I sometimes feel a certain loneliness in being a humanist, because in everyday life I am constantly in contact with people who have difficulty understanding why I have rejected my Mormon heritage, which is "ordained by God," and "the only true church." They are afraid I will lose my chance for "Celestial Glory" throughout eternity. They also feel I have betrayed my heritage, which they believe to be a precious thing (and it is!). Sometimes, I am tempted to return to my former religious orientation, for I, as a human being, naturally have an inclination to "belong," to be part of the larger group. We humans are social animals.

But humanists are an exciting group to associate with, and I don't know of any of my non-humanist friends or relatives who have actually cut off their friendship with me.

It helps me to maintain perspective to remember the words of the English author, Somerset Maugham: "Most people think little: they accept their presence in the world. Blind slaves to the striving which is their mainspring. They are driven this way and that to satisfy their natural impulses, and when it dwindles, they go out like the light of a candle. Their lives are purely instinctive. It may be that theirs is the greater wisdom. But if your consciousness has so far developed that you find certain questions pressing upon you, and you think the old answers wrong, what are you going to do? What answers will you give? ...Aristotle has said that the end of human activity is right action, and Goethe that the secret of life is living. I suppose that Goethe means that man makes the most of his life when he arrives at self-realization; he had a small respect for life governed by passing whims and uncontrolled instincts. But the difficulty of self-realization, the bringing to the highest perfection every faculty of which you are possessed, so that you get from life all the pleasure, beauty, emotion and interest you can wring from it, is that the claims of other people constantly limit your activity ...." (The Summing Up, pg. 172)

Humans yearn for this self-realization, but often do not see clearly that their own behaviors actually impede its attainment. One can bring "to the highest perfection every faculty," only if he deals with the world as it is rather than as his superstitions have misled him to believe it is. Vardis Fisher commented on people's fascination with superstition: "The great mass of the people today resist with an angry outcry those truths which knowledge puts before them, for no reason but this: that the written words set down by primitive minds contradicts those truths..." (God or Caesar, pg. 83).

He ascribed much of the evil that occurs in human relationships to sham and pretense, which may take the form of claims to authority by divine authorization, hereditary superiority, power gained through the use of force, or other specious pretexts. (It may be of interest to us who live in Utah that Fisher was one of America's finest novelists before he died in 1968. He was born in Idaho, raised a Mormon, and later excommunicated. One of his novels was The Children of God, a story of the Mormon trek westward.

People are born with a tremendous curiosity to learn all about their environment as well as to discover the causes of things. Unfortunately, all societies, because of their felt need to condition the individual to conform to cultural expectations, succeed in stifling this natural curiosity to a large degree by the time the person has achieved adulthood. Our society does much of this kind of conditioning with the exception that one is free to exercise his intellectual freedom if he wishes. Many, however, choose not to.

The preference of superstition to rationality may also stem from the fact that the latter requires more effort than the acceptance of the simplistic answers of authoritarian religion, but I believe there is more involved than mere intellectual laziness. Probably many persons have never really discovered the satisfactions and joys of the search for truth by the use of reason.

Perhaps we humanists can help others to discover these satisfactions and joys. An excellent way to introduce people to the rational quest is to suggest they read Corliss Lamont's The Philosophy of Humanism, or Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. If they feel intimidated by the prospect of having to read a whole book, and would like a shorter introduction, I suggest the chapter entitled "Gods and Stars, Priests and Kings" in H.G. Wells' The Outline of History, which takes a humanistic approach to history. In 17 pages the chapter describes how present-day religious beliefs have evolved from primitive ones, and how early in history religious and political leaders discovered the usefulness of invoking the god(s) in getting the illiterate and superstitious masses to accept these leaders' authority, and adhere to moral laws.

While we are helping others, let's each of us not be afraid to walk our own personal path of self-realization through truth seeking, to cherish our own precious uniqueness, which sets us apart from the "herd," the "flock," or the "mass." There is comfort and security in just being like everyone else, but there is adventure in the quest for truth!

Maugham says it well, "It may seem arrogant that I have not had content to walk in the steps of other men much wiser than myself ... But much as we resemble one another we are none of us exactly alike ... I have sought to make a pattern of my life. This, I suppose, might be described as self-realization tempered by a lively sense of irony, making the best of a bad job." (Op cit, pg. 173)

--Dick Layton