“WHAT ARE WE AND WHO ARE WE”: SYNTHESIZING EDWARD O. WILSON AND HOWARD THURMAN FOR TODAY'S CHILDREN'S CRISIS IN IDENTITY

“WHAT ARE WE AND WHO ARE WE”: SYNTHESIZING EDWARD O. WILSON AND HOWARD THURMAN FOR TODAY'S CHILDREN'S CRISIS IN IDENTITY

03/02/13

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

Edward O. Wilson and Howard Thurman are two of the profoundest thinkers of this era.

Wilson is Honorary Curator in Entomology and University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University. He has received more than 100 awards for his research and writing, including the U. S. National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize and two Pulitzer Prizes in non-fiction. His most recent book is “The Social Conquest of Earth.”

Thurman, who was born in a segregated Florida town in 1900, was recognized as one of the 20^th century's foremost religious leaders at the time of his death in 1981. He taught and lectured at over 500 institutions around the world and wrote more than twenty books of spiritual discovery and inspiration. He served as dean of Rankin Chapel and professor of theology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was minister and co-founder of the interdenominational Fellowship Church in San Francisco—the first fully integrated church in America. Later, he was dean of Marsh Chapel and minister-at-large of Boston University.

In this essay, we attempt to synthesize two writings of these two masters, scientist and theologian, respectively, into an integrated whole with the focus upon children, “the least of these” in all societies.

“The task of understanding humanity is too important and too daunting to leave to the humanities. Their many branches, from philosophy to law to history and the creative arts, have described the particularities of human nature with genius and exquisite detail, back and forth in endless permutations. But they have not explained why we possess our special nature and not some other out of a vast number of conceivable possibilities. In that sense, the humanities have not accounted for a full understanding of our species’ existence.

“So, just what are we? The key to the great riddle lies in the circumstance and process that created our species. The human condition is a product of history, not just the six millenniums of civilization but very much further back, across hundreds of millenniums. The whole of it, biological and cultural evolution, in seamless unity, must be explored for an answer to the mystery. When thus viewed across its entire traverse, the history of humanity also becomes the key to learning how and why our species survived.”

(Excerpted from “The Riddle of the Human Species,” by Edward O. Wilson, NEW YORK TIMES, Opinionator” 2/24/2013 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/the-riddle-of-the-human-species/)

This powerful question, “So, just what are we?” has already been asked and answered profoundly by Howard Thurman in his essay, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” in his book FOR THE INWARD JOURNEY, p.146-151 (Friends United Meeting, Richmond, Indiana: 1984).

Beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7, Thurman asks two questions which he later answers: “Who am I? What am I?” The section of this sermon of Jesus Christ that he abstracted reads viz:

Matthew 6:25-33

King James Version (KJV)

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.



Thurman then states:

“The core of the analysis of Jesus is that man is a child of God, the God of life that sustains all of nature and guarantees all the intricacies of the life-process itself.” Thurman writes. “Jesus suggests that it is quite unreasonable to assume that God, whose creative activity is expressed even in such details as the hairs of a man's head, would exclude from his concern the life, the vital spirit, of the man himself. This idea--that God is mindful of the individual—is of tremendous import in dealing with fear as a disease. In this world the socially disadvantaged man is constantly given a negative answer to the most important personal questions upon which mental health depends: 'Who am I? What am I?'

“The first question has to do with a basic self-estimate, a profound sense of belonging, of counting. If a man feels that he does not belong in the way in which it is perfectly normal for other people to belong, then he develops a deep sense of insecurity. When this happens to a person, it provides the basic material for what the psychologist calls the inferiority complex. It is quite possible for a person to have no personal sense of inferiority as such, but at the same time to be dogged by a sense of social inferiority. The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness and power. I have seen it happen again and again.”

As though answering, Edward O. Wilson says:

“A majority of people prefer to interpret history as the unfolding of a supernatural design, to whose author we owe obedience. But that comforting interpretation has grown less supportable as knowledge of the real world has expanded. Scientific knowledge (measured by numbers of scientists and scientific journals) in particular has been doubling every 10 to 20 years for over a century. In traditional explanations of the past, religious creation stories have been blended with the humanities to attribute meaning to our species’s existence. It is time to consider what science might give to the humanities and the humanities to science in a common search for a more solidly grounded answer to the great riddle.”

This “common search” between the humanities and science “for a more solidly grounded answer to the great riddle,” is a clarion call for synthesis; for the closing of ranks between the esoteric and the empirical, between science and religion, between philosophy and arts and crafts; between mundane and majestic. Wilson's call for common search is lain bare in Howard Thurman's grandmother's testimony.

Thurman writes:

“When I was a youngster, this was drilled into me by my grandmother. The idea was given to her by a certain slave minister, who, on occasion, held secret religious meetings with his fellow slaves. How everything in me quivered with the pulsing tremor of raw energy when, in her recital, she would come to the triumphant climax of the minister: 'You--you are not niggers. You—you are not slaves. You are God's children.' This established for them the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction. This alone is not enough, but without it, nothing else is of value. The first task is to get the self immunized against the most radical results of the threat of violence. When this is accomplished, relaxation takes the place of the churning fear. The individual now feels that he counts, that he belongs. He senses the confirmation of his roots, and even death becomes a little thing.

“All leaders of men have recognized the significance of this need for a sense of belonging among those who feel themselves disadvantaged. Several years ago I was talking to a young German woman who had escaped from the Nazis; first to Holland, then to France, England, and finally to America. She described for me the powerful magnet that Hitler was for German youth. The youth had lost their sense of belonging. They did not count; there was no hope for their marginal egos. According to my friend, Hitler told them: 'No one loves you—I love you; no one will give you work—I will give you work; no on wants you—I want you.' And when they saw the sunlight in his eyes, they dropped their tools and followed him. He stabilized the ego of the German youth, and put it within their power to overcome their sense of inferiority. It is true that in the hands of a man like Hitler, power is exploited and turned to ends which make for havoc and misery; but this should not cause us to ignore the basic soundness of the theory upon which he operated.

“A man's conviction that he is God's child automatically tends to shift the basis of his relationship with all his fellows. He recognizes at once that to fear a man, whatever may be that man's power over him, is a basic denial of the integrity of his very life. It lifts that mere man to a place of preeminence that belongs to God and to God alone. He who fears is literally delivered to destruction. To the child of God, a scale of values becomes available by which men are measured and their true significance determined. Even the threat of violence, with the possibility of death that it carries, is recognized for what it is—merely the threat of violence with a death potential. Such a man recognizes that death cannot possibly be the worst thing in the world. There are some things that are worse than death. To deny one's own integrity of personality in the presence of the human challenge is one of those things. 'Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.' says Jesus.”

Edward O. Wilson's rejoinder is equally elegant:

“The existence of competition and conflict, the latter often violent, has been a hallmark of societies as far back as archaeological evidence is able to offer. These and other traits we call human nature are so deeply resident in our emotions and habits of thought as to seem just part of some greater nature, like the air we all breathe, and the molecular machinery that drives all of life. But they are not. Instead, they are among the idiosyncratic hereditary traits that define our species.

“The major features of the biological origins of our species are coming into focus, and with this clarification the potential of a more fruitful contact between science and the humanities. The convergence between these two great branches of learning will matter hugely when enough people have thought it through. On the science side, genetics, the brain sciences, evolutionary biology, and paleontology will be seen in a different light. Students will be taught prehistory as well as conventional history, the whole presented as the living world’s greatest epic.

“We will also, I believe, take a more serious look at our place in nature. Exalted we are indeed, risen to be the mind of the biosphere without a doubt, our spirits capable of awe and ever more breathtaking leaps of imagination. But we are still part of earth’s fauna and flora. We are bound to it by emotion, physiology, and not least, deep history. It is dangerous to think of this planet as a way station to a better world, or continue to convert it into a literal, human-engineered spaceship. Contrary to general opinion, demons and gods do not vie for our allegiance. We are self-made, independent, alone and fragile. Self-understanding is what counts for long-term survival, both for individuals and for the species.”

This branch tendered by science, through Edward O. Wilson, to the humanities, of which spirituality/philosophy/religion are, palpably, a seminal part, is as graciously and humbly “accepted,” as it is anticipated, by Howard Thurman. Whether that branch be olive or laurel or some other is immaterial. Its tender represents a long-awaited reconciliation, reunification, of the human personality so long at loggerheads within itself, cognitively and cosmologically. Today's children, all of them, are the beneficiaries of this epistemological rapprochement.

Thurman's peroration says:

“But the child of the disinherited is likely to live a heavy life. A ceiling is placed upon his dreaming by the counsel of despair coming from his elders, whom experience has taught to expect little and to hope for less. If, on the other hand, the elders understand in their own experiences and lives the tremendous insight of Jesus, it is possible for them to share their enthusiasm with their children. This is the qualitative overtone springing from the depths of religious insight, and it is contagious. It will put into the hands of the child the key for unlocking the door of his hopes. It must never be forgotten that humans can be conditioned for the positive as well as the negative. A great and central assurance will cause parents to condition their children to high endeavor and great aspiring, and these in turn will put the child out of the immediate, clawing reaches of the tense or sustained negation of his environment. I have seen it happen. In communities that were completely barren, with no apparent growing edge, without any point to provide light for the disadvantaged, I have seen children grow up without fear, with quiet dignity and such high purpose that the mark they set for themselves has even been transcended.

“The charge that such thinking is merely rationalizing cannot be made with easy or accepted grace by the man of basic advantage. It ill behooves the man who is not forced to live in a ghetto to tell those who must how to transcend its limitations. The awareness that a man is a child of God, who is at one and the same time the God of life, creates a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy.

“Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly survive. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene. Here we reach the high water market of prophetic religion, and it is of the essence of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course God cares for the grass of the field, which lives a day and is no more, or the sparrow that falls unnoticed by the wayside. He also holds the stars in their appointed places, leaves his mark in every living thing. And he cares for me! To be assured of this becomes the answer to the threat of violence—yea, to violence itself. To the degree that a man knows this, he is unconquerable from within and without.”

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