Winston E. Langley
March 28, 2023
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Human beings need an expanding consciousness of our commonalities to help in the forging of the global solidarity and unity needed to tackle, successfully, the challenges. All of the great religions claim that each human being has the spiritual capacity for transcendence–meaning we can go beyond what may been seen, initially, as a limitation. This means the apparent permanence of war, for instance, is not so; neither is it so, in respect of the social inequality we have faced. Indeed, our links to some transcendent god who authored the coming into being and the sustenance of the universe, or some universal law, or nature, as a whole, informs us that there is a larger version of the self we bear–a self which cannot be protected, be secure, and peaceful, if others are not. This is why, in conversation with the “stranger” we find so much of ourselves expressed, through him, her, or it. And how can we hate the “stranger” and love our selves, individually and nationally, if that stranger is part of ourselves? And we can decipher “the secrets” of nature. Those secrets exist in relationships to humankind, or we would not have had the capacity to understand them.
The idea that nature (including humans) is a text, as all the great religions contend, a sacred text with instructions for us, suggests that we should treat the environment as a sacred heritage; and we certainly do not want to act in a manner that may be destructive of the common body, which cannot function without the parts, as we are told by Hinduism. The harmony about which Taoism and Confucianism instructs us reinforces the idea.
And what of the passion–and the likely ensuing joy–that ensues from the individual and common exercise of our spiritualty, rather than becoming and remaining the passive recipients (consumers) of externally fed creations for the material gain of others–and even of oneself? This is the path of secular culture, of modernism, that focuses more on supposed differences than on actual commonalities, on societies, rather than communities, on rights without responsibilities.
The health of the social (public) body and natural (PLSS) body is something about which that all the great religions speak to us. Non-human nature is not only the source of our food (and proper dieting is among the first steps to individual and public health), but the origin of our first medicines, pharmacies, and medical schools. It has been and will likely remain our primary healer, assuming we allow our imagination and the instruction we receive from it to develop fully.
Everyone of these religions speaks to the issue of equality (the manipulation of the caste system, contrary to the original intents of Hinduism, notwithstanding), and Buddhism, in addition, speaks to us about compassion; Christianity about love; Judaism about righteous conduct; Islam of broad obligations to the community beyond the nation-state; and Taoism-Confucianism of responsibilities to all under heaven.
If the values espoused by these religions were made a greater part of our social and political discourse, and if the Parliament of World Religions (an interfaith organization founded in 1893 to promote understanding among the world’s religious and spiritual communities) were become a more central part of public life, we could have a less inactive attitude toward our collective future. Indeed, a more empowered public would be working toward reshaping our value systems, such as our general worship of war and the war culture, acquiescence in inequality, and ad hoc responses to the on-going degradation of our human and non-human environment. The trafficking in ethnic, racial, religious hatreds could be contained, if not eliminated; and the celebration of our diversity within a broader unity, truly expressed.
The above-mentioned values and principles of the identified religions, over centuries, have not only been sidelined by modernism, but degraded by many so-called religious leaders, who have sought to reduce religion to instruments of power-sharing, power-overcoming, and of power-seeking. Some of the same leaders, in pursuit of “unexamined relevance,” have also compromised the values. Brining those values back into the public square is needed.
Winston E. Langley is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations and Senior Fellow at the McCormack Graduate School for Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). He served as Provost and Vice Chancellor for academic affairs for almost a decade at UMB. His academic interests are broad and include models of global order, human rights, nuclear weapons proliferation, and the role of film and literature social and political change. He has published widely, with recent publications including “War Between US and China” and “Human Rights in Turkey.” He holds degrees in biology, diplomatic history, law, and political science and international relations.
