilemmas of that character as they went through life had direct impact on a person’s moral development. But the impact was directly related to the richness and depth of the story: Didactic stories which blatantly taught morals (such as Aesop’s fables) were far less effective, presumably because those characters were two-dimensional and the situations too contrived for a person to intrinsically absorb as a value for themselves.

Also discovered to promote higher levels of empathy and, thus, moral reasoning was volunteer and community service. Getting involved and attempting to help those who are different from us tended to promote tolerance and understanding. (But this did not tend to happen when such service was done for selfish reasons such as looking good or fleshing out a resume.)

Dobrin finished his book by concluding that morality is a skill which is learned; and to learn it well, one has to work at it regularly like learning a language or a musical instrument. In light of this view, he offered eight areas of an individual’s life where one could focus on developing one’s moral skills:

1) Feelings. Get in touch with your own feelings, discover what’s important to you, what you really care about. Recognize other’s feelings and acknowledge them in your day-to-day dealings.

2) Reason. Promote independent thinking in others. Challenge yourself to be able to fully explain any position you take. Ask open-ended questions of others to hear their explanations.

3) Self-Esteem. Treat all people, including yourself, with respect. Develop interest in other’s activities. Give praise when praise is due. Support others; stand with them when they are unfairly attacked.

4) Discipline. Be firm and consistent, yet flexible, in your discipline. Don’t intimidate or ridicule. Criticize in private. ALWAYS accompany any and all discipline with a full explanation.

5) Prejudice. Examine, be aware of your own biases. Challenge your own bigotry; practice speaking about differences between people in neutral terms. Don’t allow biased I bigoted comments from others to go unchallenged.

6) Values. Develop values that are important to you. Identi1~r people that you admire and understand what it is about them that you admire.

7) Habit. Do all of the above on a regular basis. Look for opportunities to be a role model. Live your life as example to others.

8) Community. Plug in to your community, know what’s going on. Join local groups, do volunteer & community service. Get involved, develop opinions about happenings both locally and abroad.

RELIGION, ETHICS AND RELATIONSHIPS
By Dave Silva

Humanists have usually given more thought to ethics than the average person. We have all gone through some introspective soul searching to determine what our values should be and how those values apply to others. Jeanie and Stuart's presentation, at the October HAOC meeting, showed the universality of specific values and how young people tend to grow into social, ethical adults. More importantly they outlined some practical steps in helping children in that ethical growth.

What was, in my view, of greater interest to those at the meeting was what Jeanie and Stuart had to say about how their religious views effected their personal relationship. How do people who value their relationship deal with the critical issue of holding religious beliefs that seem light years apart? This is a more common problem for Humanists than for religious people. Since most people Humanists meet are religious we naturally think of how we are going to deal with dating a religious person. However, that doesn't mean we always deal with it well. The guidance of experts, or at least other people who had to struggle through this would be helpful. For the deeply religious person to have a relationship with an atheist is usually an unanticipated event that they didn't want and aren't prepared for.

The way Stuart and Jeanie worked hard to resolve this problem could serve as a model for other couples. You have to start with mutual respect for each other as a good person that you don't want to hurt just because you can't agree on certain ideas. Friends agree to disagree all the time. They decided to explore the study of ethics to discover where they had common ground; and found that they had a lot in common. The easy way for Jeanie would have been to say it just won't work, without seeing if it could. Or, to listen to friends or family, who because of preconceived ideas said it can't work. Stuart could have said it's too difficult, because some people will not accept me for what I am. They found common values they could share with their children without giving up who they are.

You don't hear a lot about this problem, but it's more common than most people think. It definitely should be talked about more openly than it is. We wish other people could hear Jeanie and Stuart's presentation and hope they will.

WHAT CAN THE HUMANIST TEACH ?
By Victor Tanious

I was very much impressed with the presentation in our last meeting of Ethics and Morality and the approach Stuart and Jeannie are taking to teach moral and ethical behavior to young adults. After the presentation, my mind started to wonder that if the Judeo Christian tradition has had a monopoly or the appearance of it (to a certain extent) on the teachings of morality by using sacred books, and through measures as guilt, shame, punishment, eternal damnation, etc. as a tool. What can we as Humanists teach others, or in other words, what is our message to the world?

Now, take a deep breath as some of you might not like what I am going to propose, but as I look back at our tradition of humanistic history and the development of our ideas from the time of Socrates to the post modernist, one common thread between all these generations and in my belief the core idea that we can truly capitalize on and teach the world as a true and a unique humanistic value (other than reason of course) is "Moral Relativism

Moral relativism to us has always been an asset, why? Simply because one learns through moral relativism not to see the world as black and white but rather as shades of Gray. The big picture as some might call it is morally relativistic in nature and has never been a straight path. In addition, one might say that learning the art of moral relativism would enhance one’s survival skill as it gives you more options through learning that serious moral decisions do arise out of situations as ideas change from generation to generation.

To give you an example, the traditional view of human action is that whatever I do is good and is morally justifiable where other people's actions against or around me is not necessarily good, and cannot be morally justifiable. Now, to get rid of such a black and white assumption one has to understand that human decisions and actions are based on the occurrence of a series of events (an experience) that has an influence on that decision. A person’s understanding of the order or sequence of these events can affect his/her judgment on why others have made such a decision. Such knowledge is morally relativistic in nature as it demands a certain level of maturity and insight into other human beings feelings, intuitions, reason, etc. That appreciation of the human condition in my opinion can be acquired from a person’s understanding of moral relativism.

If you look at the Socratic dialogues and ask yourself why did Socrates waste his time asking all these simple questions from his audience even thou he knew the answers to most of them. Simple, to highlight that life in general and the true path to knowledge is not black and white, and that definitions or solutions for us should not depend on simplistic answers based on the common understanding of the day about morality. In conclusion, to finally stand by moral relativism and to bring it out of the closet is necessary for us as it is all too well embedded in the Humanists tradition. Do I hear an Amen to that?

REALLY, MR. PASCAL, YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS
REALLY, MR. PASCAL, YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS
(a "tongue-in-cheek" reply to Pascal)