by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

The experience we share in common as secular people is that it has been necessary for us to form our own ideals and values systems, and to take upon ourselves to bear full responsibility for whatever the results of that work out to be. In his writings about political morality, Lakoff poses two common models that vie against each other, the Strict Father model versus the Nurturing Parent (which I offer as Controllers versus Nurturants. Our mental image of Nurturants comes from agriculture, wherein a farmer or nursery worker steers his/her produce toward productive natural health. Counter to that is large machinery ripping up the ground, poisoning it with injections of poisons and chemicals, to grow neatly formed rows of identical, bland-tasting plants. That is not nurturance, that is control, where every deviation from a norm gets wiped out in a struggle to attain "perfection").

There may be other than just those two models, one of which may directly apply to secular people, especially those of us who regard ourselves as ¹Progressives. If so, we ought to make that kind of determination at the outset, if we can; or, if that is impossible due to lack of information or for some other reason, we ought to keep that possibility in mind as we go along.

Nurturance serves as a family name for a whole slew of supportive values, some of which you'll find in a list at
< http://www.atheistlloyd.com/SecularFrames.html >

That list breaks down into supporting terms for each of those. That presents Nurturance as a hierarchy of value terms, from grandparent to grandchildren. It appears we can get too easily stuck on any one or two terms and so overlook the importance of them all in their relationships to each other. It must be that we quest for details and so lose sight of the overall (and very necessary) picture.

Without that picture, we have nothing to ²frame and so nothing to represent ourselves in defense against those who call us, and all others like us, "evil".

It is very nice to be able to tell each other (and the rest of the world) "I believe in honesty, kindness, charity and empathy, and think of one or all of those as values to treasure." Of course we do, but why? From where do our values arise? We claim "science", right? --or Nature. How we go about that seems not nearly as apparent or obvious as the kind of source from which Controllers draw. Have we, in our own way, "imagined" a source of values into existence so that we can proclaim our beliefs to the world? Those who deem themselves "Critical Thinkers" may often have accomplished that, but it is analytical thinkers who have advanced our causes.

We have no overweening view of a god in our secular picture, upon which we can hang our images and back our claims. We have no image of a furious father who handed down edicts in the form of law-filled scriptures and exemplary stories. We have no conspicuous role model who handed out punishments and pushed his children into meting them out amongst violators in their midst and who lived all around them, complete with sentences and judgments to be carried out in an early form of capital punishment.

All we have to stand on is Action, Consequence, Emergence, and Common Sense. From those we describe the foundations of our values, and we bear them out in our day-to-day battles with would-be detractors of our own moral senses. We may not agree on much else, but we do agree (when it comes down to right and wrong) on the biggest portion of this. Action, Consequence, Common Sense, and How Things Work make up our understanding of the Laws of Human Nature that we wonder how the Strict Father people can argue against.

So, where they have a Strict Father model in their perceptions of their choice of a god, we have the Nurturant Parent model in Mother Nature. Like all parents, they argue and vie for our understanding of what all each of them might represent. Which we choose as our own role models (or, which choice we inherit as part of our indoctrination into adulthood) will determine the nature of our own behavior, our conceptions of right and wrong, our views about morality and ethics, our understanding of Nature as the grand provider or the source of anguish, our own views of ourselves as either predator or prey, and a whole lot more.

We have a lot to learn about all of this, whichever side of this topic we stand upon and claim as our own. We know Mother Nature can seem as harsh and cruel as the slavemaster gods that mankind claims to bow down toward. We also know we can discover Her rewards, and study her directly for our knowledge about all the things we need to know in life. That seems different to us, than to be made to accept secondhand the unverifiable edicts upon which Controllers base their rules. That, we think, places too much power into undeserving hands. We know scientists can lie and will sooner or later be caught. It appears the priests and captains of the Controller ship can go on forever and never be beholden for their sins against Nature and the humanity that subsists within Her realm.

Secular Morality Home

1: In this scenario, the term 'progressive' differs in its political stance from either 'liberal' or 'conservative'. Progressive signifies a goal-orientation, and a program designed for attainment of social goals; whereas liberal denotes a kind of goody-goody approach to social problems (wherein some folks are viewed as unable to cope and so need permanent aid), and conservatism as a kind of avoidance of social problems wherein everybody must fend for themselves. In practice, conservatives have had to adopt some liberal principles in order to get votes, and liberals to adopt some conservative principles in order to show they do have some self-control. That has resulted in a one-party system, for the most part, that now fails to deal with reality in any effective way.          RETURN

2: "Framing" is the act of internalizing incoming information into a mental image that can be referred to for comparative evaluations of future similar information about any certain topic. Some information will enhance the image, complete it, support it, make it clearer and will get adopted. Some information seems to partially fit a picture already held in the mind, and so will get modified in such a way as to make it appear usable, or only those parts will be used that do fit. Information that does not fit already held images gets summarily rejected.    RETURN

3: Critical thought arrives when one begins to subject his/her own mental images to questioning, often while attempting to establish coherence between those images and the reality with which we all must deal. Critical thought is not about criticizing others about their beliefs, but about comparing theirs with our own to see how our own could be improved. It is a lifetime process.  RETURN