ColumnSome people experience overwhelming awe in church, some on magnificent mountaintops, some in elegant equations. But some of us tend to get “it” when witnessing stunning examples of our human footprint. If that sounds like you, you just might be a humanist—something with very down-to-earth implications.  

“I was blown away.” The phrase is used so often it’s a wonder we’re all not aloft. “Awesome!” A term so ubiquitous, you might find yourself yearning for the run of the mill. Indeed, if every OMG! were an honest-to-god conjure of what’s holy, His/Her/Its omnipresence would be completely and finally undeniable.

Of course it’s easy to pick on our culture’s most overused overstatements. (OMG aside, the above are certainly part of my vocabulary). But if we dial down the hyperbole for a moment and honestly think about the things that make us dizzily reach for the nearest handrail, we’re likely to learn a lot about who we are and what makes us tick.

Consider that second glance, the super serious one, that says, “No, really! I was blown away!” This usually features earnest and pleading eye contact that begs you to believe and embrace the gravity of what the speaker is gushing about. The subtext: “I’ve experienced something beyond words.” (So to speak.)

For most of us, the varieties of religious experience are evidenced as many. (I use the term “religious” advisedly, requesting some latitude from my fellow nonbelievers.) We know this because, hopefully, we know a variety of people. I, for one, have dear and respected friends who have been knocked off their horses by the Judeo-Christian King of Kings, both with and without the help of his also-divine son. Other believers I know have experienced more creedless, less-moderated Big Moments with what they perceive to be supernatural forces. Alas, such supernatural events have never happened to me.

Others tend to have their wow episodes in or considering nature, sitting on a mountaintop, watching the ocean’s waves or simply staring up at the vastness of the cosmos on a starry night. These happenings reportedly include a number of overwhelming sensations (smallness, bigness, existence, nonexistence, self, non-self) and a feeling of oneness with the universe. For a range of folks, from Buddhists to Gaians to Newtonians, our natural world offers up awe like candy, if we only take the time to look, pay attention and feel.

Unlike being touched by the supernatural, these natural episodes have happened to me. It would be something if they didn’t, living as I do in Northern California where a four-hour radius from my front door offers up glories like Yosemite and the shores of the Pacific. Over my lifetime, too, I’ve had the great fortune of experiencing marvels ranging from the Arctic Circle to the Gobi Desert. I’d have to be pretty thickheaded not to have been occasionally swept away. I, too, can be floored by the awe and joy of being a part of the universe and it’s clockwork workings, whether known, yet to be known or forever unknown. Yet despite its power, nature, per se, is not my biggest mind blower.

To Each His Swoon

The name of this column, HyperKulture, refers to a psychosomatic phenomenon that presents “rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to an experience of great personal significance, particularly viewing art.” In its debut, “In Swoon’s Way,” I wrote about a recent trip to Europe during which I had experienced a number of such events (healthily upright though I remained). Today, looking back at those moments and holding them up alongside similar events throughout my life, a pattern has emerged.

What sends my mind off its rails are the awesome things we humans do. (Yep. Awed. For real.) This goes back to what prompted my first swoon—Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon (though this is probably a swoon-after memory of a memory given the fact that I was only 5 when it happened). In fact, I remain blown away by that historic feat; just conjuring it in my mind for more than few moments can make me dizzy and if I really push it, even a little teary. I mean, the dude left the earth and walked on the moon. WTF?!

Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had a number of these man-made experiences. Visiting Atelier Brancusi, listening to the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence,” reading Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” enjoying a dinner once prepared for me by Chef Paul Prudhomme—all head-spinning. Even imagining indirect experiences—Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, MLK’s Dream, the idea of Amelia Earhart taking off into the ether—can totally spin me out when I give them more than just passing thought.

Don’t get me wrong. It takes a lot for someone or some deed to set me off—and sometimes it’s unpredictable. Why did that Caravaggio at the Met that one day spike my BP and send me running out to the street for air when all the other masterpieces I saw before it left me relatively unshaken? And what was it about that one time at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington? Why was that visit so different than all the other times I stood inside its colonnade? Who knows what kind of perfect brainstorm has to occur to rock my world?

In any case, to my religious friends: Some of your prophets. Holy shit! The idea that actual people have had that kind of impact on the world? That their ideas would hold such power and sway? Wow, man. It still baffles me that the Buddha came up with what he came up with. And to my science-focused friends, about those elegant equations that so turn you on? Given that the math is way above my pay grade, it’s the scientists themselves who suffered and slaved to arrive at such beautiful truths who ignite my wonder. Newton. Einstein. Hawking. When I think about what these people accomplished and the impact they’ve had on how we live every day—oh my!

Yep. For me it’s the humans. How about you? Have you been set asunder by Homo sapien heroics? World-renowned feats of wonder aside, are there people in your life who have done the unimaginably awesome? Your grandfather’s charity? Your mother’s unconditional love? Your aunt who lived gracefully with disease and died with strength and dignity? Maybe the person with whom you shared your first kiss? For those of us who have this mortal-creature-based swoon pattern, may I suggest that perhaps we have—heaven forbid!—an ism.

Us and (Just) Us

There’s no simple, all-purpose definition of humanism. Its many facets include historical, academic and philosophical angles dating back to well before the term came into use during the early Renaissance. But for these purposes, let’s use one that seems to be recurring and general enough to get the job done: “A system of thought that focuses on humans and their values, capacities and worth.”

Of course, there’s nothing in those words about the type of “religious” experiences I’m speaking of here. In fact, most definitions of the philosophy (or worldview or whatever you choose to call it) allude to it being distinctly rationalist and secular (big draws for me). But if we can agree with the idea that there are instances of experience in our lives that at least seem to be transcendental, then perhaps it’s okay to go ahead and give humanism its religiousy due.

Einstein here: “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.”

The great scientist was speaking broadly and, of course, addressing rapture emanating from far beyond our actions on the ground. And let’s be clear: No one would go so far as to call humanism a religion. But for those of us who ascribe to this philosophy in its secular form, we can indeed point to our very own swoons and appreciate our awesomeness in what some might go so far as to describe as a spiritual way.

However you characterize the idea of humanist rapture, if you’re going to go ahead and claim the ism there are ramifications of such a throw-down—there is no doubt a yang for this yin. While most definitions of the philosophy speak to our ability (and even inclination) to make the world a better place, there is another side of the equation that speaks to something darker about our ability to achieve.

Yes, our capacity for evil is awesome too. While there are heroes who can truly make us swoon, just watch and listen and know about the bullies, as well. The beheaders, the fundamentalists, the reactionaries—know that the visceral shudder you get when you see their “achievements” is just rapture turned upside down. We humanists can’t offload the sublimely destructive on a less-than-benevolent god, the weather or the downside of an equation. If you’re anything like me, this dark side of our awesomeness can be as mind-blowing as the brilliant side. Oh, the humanity—and the voodoo that we do.

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

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HyperKulture: Living in the Past – You Can’t Go Back… Why Would You Want To?

HyperKulture: Making Space for Your Inner Homebody – A Case for the Great Indoors

HyperKulture: You May Ask Yourself, ‘How Did I Get Here?’ – The Pitfalls of Passion Drift

Images: Aldrin Apollo/Public Domain (top), Smithsonian Institution (middle), Footsteps on the sand from Shutterstock (bottom).

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Three mothers tell their own tale of how abortion changed their lives…for the better.

Lucy was 18 when she had an abortion.

“It was the ‘bad’ kind,” she says. “The kind you have because you just don’t want to have children, or because you were irresponsible. You know, the slutty kind.” She got on with her life and thought about it every now and then, occasionally wondering if she had made the right decision. Last July, Lucy, who now lives in Norfolk and is 31, gave birth to a little a boy, Ezra. In becoming a mother, she says, she finally laid to rest those sporadic demons. “Since having my son, having gone through that process of pregnancy and childbirth and child care, I have never been so absolutely certain that what I did all those years ago was right.”

Lucy is not alone. Despite a rising anti-choice sentiment across the UK, where this story is being reported, there are a number of women for whom parenthood only strengthens their resolve that access to abortion must be safe, legal and guilt-free.

Emily lives in Devon with her partner and two daughters, aged three and one. She has a third daughter, Ivy, whom she painfully chose to abort at 23 weeks when she was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The prognosis was poor. Assuming Ivy survived birth, she would have had open heart surgery in the first week of life. Assuming she survived that, she would have needed surgery again at six months, and if she survived that, then again at three, and so on.

Emily says: “Ivy was a baby. She was perfect in every way, down to her tiny fingernails and her eyelashes. She had my partner’s feet in miniature. When she was born, she tried to breathe. We held her till she went still and told her we loved her, and that we would make the most of this life and never forget her. That was my choice.”

Nadine Dorries debates plans to bar abortion providers from giving advice to pregnant women

Not long after Emily returned to work after losing her daughter, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who has repeatedly tried to limit access to abortion services during her time as a politician, tabled an amendment to the 1967 Abortion Act that would strip abortion providers of the right to counsel women. The loosely worded bill threatened to land the role of counselor in the hands of religious or anti-choice groups.

Emily says: “I was driving home listening to the radio and was so furious I had to pull over and cry angry tears. I could not believe that there were people out there who dared to feel they had the right to take that choice out of anyone’s hands. ”

Thirty-year-old Julie had a very strict Catholic upbringing. These days she is an atheist, pro-choice, and married with a son (8 months) and a daughter (3). When she was at university she got pregnant by accident and miscarried at six weeks. During the two weeks she knew about the pregnancy she was terrified of having the baby but also realized very quickly that she was unable to have an abortion.

She says: “I felt like I would be killing a baby, and I just couldn’t consider it as an option. But I believe that a mother’s job is to do what’s best for her family, especially the child she’s carrying, sometimes the best thing is a termination and the mother should have that option.”

Abortion services are under attack in the UK like never before. The conservative majority of the coalition government are pushing through Nadine Dorries’ amendment regardless of it being defeated in parliament, and aggressive American anti-choice group 40 Days for Life have shipped their brand of campaigning to a new shore and began picketing abortion clinics at the beginning of Lent, filming women going in and out and handing out wildly inaccurate information.

While those who genuinely believe abortion is murder and those who believe it is unfortunate but sometimes necessary are never going to agree, the popular discourse on abortion misses the fact that the stories carry on long after a woman leaves the clinic, and that terminating a pregnancy can be a foundation stone for building stronger, happier, more together lives.

Emily refuses to dress her experiences up in any coy language.

“I did kill my baby,” she says. “I chose to have Ivy at 23 weeks and to watch her die in my arms because for me, that was preferable to continuing with the pregnancy. She would have had a life, just not the life I wanted for her, or for me, or for my partner, or at that time, for the possible future brothers or sisters she might have.”

And if she had chosen to continue with the pregnancy, chances are she would have lost a baby or a child at a later date than she did, something she considers to be considerably harder than losing a baby pre-birth. She doubts very much she and her partner would still be together, or that they would be living in their dream house in the idyllic Devon countryside, or that they would have the two daughters they have now.

“It’s too crazy to think about,” she says. “I’d not be me. I say that was the hardest choice I ever had to make but really, in the moment, it was one of the easiest. I knew as soon as we had the full facts that there was no way that I would put my baby through the treatment. I’ve never doubted that we made the right choice, not for a second. And that is the truth.”

Lucy says she had always considered her abortion a selfish act. At the time, she was rarely able to make it through the day without having an alcoholic drink, she was using drugs regularly and was “indescribably miserable and confused.” When she found out she was pregnant, she went to the pub, drank a double vodka, smoked half a pack of cigarettes and stayed out all night taking speed. In retrospect she thinks that perhaps she wasn’t so selfish after all. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop drinking or using drugs throughout the pregnancy.

“So I had a choice,” she says. “I could bring a child in to the world – a very unwanted child – who would start life physically damaged because of my inability to care for it in the womb, and would move through life emotionally damaged because of my inability to care for it when it arrived. Or I could choose something else, to end the pregnancy, get myself straight, go to university, get a masters degree, fall in love, buy a house, have a child who is so adored that some days I feel like the love flows out of me in giant waves. If I had continued with that pregnancy when I was 18 it would have destroyed many lives.”

Julie’s first pregnancy was exactly the opposite experience. Even though she didn’t want a child, she was unable to drink or smoke, do anything that might harm the fetus in anyway and still holds with her a guilt that she miscarried because she didn’t want to keep it. When she fell pregnant with what would become her eldest child she obsessively researched the phases of gestation and fell in love “with a child, not a potential child” and began to believe that the 24 week time limit on is horrific. Yet during her third pregnancy, the one that would produce her second child, she planned to attend a pro-choice rally.

“To me I was exactly the right person to be there, saying ‘look at me, I’m pregnant, I love my children but I’m still pro-choice.’ The conservative right and the Catholics like to paint women who terminate pregnancies as morally, emotionally and intellectually weak. I could never have terminated a pregnancy myself, but I believe I should have the right to, and I will publicly stand with women who have had to make that decision. I will also stand against anyone, politician or religious zealot, or both, who thinks that religious dogma is an appropriate basis for lawmaking,” she says.

Lucy says that if she could have gotten to the same point in her life in a less awful way then of course she would choose that.

“But I did what I did and I’m fine with that. No one is pro-abortion, no one wants to actually do it, but sometimes it is the best option. I’ve spent a lot of time mired in existential crises and trying to rationalize it and eventually realized that we decide who lives and dies all the time. We make conscious decisions to have a baby; that someone knew should not exist. We send people to war to die. The death penalty sends innocent people to their graves every year. We have people die from famine or drought or brutal regimes and we allow that to happen. We decide that our grandma or uncle or best friend has reached such a point in their illness that their quality of life is too diminished and we quietly ask the doctor if they can up the morphine dosage. It’s just part of the way stuff works. We can call upon Fate or God and be a victim of circumstance, or we can engage with it, choose our lives, the course of events that are best for ourselves and our families. If you don’t like it, so be it, but no one has the right to interfere with those choices. I now consider my first true act as a mother was realizing that I was in no position to become a mother. In a sense I am proud of that and it gives me confidence that I am making the right choices for my family now.”

Image: The Guardian, zeevveez, Medill DC, Elvert Barnes

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