It can be difficult not to feel discouraged as we watch the world experience a resurgence of religious fundamentalism. The use of fear and the promulgation of religious hate by both religious leaders and political ones has been on the rise for the past decade. And this movement is gaining ground and popularity. It’s hard not to feel like we are moving backwards in our progress.
We have seen in the past couple of years the biggest threat to women’s equality, health and right to privacy in the past 50 years as the right to choose was revoked in some states and in peril everywhere else. Outspoken men have made it clear that they want women to take on more “traditional” roles, further eroding the gains women have made over the decades.
Coming off an era of unity, we chanted “Love is Love” as gay marriage was legalized, only to see proud boys with their semi-automatic weapons threaten drag queen story hours, “bathroom laws” being passed and mainstream politicians referring to members of the LGBTQ+ community and “groomers,” hinting at an equivalency between being part of that community and being a pedophile.
Racism also has had it renaissance with brown people especially being targeted. The “Illegal Immigration” discussion makes it clear that if you are brown, and especially if you have an accent, many Americans will assume you are an Illegal Immigrant, even if you are not. And if you are an Illegal Immigrant, rhetoric casts you as subhuman – the term vermin has been used.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that the “Arc of history bends toward justice,” but sometimes standing where we are in history, this can be hard to believe. Personally, while watching hard won rights get eroded and seeing just how many people long nostalgically for a racist and sexist past when America was “great,” I have often found myself disillusioned. Part of this though, is my own misjudgment of just where humanity is in its evolution.
Most of my adulthood has been spent studying in the Western Mystery Tradition. Groups like the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and Martinists believe strongly in the concept of Universal Brotherhood, and that humanity itself is a Fraternity united by a divine parent. Such groups, and the individuals who belong to them, tend to be more accepting of different races, cultures, religious and political beliefs and embrace diversity. Memories from my early adulthood include Masonic Altars with the Bible, Koran, and Torah on them – A nod to the idea that we should respect and learn from all the world’s religions. Religion was always looked at as something that expanded your love for humanity, instead of restricting that love to encompass only those who adopt your specific dogma.
From that background, it was shocking when those who felt differently began to speak up. 2016 ushered in a period where the worst of us felt empowered to expound the worst, most hateful ideologies to the world without shame. And since then, adherents to hateful ideologies have grown, not shrank, in number. I found myself asking, where is this arc that is bending toward justice?
Turns out, to see that arc I had to do 2 things. The first was to realize that the people with whom I had chosen to associate myself were actively engaged in self-reflection and improvement – this engagement isn’t as common in humanity as I thought. Secondly, I needed to widen my perspective.
Plato had it right when he said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Unfortunately, there is a majority of humanity that either chooses not to engage in self-examination or cannot do so. Some people simply cannot engage in such pursuits because of their situation in life. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is correct here; if you are preoccupied with your own survival, you don’t have time to think about your own personal philosophy or engage in self-development. You are simply trying to get shelter, food, water, etc -to make it to another day. Given the general wealth of some nations, it is shocking that so many people in the world are living hand-to-mouth like this, but large portions of the global population are. For others, refraining from self-reflection and self-improvement is a choice. Humanity remains stuck in the concerns of the material world. They are more concerned with monetary success, or fame, or recognition than they are with their own spiritual development. There is just a more reliable and immediate dopamine hit from buying a new thing, getting a new like on social media, or gaining respect for your material success, than there is from a long, sustained effort at self-improvement.
This meant that the people I thought were examples of what humanity was like were actually a bit out-of-the-ordinary. The majority of humanity is too deep into the world to gain the perspective needed for significant self-improvement. When you are focused on the material world only, your sympathy for your fellow man is limited because your neighbor could have something that you want or need, and it’s easy to feel that giving them something would mean less for you. Materialism leads to selfishness and selfishness does not contribute to altruism. The Materialist’s view is a view of scarcity and a fight over resources. It is a competition for these resources between those like you and those who are not like you. Even if there is enough for everyone, the “scarcity” mentality will perpetuate this competition. Fear and prejudice are its companions, and it is antithetical to the concept of Universal Brotherhood.
The second thing I had to remember is that you can only see the arc toward justice from the long view. It’s like the Stock Market. Looking at it long term, you can see that the stock market tends toward growth. This is a truth about the Market that has existed for its entire history. However, it would be difficult to explain that truth to someone who was living through the Great Depression or who had just lost their home due to the crash in 2008. The lesson here is that the arc toward justice is the same. Looked at in the long view you can see it, but there are temporary dips that can easily make it seem like things are going the wrong way. I feel like that is where we are now, watching as women’s and LGBTQ+ rights being degraded and a resurgence in racism, prejudice and fundamentalism. But not long-ago things were much worse.
The year that my mother was born, the United States Supreme Court decided Browder vs Gayle, which determined that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. Just think, a couple of generations ago, black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus, use different drinking fountains, weren’t allowed in certain restaurants, and went to segregated schools. Likewise, it was only 2 years before I was born that women gained the right to choose. For my mother’s generation, many women had to get abortions by illegal and dangerous means. During the 60’s 70’s and 80’s the KKK and other outwardly racist organizations held considerable political power in the US.
The 20th century itself was full of human transformation. As we entered the 1900’s we had just started using the automobile on a regular basis, Jim Crow was the law of the land, and the industrial revolution was getting under way. We started the 20th century barely able to leave the ground in small planes, and by the time the century was coming to a close we had traveled to the moon and had robotic rovers on Mars. We had cured or eradicated diseases that had decimated previous generations and significantly increased our life expectancy. In that hundred years, humanity grew more, learned more, than we had in the past millennium. It was a huge amount of growth in a relatively short period of time. And as we grew technologically, we grew socially as well. In my mother’s generation, it was still expected that the woman be home raising the kids with the father as the breadwinner. Domestic violence was a fact of life that was generally ignored by neighbors and family members of the victims. Women’s rights have grown significantly since that time. While racism is alive and well, especially in the US, humanity has grown to be much more tolerant and accepting of other people who are different than them.
From our point in history, where things seem to be going backwards, it’s important to remember that the growth and change we have experienced on all levels in the past 125 years is faster and more intense than at any other time in human history. We may see progress as slow, but it has been screaming past at blinding speed in comparison to the centuries before.
Now we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century. While women’s rights are threatened, women have much more political and economic power to fight those threats than ever before. The LGBTQ+ community is threatened, but while they face obstacles and continued challenges, they are accepted and loved by more of humanity than at any other time in history. People of color face challenges, but again they have more economic and political power to fight those challenges than was the case during the Civil Rights era. Fear and hatred of the foreigner and the immigrant are again on the rise, but many more people are sympathetic to their plight than has been the case historically.
Those of us who practice a spiritual life, believe in Universal Brotherhood and believe in Plato when he says “the unexamined life is not worth living” need to exercise patience and vigilance. Patience because, while it seems slow, humanity’s development is moving forward at breakneck speed and still accelerating. Those who are stuck in the past tend to rebel against this change and try to slow it down or stop it. Vigilance is needed to ensure that Martin Luther King Jr. continues to be right. These setbacks in society can be a bump in the road, but if left unchecked and unchallenged, they can also plot a new trajectory of spiritual darkness, totalitarianism and tribalism. We must continue to challenge our fellow humans to be better versions of themselves, to cast aside fear and embrace Brotherhood.
Tony Hornsby 
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