Humanism Versus Mystrikism
4. Humanist Priorities
It may be objected that, nonetheless, the little time and resources that Humanist organizations spend on advocating for animal rights and environmental preservation indicates a moral bias against non-human sentients and ecological integrity. I don't think this criticism is fair as it ignores the unique advocacy of Humanist and other secular groups for the rights of the non-religious and against egregious religious repression.
Consider the breadth of issues that Humanist organizations tackle in this space of religious political overreach and outright persecution. In many countries, humanists, atheists and apostates are being imprisoned and murdered for their beliefs, along with gays and transgender folk. The rise of white Christian nationalism in the U.S. and Russia is, piece by piece, leading to the dismantling of the separation of church and state. In other countries, less overt attacks on secular democracy see substantial public funds being redirected towards indoctrinating children in public schools and subsidising rich private religious schools. Councils and parliaments are routinely opened with a religious prayer. Free speech is severely curtailed with blasphemy laws used to settle personal grievances. Religious institutions receive massive tax breaks and are freed from governance requirements, exemptions not available to non-religious institutions.
Women and girls are especially discriminated against, being denied education, economic independence and freedom of movement in the name of religion. The denial of their reproductive rights (sex education, contraception, abortion) on the basis of religious strictures leads to unwanted pregnancies, social disadvantage and, in all too many cases, death from late and botched abortions. Add to that the psychologically damaging effects of purity culture, being taught to fear eternal punishment in hell and the forced isolation from one's family after leaving one's religion.
On all of these crucial issues, Humanist organizations conduct research to gather the facts and run campaigns through public awareness and political lobbying. Despite McDonald's assertion that his world view 'respectfully enhances, complements, and expands upon the scope of humanism' [McDonald 2023], these are not issues that I see his Mystriks addressing in any meaningful and practical way. In addition, Humanist organizations do an enormous amount in creating community and a sense of belonging for the growing number of non-religious. They conduct non-religious humanist marriage and funeral ceremonies, and provide a safe space and counselling for those psychologically and physically damaged by religion. Where are McDonald's Mystriks providing these services that would not otherwise be delivered?
For the two causes that McDonald rightly cares about, there are many dedicated groups with the necessary expertise and resources already advocating for non-human sentients and the environment. If Humanist and other freethinker groups did not advocate for the non-religious in all of those areas I mention, no other group would pick up the tab. McDonald's Mystrik community is not doing this valuable work in providing safe community to the ex-religious, saving the lives and livelihoods of freethinkers and apostates, and protecting political and social freedoms. In fact, Humanist groups are doing considerably more already campaigning against animal cruelty and environmental degradation compared with the actions of the Mystrik community. And from my experience of Humanist groups over many years, members of Humanist societies are much more likely to be environmental campaigners, vegetarians and vegans compared with the general population.
In addition, I haven't seen McDonald complaining about the lack of priority given to non-human animals and the environment by the many other social justice activist groups to which people subscribe. The advocates of feminism and anti-racism, for example, also fall well short of McDonald's ideal by displaying 'a consistent prioritisation of human well-being and progress over non-human concerns'. Activist groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are also 'focused on human rights and autonomy, with no significant recognition of other sentient life'. Why isn't he writing 'A Friendly Critique' for each of these organizations? I mean, the names of these activist groups belie a scope of moral concern that is even more restrictive than that supposedly of 'humanism' (i.e., extending, as they do, to only 'women' and 'colored people').
To that criticism, it could be objected that feminism and anti-racism are not world views, as is humanism. These groups make no claim to an all-encompassing ethic, set up as they are explicitly to tackle a single issue, McDonald might say. However, there are world views that I could have brought up to highlight McDonald's inconsistency here. Consider, for example, these world views: Marxism, Objectivism (Ayn Rand), Anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner), Existentialism (Sartre), Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The movements representing these world views campaign for the interests of non-human sentients to an even less extent compared with that of humanism. I haven't seen McDonald pick out any of these movements for special attention showing how they must do better. Perhaps it is because they don't have 'human' in their name, making them an easy target for accusations of 'anthropocentrism'.
Even if McDonald were consistent in his criticism of other world views, why stop at critiquing world views only? The leaders and members of feminist and anti-racist activist groups also subscribe to a world view that on McDonald's terms deserve criticism for their narrow focus. And for those leaders and members who do not hold a world view, they ought to be, nonetheless, deserving of McDonald's criticism for not giving sufficient attention to non-human animals and the environment in their activism.
Of course, all of this criticism of other activist groups is nonsense as it falsely assumes that an activist can only subscribe to one and only one activist group or ideology. But people are multi-dimensional. For example, I am a humanist and a sentientist and a feminist and an anti-racist, all at the same time. To constrain each of the activist groups to which we belong to give equal or almost equal priority to non-human sentients and the environment is to emasculate each group's strategic resources and its impact. Each group, to be effective in changing an unjust practice, must develop an expertise in and a strategic focus on that particular injustice, be it animal cruelty, patriarchy, worker exploitation, the persecution of the non-religious or global warming.
What this means is that given a movement's particular interests, skills and resources, it is most likely to affect real, positive change if it primarily focuses on those themes and concerns and not others. Humanist organizations share this necessary strategic focusing of efforts with Marxists, feminists, anti-racists, environmentalists and animal activists (hence my analogy). If, for example, feminist and anti-racist movements had chosen to focus more on other major wrongs of the world, they would not have made the global impacts in righting the injustices and sufferings they did focus on. An organization that prioritizes all major injustices prioritizes none.
Cognizant of this necessary strategic focus at the global level, Humanists International [2019b] put it like this:
As an organization, Humanists International has a strategic focus on a range of human rights priorities and issues based on humanist values, which are promoted though our advocacy work. They are issues which unite humanists, or on which humanists have a specific and unique input, issues which represent trends across international boundaries, or concerns that are sometimes overlooked or underrepresented on the international stage.
Humanists UK [2023e] also make clear their campaign priorities based on specific secularist concerns:
We devote much of our time to campaigning and lobbying on behalf of the non-religious as well as for freedom of religion, belief, speech, thought, and expression more generally. We work for an open society and a secular state with no religious privilege or discrimination based on religion or belief.
I suggest much of the criticism around humanism and Humanist organizations being 'human-centric' arises through inattention to this distinction between an organization's philosophical commitments and its social and political realities. The term 'centric' can apply to either of these two facets, resulting in equivocation as a criticism of one facet is assumed to apply to the other. If all a critic means is that Humanist campaigns, by and large, centre on issues of human injustice and suffering, then, as I've tried to show, that does not entail that humanism per se devalues non-human life or that it is 'human-centric'. This risk of overstatement also applies to the charge of 'anthropocentrism'. This derogatory term is open to the same kind of equivocation.
