Yesterday’s platform on the similarities and differences between Ethical Culture and Unitarian Universalism (audio recordings of recent platforms will be up on the podcast page soon) brought up again the issue of humanism, and more specifically the word “humanism.” I mentioned that although both groups have lots of self-described humanists in them, Ethical Culture overall embraces the term much more officially than does Unitarian Universalism, which tends to have periodic battles between humanist and other subgroups. Do you agree?

Some Ethical Culturists worry that using “humanist” in our official language–such as we recently added to our sign–implies that theists are not welcome here, while others believe that if our philosophy, practices, and majority of membership are humanist we might as well use the term, as it helps people understand better who we are. What do you think? Would you define yourself as an Ethical Humanist? Would you like the Ethical Society and/or our national movement to use the term humanist/ism more often or more officially? Or not?

I’m back from the American Ethical Union Lay Leadership Summer School, and again I had an incredible time helping folks from around the country learn more about Ethical Culture and sharpen their relationship-skills in order to build stronger Ethical Societies. And I sang, danced, ate great vegan food, and admired the gorgeous Appalachian scenery, too, although at an earlier hour than I normally like to admire things.

And not related to any of that, today Ethical Culture was mentioned in the Washington Post, in a very interesting commentary piece about a recent Obama/McCain event: “Now, can we have more of these events in Catholic churches, mosques, synagogues and ethical society meeting halls?” I wish we could. If Obama and McCain would like to have a dialog on ethics, the Ethical Society of St. Louis is open to ‘em. We even have some newly-skilled lay leaders who could help facilitate.

Greetings. I’m back from vacation but about to leave for 12 days to teach at the AEU Lay Leadership Summer School. I’ll be giving a platform about the experience Bill and I had at Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village (see last post) at the end of September. It was a fascinating place that brought up tons of eco-questions in me.

I avoided almost all newsmedia in July, and that was very satisfying. Not only was I not as anxious about things way beyond my control, but when I did finally (or accidentally) hear some news, I found I hadn’t really missed anything. So I am going to continue–not so much fasting, since being aware of what’s going on is essential to ethical living, but drastically cutting down on my news and infotainment consumption. Yes, I’m going to try to kick the NPR habit. I love and admire NPR, but I’m not so sure anymore that hearing people talk about the same three pieces of information from 15 different angles over multiple hours and days is really essential to my ethical growth. Perhaps the Friday News Round-Up, with follow-up research if they mention something new I feel is important to know more about, is enough.

How about you? Do you every feel like too much information is almost as bad to your motivation as none at all? Are you also an NPR addict who knows more about the politics of other countries than about what’s going on in your own city? Have you tried or succeeded in cutting down on infotainment in whatever form, just to lower your blood pressure? What did you do with all that new free time?

How do you try to find the Golden Mean between ignorance and information overload?

I have written several times on this blog recently about Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village, an off-the-grid growing community in NE Missouri that is dedicated to sustainable, community-oriented living. Well, Billy and I are going to Dancing Rabbit next week, as part of their visitor program. We will be camping out, eating with a vegan food co-op (yeah!), and learning all about life at Dancing Rabbit–how the community makes decisions, builds housing, grows food, creates energy . . . even how composting toilets work. I am quite excited to see how a truly sustainable community can work, and to meet the no-doubt passionate and interesting people who live in an eco-village.

I will be giving a Sunday platform address on our visit some time this fall to share our experience, impressions, and ethical lessons. Please let me know if you have specific questions about Dancing Rabbit that I can look into during our visit.

Dancing Rabbit does have internet access, as evident from their excellent web site, but this visit also begins my July vacation, and I am planning to take an electronic vacation as well as a physical one, so this blog will be on hiatus until sometime in August. Have a good summer, everyone, and try to take a break from technology yourself if possible. Your body and mind and probably your loved ones will thank you.

Check out the moving stories in the comments in the nytimes article on the same-sex marriages taking place in California now and hopefully forever. Some couples are getting married for the second or third time to the same person because of our medieval national marriage laws. But ethical evolution continues to advance: Congratulations to all you California couples!

Monday June 16 at 7pm, George Lakoff will be at the Central Library (Olive and 13th) to promote his new book, The Political Mind. I haven’t read it, but I have read his previous books Moral Politics and Don’t Think of an Elephant, and it sounds from interviews that this new book is more of the same, with additional findings of brains studies of liberals and conservatives.

Lakoff’s basic idea in these books is that liberals and conservatives have different ‘cognitive frames’ through which they experience the world, and that these frames determine the dangers that each group is more sensitive to and the kinds of solutions they prefer. Lakoff is a liberal, so his bias is toward the liberal frame and his hope is that liberals can use both frames to convince independents and perhaps even conservatives to adopt their policies. There’s a primer on Lakoff’s frames on Wikipedia.

I like Lakoff’s work because I believe that many of us live our lives based on metaphors and stories that we tell ourselves about the world, consciously or unconsciously. I would prefer that we all become more aware of these stories and better able to adapt them compassionately and realistically, rather than manipulate others using stories, but at least Lakoff brings some of these ideas to light.

I described Lakoff’s frames and how they relate to liberal and conservative religion in my platform address “The Religious Left and Civil Rights” (go to our podcasts page and scroll way down to Feb 2006 if you want to hear it).

General Motors is phasing out SUVs and Hummers and will be selling the electric Volt in the next two years. Hell is slowly freezing over, which might mean the Arctic may not melt–or may at least re-freeze after melting, as turning around global warming is probably not going to happen fast enough. But I’m growing hopeful. One of our major political parties has a nominee of color! If California becomes the first state to actually vote to give same-sex couples equal marriage rights this November, I will be more optimistic about the ethical evolution of humanity than I’ve been in a long time.

There are more and more stories popping up in the news about people making changes to try to avoid the high gas prices–trying to make do with less than one-car-per-person in a family, biking, motorcycling, even (gasp!) using public transportation. And people who have to drive a car are opting for smaller cars when they can.

I have to say, I think it’s good. I’m glad that gas is so expensive and I hope it stays this way. I know that it’s a true hardship for some people, and I hope that some way can be found to help them out (better and cheaper public transportation? Car/van sharing?). But for most of us, I suspect, it’s more a matter of inconvenience–or rather, of discovering that what we thought we couldn’t live without, we can, when costs become high enough.

“Lifestyle creep” is when we get used to new luxuries and start seeing them as necessities. Having grown up in the seventies, I can recall that families used to get along fine without SUVs, that people adjusted their schedules in order to carpool, share a car, or take public transportation to work. We’ve become so used to doing whatever we want whenever we want it, we start to believe it’s our right. We don’t really have a right to pollute the air and warm the globe, but that’s too abstract and long-term to motivate most of us. So these high gas prices are starting to do what our consciences could not–halt and even reverse transportation lifestyle creep. I also remember how this started to happen in the seventies, and then energy prices fell again and we threw our new energy-saving ways out the window. The best scenario would be if today’s high energy prices lead to a boom in clean energy, but until then, unlike those people who were praying for lower gas prices, I’m hoping they stay high and go higher. Better some pain and adjustment now than to continue in the unsustainable way we’ve been going.

Have you made any adjustments in your life because of pain at the pump? Are you considering making any changes? Or, what would it take for you? $5/gallon? More?

I don’t know if it’s all the colds I’ve had recently, or the fact that I’d rather be working in the garden, but I’m feeling blogged out. So instead of wracking my brain to write about something just for the sake of writing, I thought I’d ask you all–What topics would you like to see me address? What questions would you like me to tackle?

This goes for the blog and also for the upcoming platform address season of September ‘09 - May ‘10. (The Ethical Society has regular platform meetings all summer, but I only give one address between May and September. This summer we will be having guest speakers on ethics and the arts, on our relationship with the environment, and on other great topics.) I am now planning next season’s platform addresses, so if there’s a topic, issue, question, or whathaveyou that you’d like me to speak on, let me know.

I posted several weeks ago about Dancing Rabbit eco-village in Missouri. Turns out it was featured a few years ago in the TV show “30 Days,” which puts people in radically unfamiliar (for them) environments for 30 days to see what they learn from the experience (and to make money for the network by playing up the resulting drama, of course). To see the “30 Days” show in which two urban New Yorkers spend a month at Dancing Rabbit, click here. To read the perhaps even more interesting ‘What Really Happened’ report from Dancing Rabbit members, click here, and become (even) more skeptical of reality TV.

Still, it was fascinating to watch the adjustment of two average Americans to go from eco-footprints of 12.5 Earths to footprints of 1.2. I don’t know if the show does updates, but I’d like to know if they were able to make any permanent changes when they returned to their “normal” lives. Goodness knows, the definition of “normal” is going to have to change soon, whether we like it or not.