Strictly speaking the following chapters are concerned with the behaviour of humans rather than the question of the existence or non-existence of a god. But we cannot discuss the notion of god and therefore religion, without looking at human behaviour. I wish to emphasise the difference between people to people relationships and a relationship between a person and a god. They are of course very different. The first is a social relationship in character and fact involving only humans. The second is a personal religious idea which need have no vital connection with anyone other than the worshipper.

In recent decades there has occurred the notion that the essence of Christianity is love, peace, justice and good works. Many believe that those qualities are dependent on religious faith. Those ethical concepts are people to people relationships, and are therefore social in quality, they are not people to god or belief relationships at all. There is of course no reason why a person cannot engage in the pursuit of both religious and social accord. The religious belief could even assist in doing so. So let us recognise that human beings are naturally social beings. We value the trust and integrity of fellow human beings most highly.

Our social nature is a very basic human quality, without which humankind could never have become a community. We give these qualities the name of humanism.

Humanism focuses on the instinctive qualities and relationships of human beings and not on mystical belief. It is known as the science of people and society. Humanism declares the potential of human beings; that they are complete within themselves and can achieve the highest excellence of their personal potential. Humanism would agree with Confucian philosophy that man is born innately good, and that he becomes less than good because of the pressure and evil environment to which he is subjected. The French philosopher Rousseau confirmed Confu-cian thinking when he said "Nature has made man happy and good but society depraves him and makes him miserable."

Important advances have been made during the last hundred years in understanding the nature of our own species. We have begun to examine the person as a whole entity and investigate the causes of human behaviour.

Humanism is not something newly dreamed up by philosophers. Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Jesus and many others throughout the ages have been humanists. Humanism has no fixed parameters. For our purpose, we will define it as an attitude of enlightened concern for the welfare of all human beings. The professor of psychology who was past president of the American Psychological Society, Dr. Abraham H. Maslow, had this to say in his book "Toward a Psychology of Being."

"I must confess that I have come to think of this humanist trend in psychology as a revolution in the truest, oldest sense of the word—.new ways of perceiving and thinking, new images of man and of society, new conceptions of ethics and of values, new directions in which to move....For any man of goodwill, any pro-life man, there is work to be done here, effective, virtuous, satisfying work which can give rich meaning to one's own life and to others."

Maslow paints a broad challenging picture which is being taken up by an increasing number of intelligent people of goodwill. Humanism covers a wide field; indeed, it is the study of human behaviour by humans and may rightly include our habitat and environment.

Christianity views people as sinful, fallen creatures who will remain unworthy until they seek the help of a righteous god. The Bible presents a punishment and reward system of controlling human behaviour, sometimes called the stick and carrot method. It threatens punishment for disobedience and promises a reward in the next world for obedience. As a philosophy, the Christian religion has sought to herd human beings into a narrow compliance to an ancient myth. It makes demands but does not allow free growth. Jesus is supposed to have said "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16:16 ). I would argue that these words are out of character, and are not the words of Jesus. They were recorded as being spoken by him after his crucifixion. Nevertheless, this absolute, unbending and limiting dogma runs right through the New Testament. There is no freedom or tolerance for genuine doubt or disagreement. The Christian message tries to use fear to persuade people to believe in its doctrine.

In contrast to the narrow Christian theology, humanism is able to look deeply into the causes and effects of human behaviour in a scientific way. It first recognises the social drives and needs of the human being. Indeed, a purely solitary human is almost a contradiction of terms. A basic human quality is our constant need for society; our conscious co-operation with other humans. This need I have called 'the social imperative', we all possess it in good measure.

The other side of our social imperative is our grinding self interest, which uses reciprocity as a means of self gain. We will digress for a while to look at self interest by including two or three pages from my previous book " Liberty to Live". It will illustrate how all of us are egocentric beings and never do anything for absolutely nothing.

"Let us ask why society complies with the universal law of reciprocity, what do we want from it? Could it be that the only reason we give is to receive something else in exchange. That none of us ever does anything for nothing.

This is a subject which sometimes stirs people up like few other ideas. We have been so indoctrinated with the idea of loving our fellow being but not ourselves, that we can feel very emotional toward the idea that there could be an ulterior motive behind our actions.

We do have innate drives relating to the survival of our species. One of these is to protect our personal dignity, another is a mother's response to her infant child. Even in these innate drives, there is a strong element of self interest. The following story shows what I mean but it also shows mother love in one of its truest and purest forms.

Years ago, before my boat builder introduced improved methods, he used to cast the lead keels for new boats in the factory yard. An old cast iron bath became a crucible and would be filled with ingots of lead. Around this he would stack and burn the offcuts of wood from the factory. Through a fitting in the bath he would run the molten lead into a prepared mould in the ground. There might be two or three tons of lead in the bath before it was released.

It was quite a spectacular occasion, the intense fire, the manipulation of the lead, the birth of a new keel. On this occasion the boatbuilder's wife and two small sons were watching the operation. Suddenly a large crack appeared in the old cast iron bath. Molten lead, like a river, flowed in two streams one each side and then completely surrounded one of their small sons.

Seeing what had happened, the mother ran through the molten lead to snatch the boy to safety, the result was very serious and painful burns to her own feet which required hospital care. A very brave and loving mother indeed she was. Did she think of herself? No! she thought of her child and only of him.

But she did not do it for nothing. She ran through that lead to save her child from suffering. To preserve her own love relationship with her son. She did not think about it but she did have a self interest. She was preserving and protecting something very dear to herself.

I may ask myself, "why did my wife and I decide to share our lives?" Because we each wanted something from the other, including a home, companionship and acceptance. Why did you choose your husband; because you thought he would be a good provider for you and your children; because you could dominate him; because you needed someone to mother, or simply because he excited you and made you feel good, or one or more of many other reasons? One thing is certain, you did it for private gain of some kind; most likely some gain other than material, but personal gain nevertheless. Let us acknowledge that we are egocentric beings. We each think primarily of ourselves. There is always a reason why we do something. None of us ever does something for nothing."

Our need for social intercourse and our egocentrism could seem to be opposing qualities which could lead to social destruction. Indeed, without a measure of understanding, that can and does happen. When wars start, dialogue ceases. What ethical humanism seeks to do is to understand the needs of the individual and to suggest how our social imperative and our unique individual needs can co-operate to strengthen each other rather than create conflict.

Violence is a problem we need to look at. The use of violent force against persons and society is evident on all sides. We see powerful people subjugating the weak. People using others for personal advantage. We see violence being meted out to small children. War is community violence. Is all this violence and discord also a human imperative like our social imperative; something natural we cannot avoid?

The New Zealand Maori sought revenge (utu) for personal and tribal insults. They robbed their neighbouring tribes and fought hand to hand battles with their enemies. Another community, not far away on the Chatham Islands , people of the same Polynesian stock and similar language, had outlawed violent physical conflict. If violence is a human behavioural imperative, how could the Moriori have established a community where physical violence was outlawed? When they were invaded by a warlike tribe, they had no weapons of war and literally did not know how to defend themselves against their murderous cousins.

Violence is not a behavioural imperative in the same way that our social need is a human imperative. We are all capable of violence but we only use it when there is a hope of success or when there is an opportunity or advantage to do so. Violence is not an unavoidable necessity, we can control it. It is taught to us from early childhood as an easy alternative to reason. It is a breakdown of intelligent communication.

Violence is caused by a lack of enough respect for other human beings. The cure of disrespect of others is self respect. Self esteem tends to defuse the early training and desire for violence against others. We can find humanistic answers to our social problems.

Some Comments

The Christian religion tells us not to be angry, lie, hate, or steal. In other words it tells us to repress the desire and then makes a threat of punishment if we do not obey. It does not deal with the problem. Humanism says that repressed emotion is harmful to us and may result in poor behaviour. It recognises that poor behaviour may be the result of a hidden emotional problem or lack of education or a deprivation. It calls for information by enquiring why one is angry, tells lies, hates or steals and then seeks to deal with the problem. It seeks to provide education or adjustments to cure the cause of the difficulty. It does not use fear or threaten a stick or offer a carrot of life in the next world. Given enough opportunity and understanding, we seldom need threats to make us decide. The most powerful and permanent decisions we make come from our own choices. We do not give of our best effort when we are compelled to do something we have not chosen to do.

There is a profound difference between religious thought and humanism. The Christian religion needs fear to support its demands. Humanism suggests that given adequate opportunity healthy people prefer socially acceptable behaviour to anti-social behaviour. The Christian religion as presented in the Bible, focuses on death, self denial, sin and punishment in an after-world for evil deeds, all negative concepts. Humanism focuses on personal growth, self awareness, personal potential, dignity and self respect. Every person is equally a person of worth. Religion claims to offer rewards for the believer in the next life, humanism offers rewards in this life for both the self and society.

Some of the emotions which hinder acceptable behaviour are related to our egocentrism, our greed, jealousy or a desire to dominate, get even or gain power. These are also natural responses to situations. Running with these powerful feelings is a fear of being thought weak, stupid or afraid, or some other personal fear which we seldom like to share, even a fear of what the neighbours or our peers may think. This is where understanding and healing needs to take place. There is a deep need within each one of us which religion has taught us to ignore but which modern humanism and psychology emphasises. One of the most important needs is to learn self respect. Unless we can learn to love and respect ourselves, there is not much chance that we will be able to love or respect others in society.

We have seen how the ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism viewed the continual struggle between good and evil and sought to encourage the former and discourage the latter. Confucius drew a comparison between the power of virtue and the power of absolute force. He regarded absolute force as the antithesis of the force of personal example, justice, wisdom and dignity. He preached the advantage of what we would now call a humanistic attitude toward individuals and society.

The problem of good and evil or the positive and negative sides of human nature is still with us. The Christian religion has certainly not cured the problem by imposing its absolute dogma of retribution for error. On the one side we have our natural social bias, which involves human contact, co-operation, compassion, an inner sense of justice, friendship and unity. On the other hand, there is a personal egocentric drive to be at least equal with our fellows in dignity, social standing and perhaps possessions. The poor and depressed may seem to tolerate a disparity of wealth and privilege; they have no option. It seems to me that when we are not accepted by society as persons of equal worth, our survival instincts can drive any one of us to anti-social acts in an attempt to redress the imbalance.

The religion of the Bible devalues life in this world in favour of the notion of a life after death. It tends not to acknowledge the innate social qualities found in all of us. Rather it tends to denigrate the natural human as a sinner in need of redemption by faith in, and dependency on a force outside the self. The limited and rigidly defined ethics as presented in the Bible tend to stifle our thoughts and feelings. If we restrict ourselves to measuring the worth of our experience by fixed notions of dogmatic religious thought, we limit our personal growth. If we disregard people to people relationships and our own in-built sense of rightness, and apply an outside dogma, we act as less than socialised human beings. We do damage to our psyche when we place the supposed truth of an absolute dogma ahead of human values and experience.

Perhaps that is one reason why so many people trust neither themselves nor any one else. We have been trained over hundreds of years by Christian dogma that everyone is bad and in need of salvation. We have discouraged the innate social qualities of candour, the sense of fair play and warm acceptance of our fellow beings. We use threat and force instead of understanding and persuasion. In other words, our training tends to make us disregard our in-built spontaneous human response to our fellows and take the hard alternative of extreme self interest. Not only do we lock up our houses and cars, we lock up our emotions of warm human feelings.

Research shows that the great majority of our delinquents lost their way while they were still children. They never achieved self esteem, personal dignity and a sense of self worth. The building of these qualities, first in the individual and then in society, seems to me to provide at least one important answer to the problem of anti-social behaviour.

The human dilemma is a social issue found in the heart and mind of each person. Fortunately our personal problems can be solved by each one of us who is able to look deeply and honestly at himself or herself and make choices. You and I are each entitled to a full expression of life with dignity, honour and social acceptance, and we can gain this without loss to others. We shall talk about this next under the subtitle of "On Becoming a Person."

We have noted that we are each born with natural qualities of compassion and tenderness, a sense of justice and fair play. We all feel comfortable with harmony of sound and colour, beauty of scenery and friendship. We appreciate our ability to express ourselves in social activities, be it sport or other avenue. We like variety and adventure; we enjoy excitement, and we like loving and being loved. Together with our mental agility and social inclinations, we humans have incredible potential to enjoy life without resorting to anti-social behaviour. It is beneficial if we can recognise that each of us has these rich and varied qualities; that we are indeed persons of tremendous ability and worth. We all are certainly entitled to develop self esteem, self awareness and personal dignity which will enable us to achieve fully active and happy social relationships. When we acknowledge these qualities within ourselves, we will automatically recognise them in others.

The best and strongest qualities are those which spring from our own sense of dignity and the social imperatives with which we were born. What we can do is to learn to explore those qualities within ourselves. In the next few pages, we will look deeply at the self to see if together we can discover how we can get in touch with the real self.

On Becoming a Person

Most of us are born with sound bodies and minds which remain sound for most of our lives. Yet many collect emotional attitudes, fears and anxieties which prevent a full and happy life. Let us look at what could be a serious blockage preventing us from being able to solve our problems. Let us see if we can understand and achieve harmony between the positive and negative sides of our nature. I have borrowed the title of this section from a book by one of America 's most respected psychotherapists, the late Professor Carl Rogers. In it he says,

"Below the level of the problem situation about which the individual is complaining; behind the trouble with studies, with wife, or employer, or with his own uncontrollable or bizarre behaviour, or with his frightening feelings, - lies one central search. It seems to me that at bottom each person is asking "who am I. How can I get in touch with this real self underlying my surface behaviour, how can I become myself?"

The fact is that each one of us is a unique person, born of unique parents into a unique home environment. There actually is no other person in the world with the same genes, or the same life experience. Our responses to our own individual experiences have contributed to the persons we are. From the day of birth each of us is entirely different from every other person on this earth! Each other person is also a unique person in his or her own right.

We know that we exist because our five senses of touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste enable us to be aware of ourselves and the world about us. Without these marvellous senses we could not be conscious persons. We can lose one or two of these senses and still be functioning conscious persons in our own right. Our five senses are the gateway to all of our experiences and understanding. In this we are all equal, rich or poor, female or male, black or white, big or little, there is no difference.

So what causes us to lose confidence in ourselves and lose touch with the real self underlying our behaviour? Obviously it must be our own thinking and attitudes gained from personal experiences since birth. The Australian aboriginal has something to teach us here. In pre-European times, when an aboriginal woman became pregnant, her child was understood to be a spirit child of the totem or sacred site near where it was conceived. This gave the child a birth right, equal with others, to the resources of the area. The tribes recognised and honoured that birthright. For all of life, child and adult, that person felt part of the locality and entitled to its resources. Each had a personal stake which established identity. It was a fact of being and belonging which was important and never questioned.

Our society, with all its advantages, fails to establish a personal identity in many of our children. Many seem to feel like a stranger in a foreign land, without rights or roots, strangers within their own society, insignificant among the human mass and with little sense of personal worth. They ask, as Rogers said, "how can I get in touch with the real self underlying my surface behaviour, how can I become myself?" My purpose in this section is to put into words, as clearly as I can, a way to restore a knowledge of personal identity, self worth and inner acceptance.

Our society has also been influenced, for many hundreds of years, by a religion with a limited and dogmatic doctrine which defames human character. The doctrine implies that we can only be controlled by punishment and rewards. So deeply rooted is this idea that many do not question it. But it is not true! The fact is that social beings are born with a dominant attraction to social intercourse, the social imperative we talked about earlier. We all like to be part of a community. We are all comfortable living in peace and harmony among our fellows. We all need each other. Sure, we rebel against injustice and indignities of all kinds. That is a natural response we make in an effort to preserve our personal dignity. Many others are deeply afraid of social disapproval.

Most of us became mesmerised from early childhood with negative indoctrination. We came to regard a large number of the human species as untrustworthy, scheming and dangerous. Our training suggested that we must continually improve our performance in order to remain competitive with our fellows. We often called it 'the rat race'. For many persons there is a continual threat of failure lurking in the background. In early life, we were often told that we were naughty, dirty, stupid or selfish. We became conditioned to esteeming ourselves as we thought others evaluated us. Instead of developing personal regard, many of us locked our thinking into personal disregard. Many become permanently mesmerised by repeated negative training.

The problem is that a person can be humiliated so often that one comes to think of oneself as less than worthy, perhaps stupid or lazy, or has many other self-denigrating thoughts. Then the tendency is to bring out an emotional whip and beat oneself again and again. No wonder we lose the zest for life and lack self confidence. But we are not stupid, we are intelligent and normal people. It is possible to reestablish the importance of our own personality again. Rogers calls this "positive personal regard".

Most of us were fairly free and natural until we were about two or three years old. Some have retained their sense of self dignity, but others started and continue to take on the restrictions and pressures of convention. It is not easy to discontinue the bad religious and social habit of putting oneself down. Most people have had a great deal of practice since early childhood at self denigration.

We have looked at ourselves intellectually and decided that we are unique and equal persons, but it is not always easy to believe what our reasoning tells us. Somehow the intellectual statement misses the mark and does not touch our feelings. We can still feel ill at ease. Perhaps it is easier first to acknowledge that each person has an equal right to life. If we have equal right to life, then it follows that each of us is also a person of worth. Some of us may feel that we are only potentially persons of worth but that is not correct. The status of worth was given to us at birth, it is our birthright.

Please go back to Chapter 14 and read again about Dr. Hilgard's experiment at Stanford University. Hilgard demonstrated that there is a deep level of awareness within us which is quietly noticing the course of our experience. He called this the hidden observer. I believe we can become aware of the presence of the hidden observer without being hypnotised. We can explore our own inner feelings. When we do this, the new awareness can be a tremendous help in overcoming demoralising feelings. The hidden observer is that non-judgemental part of us that watches all the time. It quietly notices what is happening below the panics and screaming on the surface. When there has been a disruption and everyone is excited, we do not always notice the hidden observer. However, it is not unusual for people under stress to become aware of a deep peace and strength within themselves. It is the stress situation which is really the aggressor into the territory of our being. We can find quietness when we go below the screaming surface and find the hidden observer. A little practice will help us.

We are not divided into parts; the hidden observer is not a separate identity; it is ourselves, our real person. It is as if we are being imposed upon by the outside stressful situation we have been subjected to. That is the part which is not the real self. We feel the imposition as a pressure or convention placed upon us, with which we comply, but which we do not wish to own.

How shall we bridge the gap between our mental acceptance and our real feelings? Modern teaching tells us that we need to love ourselves before we can claim our birthright of equal membership in society. This is the hiatus or gap we need to come to grips with. Many will respond, "but how can I love myself". The answer is to give yourself credit and just commence enjoying the person you are! Live in the present, not in the past and you will increasingly find much to love about yourself. By nurturing the beautiful and good within us, we can learn to like and eventually love ourselves.

How can we escape or modify the past training? How can we free ourselves from locked in habits of negative thought?

Firstly we can acknowledge the origin of the offending training and that it did occur.

Secondly we can reject that training by condemning it as seriously damaging and inhibiting of human experience.

Thirdly we can set about creating a new image of ourselves and the development of feelings of personal self regard and worth. In other words re-establish contact with our own social nature with which we were born.

Let us avoid placing limits on our thoughts. Let us get in touch with the real underlying human person we really are, acknowledging our social nature, the social imperative. Let us slowly get to know the real person without the veneer of surface compliance to the situation or anxiety. Let us start developing personal self regard by giving ourselves credit where we can. Take time and space for ourselves to enjoy our own humanity and environment. Commence making our own choices independently of other people. As we achieve this, we will find a sense of well being and new confidence coming into our lives, we will develop self esteem.

Basically we are all equally social animals who need and enjoy human touch and acceptance without conflict. We need stimulation and excitement but not at the expense of someone else. Conflict is a breakdown of communication, not an achievement. Many of us have become so enmeshed since childhood with a hierarchy of power and status that we can easily lose touch with humanity. Instead of enjoying the harmony and unity of nature and all human beings, we can, in our competitive anxiety to excel against others, cut ourselves off from the warm loving stream of life. We can become commercial units at the expense of tenderness and compassion.

It is as though we had been so busy with the notions of sin, guilt, blame and disciplining ourselves and others to conform to outside demands that we have lost touch with self trust and self esteem. We become afraid to trust our bodies, afraid to trust our minds, afraid to lose control. The result is that we lose touch with trusting and loving others. We can be in danger of dehumanising ourselves and becoming unfeeling human machines, not caring for others, cutting ourselves off from the very thing that makes us human, our social nature. It is that important! We isolate ourselves to our own detriment. The poet Alexander Pope said "True self love and social (love) are the same." Those who lose self love, lose the ability to love the society we live in. Our esteem of ourselves can programme us toward success and happiness.

A person may be very selfish and grasping, but selfishness should not be confused with self esteem. Selfishness demonstrates an inner emptiness or hunger which the person is trying desperately to fill. Self esteem is a force completely opposite to selfishness. It is a state, already filled with quiet satisfaction, inner contentment and sufficiency where there is no need to be grasping or displaying for attention. Out of the abundance and warmth that self esteem provides, we can easily and selflessly love others. It is only to the measure that we have filled our own lives with love that we can spill over with love to others. You and I are most important persons. We are social beings who benefit by having esteem for ourselves and those about us. Think about that.