President Obama Brings Humanism Back to the White House
By Robert Waddell, February 8, 2009
After the historic and jubilant election and inauguration Barack Obama, many Americans now look on their futures with much more hope and possibility than in the last accursed, gloomy 8 years under George W. Bush. An Obama presidency has already begun to roll back Bush polices that extinguished human and civil rights at home and abroad. Even Bush’s Republican base knew that the 43rd President was in part responsible for the current crushing economy that President Obama must now resolve. Bush’s presidency has left a stifled and stagnant feeling in the air and Americans now ask ‘when will the train start moving again?’
 The world saw and heard on January 20th that a President pledges to protect and defend the Constitution, a promise George W. Bush broke many times over in the name of national security and defending the Republic. (In Vietnam, the saying was “we have to burn the village in order to save it.”) Bush’s presidency cared more about exporting democracy than preserving it at home.
Besides dealing with two wars and the economy, President Obama brings back a sense of trust and integrity to the office of the Presidency. Obama brings Humanity and Humanism. But what is Humanism? According to Webster’s dictionary, humanism is “any system of thought or action based on the interests and ideals of humanity,” or “the quality of being human.”
To be sure, President Obama, I cross my fingers, has the interests of the people, which include – children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, not only the middle class. Obama pledged to be President to all Americans even though the needs of Americans is at cross purposes with the needs of other Americans, the invisible class lines of have and have nots. Obama will be faced with temptations and the world will see what Obama is made of when he faces down any huge crisis.
Still, Obama brings back a sense of humanity to the job of the President. He can admit in public that he made mistakes. So, what is humanism?
There’s Secular Humanism, Religious Humanism and Literary Humanism but Frederick Edwords, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association wrote in an essay “What is Humanism?” that “…because authors and speakers often don’t clarify which meaning they intend, those trying to explain humanism can easily become a source of confusion.”
This reporter’s day job is as a professor at the only Puerto Rican college on the U.S. mainland where I teach English among other things. This college has manuals on terms and concepts of the institution’s mission. And so many professors and the administration speak of humanism glibly but truly defines or written down its meaning. When something is defined without definition than the meaning and purpose of the word changes and actions associated with the idea changes from one day to the next. Or, to put it another way, if you can’t pin it down, it’s all a bunch of smoke, hot air and fluffy parlor tricks. This is the perfect bacterial breeding ground for Hypocrisy.
Baraka Obama comes down in the middle of religious and secular humanism. Edwords wrote, “Because both Religious and Secular Humanism are identified so closely with cultural humanism, they readily embrace modern science, democratic principals, human rights, and free inquiry.”
For example, and I say this all with tongue in cheek, Humanism, I realized yesterday is all bodily functions: ingestion, digestion, defecation, urination, bleeding. All that goes in and all that goes out: this is human.
However, today I’ve changed my mind --- I didn’t really define humanism so I can change. Humanism is Death. All people are born, get sick, get old and die. All people, as the Dalai Lama has written, want to be happy and avoid suffering. But Death comes to us all so death truly defines our humanity.
But now, I’ve changed my mind again, Humanism is money. Anything we can say or do to get it, keep it, use it, improve our lives and have more than the next guy – this is Humanism. In America, In God We Trust is printed on all of our money so everything financial is next to Godly so if the economy is bad, the Deity might be suffering some serious heart palpitations. No matter what we do or say, money is king, so who cares what used car salesman tricks are used on students or on the voting public: money is God and we’re entitled to get ours, no matter what the cost. Darwin and Americanism have always been closely related.
In America, Humanism should be living up to the principals of Democracy--- the Democrats have been saying this for years--- and Freedom as set forth in the Constitution. Humanists that one could connect with Barack Obama in a philosophical and Humanistic way could include Margaret Sanger, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, Gloria Steinem and A. Phillip Randolph, just to name a few.
Even if there is no clear written, or perhaps unwritten, statement, it is best that any President strives towards the goal of Humanism, even if he’s just going through the motions of bodily functions, greed, fame all leading to death. Trying should be better than nothing or just ignoring the concept of Humanism. Even if it’s not written down, it’s embalmed on our hearts, something we try to do, like working hard for a home run in a baseball game, but it’s not written down anywhere that you will hit one out of the park. For now, the Humanism I’ll settle for lies with the Constitution and President Barack Obama and the next Hopeful 4 to 8 years.
Humanism might not be written down (scribbled on a cocktail napkin, maybe, as it relates to the Presidency) but the real principals of Humanism, we hope, are encased in the heart and mind of the 44th man and his Humanistic team at Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House in Washington, D.C. where the 21st Century has finally begun.
This story was developed through the Education Beat Writing Fellowship at the New York Community Alliance. |
