I'm a people, you're a people . . .

I watched Sen. Ted Kennedy's funeral this morning. It was, I am compelled to say, abysmally sad. Watching a Catholic funeral (yawn) that exalted Sen. Kennedy in a religious manner was also abysmally sad, considering that, at heart, I believe he was a Humanist of the highest degree, and so I am inspired to write a little (I'm tired) about Humanism.
It seems so simple: humanity is the measure of all things. That being the case, how we treat each other is the measure of our own worth on this earth. We, as a collection of social, mostly sentient critters can (and have) create a moral code without having to worry about Yahweh at one end of the spectrum and Old Scratch at the other.
See, our highly-evolved brains have enabled us to realize that success as a species depends wholly on cooperation and social laws to govern behavior. Y'know who else does that? Ants, birds, sardines, dolphins, bees, termites, et. al. Wacky, huh? How come god didn't create those fabulous specimens of social morality in his image too? Oh, that's right, because god (standing in here for the words 'god,' 'gods,' and 'goddesses') was created by man in his image. You have to figure that in a few eons (or maybe not even that long) there will be a First Church of Sardine-us Christ (Reformed) on every other street corner under the sea. It's an inevitable product of brain evolution that eventually, sentience will result in the asking of the "Big Questions." Sardines will only be able to assume (and rightly so (from a sardine's perspective)) that their world was created by a creature that looked and acted remarkably like them.
Hopefully, after the sardines struggle through the Dark Ages, some of them will cast off the blinders and see the light. Hopefully, they will reexamine the "Big Questions," and decide that:

• Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis.
• Sardines are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.
• Ethical values are derived from sardine need and interest as tested by experience.
• Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of sardinian(?) ideals.
• Sardines are social by nature and find meaning in relationships.
• Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.

Just to be clear, I would like for you to replace "sardine" with "human" in the above bulleted list to get my point, which is that we don't need Jesus or Buddha or Vishnu or Yahweh or Mohammed or Gaia to tell us how to act in society. We don't require the promise of heaven or the threat of hell to dictate our social actions. Instead, we require only that we realize our potential, both individually and as a society and ultimately as a species, in order to be fulfilled. We require a rational, logical, empirical view of the world we experience, if only so that we may experience it more completely, since it's all we've got. We require reaching out (and sometimes back) to grasp the hands of those who need us to pull them closer. We need to stop being so fucking ashamed to be homo sapiens. Instead of cowering in fear of punishment and reward from a vengeful, spiteful, homicidal, genocidal, hypocritical god (and that's just the Judeo-Christian one), we need to stand up and proclaim ourselves as the best homo sapiens on the planet. You know those sardines could stand to be taken down a peg or two.

Albert Einstein believed that. Except the part about the sardines. So did Isaac Asimov, Jonas Salk, and Bertrand Russel. Margaret Atwood and Gloria Steinem still do. Pretty good company, but perhaps the most influential of all was John F. Kennedy, and by extension, Sen. Kennedy (see how I'm bringing it around? That's how you know I'm almost through).

See, when JFK (". . . but I thought he was Irish Catholic." Well, sometimes you have to pretend really hard just to get where you want to go) told the disillusioned people of an America facing civil unrest, ideological assault, and an un-winnable war to ask not what their country could do for them -- but what they could do for their country, he was invoking a basic humanist belief: Working to better the whole improves the self. Edification and fulfillment lies not in placing blame, passing bucks, pointing fingers, or bombing Afghani villages into Democracy. It didn't lie in bombing Vietnamese villages either, turns out. It doesn't lie in shouting down elected officials at town hall meetings, nor in assassinating MLK. It doesn't lie in stealing money from the sick, old, and frail to build golden monuments to Jesus and dress his preachers in clothes befitting only the sleaziest of pimps. It doesn't lie in beating homosexuals to death and leaving them for the coyotes, nor in detonating a car bomb outside a cafe in Belfast, Sarajevo, Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad, Oklahoma City, Mogadishu, or Jakarta. It doesn't lie in signs reading "God Hates Fags!" or telling the viewers of The 700 Club that Hurricane Katrina was punishment for legalized abortion. It cannot be found in condemnation, hatred, violence, intolerance, or any of the other social sins of religion.

Look at all the horrible things I just pointed out. Imagine if just one iota of the energy that we, as a species, have spent on religion had been spent on bettering ourselves collectively. I won't even guide your thoughts -- just . . . just think about it.

Let's make a pact then, to start to look for what we can do to make our society and species better, bigger, stronger, faster . . . wait a minute . . .. But seriously. The tools are there: our big ol' brains, our iPhones, laptops, Facebook, video cameras (thanks to Jeff, Kathryn, and the rest), blogs, novels, scripts -- a host of forums that are relatively untapped. Remember, a few sardines swimming in the opposite direction can turn the whole direction of the school. Let us not forget those who parted the waters. RIP Senator Kennedy.

Also, check out this clip from Real Time with Bill Maher with Bill Moyers that inspired this rambling, ill-thought-out little rant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSQ2DWkVE0.