This morning the press reports that international aid is finally being accepted by the Myanmar government, following the devastating cyclone there several days ago. If you would like to donate to help the victims, charitynavigator.com has a page listing 4-star charities related to Myanmar aid–also see their page on tips for giving during a crisis.

Periodically members ask what the rules are about political speech at a religious organization such as the Ethical Society. In brief, religious organizations can take official positions on issues and lobby for those positions, provided that they do not spend a “significant” amount of their resources on political activities. (The IRS doesn’t specify what would be significant.) What religious organizations can NOT do is endorse or oppose specific candidates. The staff and clergy of religious organizations can endorse or oppose candidates as individuals, as long as they are clearly speaking only for themselves.

So it’s legal for the Ethical Society to support universal health care or a death penalty moratorium, for instance. It would not be legal for us to campaign for or against a specific candidate. Generally, the Society limits the positions we take on issues, as we seek to be a place where people of differing views can be comfortable and learn from each other. Our Ethical Action Committee takes positions more often, clearly stating that they are not speaking for the entire Society.

It’s often difficult to balance the desire of many members to have the Society take a stand on important issues, and the desire of other members to maintain a more neutral Society that can act as a place for dialog. My belief is that we should act to affirm and defend the worth and dignity of every person, such as by opposing torture and the death penalty, and by promoting equal marriage and universal health care. However, people can often disagree on the best method of affirming worth, and rights are often in conflict, so it is probably best that we are careful about too freely taking official stands.

What do you think? Would you like to see the Ethical Society take more official positions on ethical issues of our day? Less official positions? Different ones? Or are we keeping a good balance?

Yesterday I attended a lecture at Wash U by ethicist Peter Singer, who has long been a favorite of mine for works such as How Are We to Live? and The Ethics of What We Eat.

Yesterday’s lecture was a presentation of the ideas from his 1999 NY Times article “The Singer Solution to World Poverty.” I recommend you read it if you haven’t already. Singer’s solution, in a nutshell, is that those of us who can afford luxuries such as dining out, going to the movies, buying clothes when we already have clothes, etc., should stop buying luxuries and instead donate a lot more money to nonprofits that help the world’s poor. Singer himself donates 20% of his income to charity, according to accounts. (He more recently continues his arguments in the article “What Should a Billionaire Give–and What Should You?”)

Singer is a utilitarian philosopher, and so his primary focus is on logically proving the “rightness” of his solution. I am a pragmatist, however, and my focus is on motivating people’s actions. It doesn’t matter (I submit) what we theoretically agree is “right” to do if we’re still not going to do it. Singer admits that his arguments are unlikely to sway many people to do the right thing but believes that just knowing that we’re failing to do the right thing is a step in the right direction. I’m afraid such knowledge (assuming we’ll let ourselves agree with his logic, which is a big assumption) without action just hardens us, making us more cynical and let likely to act. I may be wrong about that, but clearly the important thing is not the logical argument but overcoming the emotional justifications that keep us swathed in luxuries while millions die preventable deaths everyday.

So here’s my question. What is it that motivates you to sacrifice for a greater good, however you define it? If you’ve given money and time to causes or inconvenienced yourself to help the environment, what was it that made you do that? Were you persuaded by a logical argument, moved by a story or image, inspired by an ideal? What keeps you from giving, or from giving more than you do? This is the information we need to make utilitarian ethics pragmatic reality.

Ethical Action Resolution of the American Ethical Union
Statement Reaffirming Its Opposition to Torture*
Adopted by Consensus by the 93rd Assembly of the AEU
Austin, Texas, April 2008

WHEREAS: Respect and reverence for human dignity is the foremost principle of Ethical Culture, and the use of torture is the most heinous violation of human dignity, and

WHEREAS: The American Ethical Union remains absolutely and unalterably opposed to the employment of torture by the military, intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, or other actors public or private, and

WHEREAS: The employment of torture in direct and willful violation of the United Nations Convention on Torture has become a component of American policy in its “War on terror,”

THEREFORE: The American Ethical Union calls upon the Congress and President of the United States :
· To immediately and unconditionally cease the practice of torture everywhere, including the transfer of prisoners to other jurisdictions where torture may be employed, and
· To allow unfettered access and inspection of any and all sites and facilities, and
· To avow without reservation to abide by its international agreements and honor the highest standards of human rights, and
· To openly recognize and apologize for all transgressions, to allow for due process, and, whenever and wherever possible, to make restitution to their victims.

FURTHERMORE: We call upon the Leaders and members of The American Ethical Union to inspire and advocate for the end of present American policy and the “torture debate” through Sunday addresses in accord with the National Leaders’ Council Paper in Support of the Resolution Against Torture.

* UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE (Article 1) The term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

This is long for a blog post, but in honor of Earth Day, here is the address I gave at the AEU Assembly last week:

For the platform address today you’ll be hearing from three leaders on the theme of this Assembly, “Where We Live.”

I’m going to speak from a personal and environmental point of view, primarily because I am a dreadfully literal-minded person. When I think about Where I Live, I see the big blue marble, the earth as seen from space, and I see my yellow house with its front porch and daffodils in St. Louis. And I think how those two images are related: how my practical, mundane choices of where and how I live, affect that big blue marble.

When Bill and I decided to buy a house over a year ago, we immediately faced some decisions that for us were clearly ethical decisions, but none of which were all that easy or clear.

The City of St. Louis is still struggling back from the mass flight to the suburbs of several decades ago—white and middle-class people fled the city, beginning a steep decline in the quality of the public schools, and now the lack of good public schools is one of the main barriers to many people who consider coming back to the city. Bill and I don’t have children, and we wanted to support the city by buying our house there. However, the Ethical Society of St. Louis, where I work, moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, so moving to the city would mean I could no longer easily walk to work, and we would have to buy a second car. We had to choose between helping a community or helping the environment.

We ultimately bought a house two blocks into the city limits, as close to the Society as possible. I can still walk to work, but it takes an hour, which is a little long even for a former New Yorker, so I bought a motor scooter that gets 90 mpg and I use that to commute, most of the time. It’s sometimes fun but often inconvenient, wet, and damn cold in the winter.

I love where I live; I love my life. I just wish it were not so full to the brim and spilling over with compromises. More examples: Environmentally an apartment is kinder to the environment than a stand-alone house, but when you have rock bands in your house a stand-alone building is kinder to your neighbors. A new house would have been much more energy-efficient than our 102-year-old place, but the energy to build anything new is considerable, so instead we are adding insulation and using as little heat or air conditioning as we can. Which also is often not very comfortable.

I wish that our choices were as seemingly pleasant and easy as in this hotel, where we can consider ourselves green for using the same sheets and towels for three days. Don’t get me wrong; the attempts of places like this hotel to be more environmentally sensitive are good, and I hope they make some guests think more about their choices. But as our speaker on global warming implied yesterday, we will not be able to turn around our catastrophic course without radical changes in our lifestyles. Much more radical than we are often willing to consider.

I get the impression that I am seen as being on the radical environmental fringe of our movement—I follow a vegan diet, I drive a scooter, I buy practically everything but my food second-hand, at the Society after I wash my hands in the bathroom I run with dripping hands to my office to dry them with a towel rather than use a paper towel.

And yet, it’s not enough. I go online and do those ecological footprint quizzes, and even when I cheat by claiming that I eat more organic food than I really do, I’m always still above 2 earths. It would take more than two earths to sustain humanity if everyone lived like me. And yet my lifestyle is considered too difficult by a majority of Ethical Culturists. What does that mean?

By the way, what’s killing my footprint stats is not what I thought, all the air travel that I do for Ethical Culture, though that doesn’t help. The biggest environmental sin is that Bill and I have a two-person household and the relative extravagance of 1100 square feet. Relative, of course, to the rest of the world; an 1100 square-foot-house is less than half the size of the average American home today.

So what can we do, if even the so-called environmentalists aren’t doing enough? Saying “it’s too hard” and waiting for technology to save us isn’t an option, practically or ethically. Because the nature of being a developing species on the earth, as we were talking about at the bioethics workshop yesterday, is that we will constantly be faced with new challenges that we will have to adapt to or give way for better-adaptive species (probably roaches or bacteria). That means that we must culture not only our ability to solve problems using science and technology, but our willingness to understand and respond to all our ethical relationships, be they with other species, ecosystems, or people literally on the other side of the earth. Because my footprint of 2.67 or whatever really means that I am using someone else’s resources. I believe that what we must develop is not so much technology as the ethical imagination to honor our relationship with that someone else whom we will likely never meet, and stop eating their food, using their energy, poisoning their atmosphere, and causing drought and flooding in their communities.

Every year at the Ethical Society of St. Louis I give a platform address to kick off pledge week, and this year I talked about our Ethical Currency, which is much more than money—it’s everything we have that we use to build a better future, money, time, energy, thought, our health, our relationships. It will take all our ethical currency to face our environmental crisis, because for us as Americans, the essential challenge is that we have to go back to Sunday School and learn how to share.

We will have to be much more generous with our ethical currency. We will have to buy fewer and probably more expensive things that are made sustainably and save energy; we will have to share things and living space and vehicles with more people; we will have to use our energy to walk more or do whatever we are able to do physically instead of plugging in a machine to do it for us; we will have to use our time to rebuild community and perhaps to wait for public transportation or to consolidate car trips; we will have to change. Change our diet, our everyday assumptions, our way of life.

People hate change. Yet we are also the most adaptable species on the planet. And religious liberals should by definition be the people most open to change. And religion doesn’t get any more liberal than Ethical Culture. So it better start with us. And it better start now.

BTW, I’ll be in Austin this week for the AEU annual assembly, at which among other things I hope we will be passing a statement against torture. I’ll report on the Assembly on my return. Have a good week.

Who says Missouri isn’t at the forefront of the environmental movement? Turns out we have one of the very few viable eco-villages in America. I ran across Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village online–they are a ten-year-old community in northeast Missouri in which people are trying to live sustainably, build naturally, and live cooperatively (30 people share 2 cars, for example, and there are several groups at DR that share meals regularly). Their web site includes some nice videos on life at DR and on some of their natural building techniques (earth plasters, strawbale, etc.). And they’ll soon have a B&B, which will give discounts if you get there by train, hybrid, or bicycle.

They have big plans to expand and are looking for eco-minded folks who would like to learn about eco-villages and perhaps join one. I only know what I’ve read/seen online, so far, but for radical environmentalists and communitarians, they seem . . . well, pretty normal. I look forward to the day when living in an eco-village is no weirder than moving to the ‘burbs. Actually, I look forward to the day when it’s much less weird.

For a long time I’ve daydreamed of living a more simple, natural, sustainable, cooperative lifestyle. Whenever I’ve looked into it, though, there seem to be so many hurdles, from finances to necessary skills to the all important cooperating- with- your- neighbors- without- ending- up- wanting- to- kill- each- other.

Could you imagine living like the folks at Dancing Rabbit? In some ways but not others? Does it seem like a nightmare life to you? Like a dreamlife you wish you could make work somehow?

While you’re doing your taxes, you might be dreaming about the check that many of us will soon be getting from the government, to help stimulate the economy. Here are a few things to consider before you spend it:

1. Although it won’t help with the “stimulus,” if you have debts, particularly credit-card debt, pay it off first, for your financial health and peace of mind.
2. If you don’t have an emergency fund or adequate retirement savings plan, put this money toward your future.
3. If this money is truly discretionary income for you, then feel free to spend it, and when you do, vote with your dollars for the world you want. Making charitable and political donations stimulates the economy as much as buying a flat-screen TV does. If you need new items around the house, or are just going to use the rebate to stock up on necessities, buy as Green as you can.

Wouldn’t it be great if these rebates stimulated not just “the economy,” but a more compassionate and environmental economy of the future?

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a new blog called “Civil Religion,” and I’ve been asked to be one of the participants. I’m glad to be speaking for Ethical Religion and religious humanism in another forum, and I hope you’ll all check out the blog. My first post has elicited questions from a commenter on what we base our ethical values. He makes the common mistake of assuming that humanists are moral relativists or hedonists. Clearly we need to be sharing our views on a wider stage, so please feel free to join the conversation there. But please, make your comments examples of good ethical relationship values, no matter the provocation.

Billy and I marked Earth Hour Saturday night with an hour of reading aloud by candlelight. Bill and I (mostly Bill) are reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the 1860 presidential election and its aftermath. Saturday night we got up to the part where Lincoln won his party’s nomination, on the third ballot. After a short period of disappointment, his main rival, William Seward, who had been the clear front-runner up to the last minute, undertook a speaking tour in support of Lincoln, for the good of the party. Not to give the end away, but after Lincoln’s election as president, Lincoln ended up appointing all of his major rivals to his cabinet.

Given the nasty turn the campaigning has taken lately, I hope that the current presidential candidates know their history, and will also put their party interests ahead of their own egos.