Can secular humanism be a kind of brainwashing?
Richard and Dan live in a society that is thoroughly and harmoniously religious. People are happy. They sing hymns together, burn incense, enjoy wearing robes and have a penchant for incantation. There exists little in the way of what we would recognize as education. Children are taught about God, sacred traditions, the importance of family and community, the truth of the Holy Scripture, but that’s about it.
Richard and Dan, however, do not share the religious sensibility of their fellow citizens. They were brought up by their parents – members of the renegade Enquiries at the Periphery – to be secular humanists. As teenagers, they were closeted away, and put through an intense educational program designed to teach them the overriding importance of science and scientific methodology. At first, Richard and Dan resisted the efforts of their teachers, preferring the simplicity of the beliefs of their early childhood, but the pressure from their teachers was relentless, and inevitably they came to embrace a scientific worldview.
However, their education has not made them happy. They are alienated from the society in which they live, and they find themselves wishing that they could be more like other people – that they could experience the exuberance of happy singing, the joy of worshipping the God they do not believe exists, and the togetherness engendered by a shared belief. But try as they might, they simply cannot believe. It is impossible. They know that their way of understanding the world is the right way, but they wish it were otherwise.
Richard and Dan live lonely, miserable, friendless lives. They are considerably less happy than they would have been had they not been born to proselytizing secular humanist parents. If you ask them about it, they’ll tell you that they were brainwashed as teenagers – that they were victims of a kind of abuse, which has left them unable to live as full members of their society.
***
The notion of brainwashing usually carries with it the idea that a victim has been forced or pushed to believe various things that are palpably false or absurd. The scenario above subverts this idea by asking us to consider whether it is right to describe as brainwashing the inculcation of a worldview that many people think is rationally justified. Richard and Dan are committed to the truth of secular humanism, but they claim that they cannot help but think that way – despite their desire not to do so – because of the nature of their upbringing and education. They have, in effect, been brainwashed.
A possible objection here is to insist that part of what defines brainwashing is that it involves employing specific psychological techniques – such as isolation and emotional manipulation – in order to ensure that people come to believe particular things. The trouble is that this definition seems to leave too much out. Consider, for example, that the scientist Richard Dawkins, and philosopher Anthony Grayling, and many others like them, have suggested that the normal religious education provided by churches, mosques and synagogues is “brainwashing” and “child abuse”.
Perhaps then what defines brainwashing is that it involves the passing on of beliefs that are presented as being unquestionably true. This allows in the teaching of religion as a kind of brainwashing. The trouble is that it also allows in an awful lot else. Just think about how history was taught for a large part of the twentieth century: facts and dates – no questioning, no dissent, and nothing to suggest that the details of history are contested. So was the teaching of history – and anything else taught in a similar fashion – a kind of brainwashing? Perhaps it was.
Maybe the only way to avoid the brainwashing charge is to cultivate a restless and questioning spirit in people through our educational practices. But here the case of Richard and Dan looms large again. They were both precisely taught to be restless and questioning, and it is their claim that they have been damaged as a consequence. For them, it is their inability to leave behind the legacy of their “enlightened” education that has left them isolated and estranged.
This is a reworking of a post that originally appeared on the Talking Philosophy blog.
Category: Ethics, Philosophy, Science, religion | Tags: brainwashing, humanism, religion 24 comments »
May 15th, 2009 at 10:17 am
If one uses the broad definition of brain-washing, certainly the biggest source of brain-washing for most people today is the media, especially advertising.
However, in the case of Richard and Dan, if they were taught to think for themselves, rationally, I would not call them brain-washed. No one ever claimed, besides a few philosophers like the Stoics and others, that clear thinking guarantees happiness. In fact, as the book Ecclesiastes says, wisdom brings sorrow. (not the exact phrase) Clear-thinking is its own reward or the unexamined life is not worth living. The examined life isn’t always the happiest life, and I might be a lot more happy, stoned out of my mind, than reflecting on what I’m reflecting on.
May 16th, 2009 at 9:56 am
This is a difficult question. What is brainwashing? I suppose the part of the story that we don’t hear is whether Richard and Dan were free to rebel against their parents or whether they were forcibly restricted from going out into the community. Surely in a free non brainwashed world we have the right to be wrong and to kick against our parents, so to speak. I know my daughters think for themselves. I have tried to impart scientific thinking to them but I also have my beliefs and they have theirs. I would never belittle their beliefs although I might engage in an argument with them.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] Can secular humanism be a kind of brainwashing? [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Not exactly being a philosopher or even a deep thinker, as such, I do consider simple facts. So, I can add these words about what determines brainwashing. Now just think, we know from history, no matter how hard you squint, that religious indoctrination is fully capable of brainwashing its victims. Yes, a victim(s) is the right word.
Therefore, what acts or practices are identifiable within forms of indoctrination that make such instruction a form of brainwashing? And, can the concepts of atheism and/or secular humanism be labeled as some do, also a religion? The answer is also in history, especially language history. The answers, among others, are highlighted by the words blasphemy and heretic. Brainwashing is dependent upon those two words. And, when you hear an atheist, secular humanist, or free thinkers use those words in describing another person’s differing opinions of reality, mystical or scientific, then indeed, all are capable of being labeled brainwashing. But, personally, I have never heard a single use of those two words come out of the mouth or writings of any person except those pushing mysticism and the spiritual world.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
From what I take to be “secular humanism”: a philosophy that encourages thought, individual thought; I just don’t see how anyone can consider that to be brain-washing. If someone wants to brain-wash me into thinking and making my own decisions then I’m all for it!
May 19th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
In reference to Terry’s (insightful) post: Someone claiming that a divergent religious belief is blasphemous seems to be very similar to claiming that an argument fallacious or unfounded. The former is a religious way of speaking, and the latter is the preferred secular method. Aren’t they both really saying the “same thing”?
Language is important, as Terry pointed out, but not the key issue of this post ,in my opinion. The issue is equality. Why do we give secular humanism a pass when it comes to the possibility of being crazy or brainwashed? If held to the same standard, many secular humanists would appear brainwashed as the article suggests. Religion is more structured, thus easier to criticize. Nonetheless, brainwashing is brainwashing structured or not.
p.s. for the uninitiated, checkout Derren Brown on youtube for an example of brainwashing (and a good laugh)
May 19th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Surely claiming a divergent religious belief is blasphemous is not relevantly similar to claiming an argument is fallacious: in saying of an argument that it is fallacious, one is merely claiming that the truth of the conclusion does not follow from the truth of the premises. Nothing is implied, however, about the truth of either. Is this not a fundamental dissimilarity?
May 20th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I probably should have added heretical along w/ blasphemous (a la Terry’s post). But I still think the two (fallacious and blasphemous) are fairly similar. For example, the fallacious or unfounded reasoning of Dawkin’s (e.g., that God does not exist b/c people were born at different parts of the globe at different times— he uses this one in every single debate that he ever been in) is ‘somewhat similar’ if not ‘very similar’ to a religious person saying that Dawkin’s is being blasphemous and heretical for reasoning in the same fashion.
If we just go by definition, I concede, they do not look all that similar. Well, then, so much for definitions. The meaning of a word is its use in the language, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. The words under discussion, often times, get used in similar ways. We have been “brainwashed” by the secular humanist to think differently! (yes, that was a joke)
May 24th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
I think the above scenario goes right to the heart of the matter as regards indoctrinating children with ANY dogma. Whilst I agree with comments above relating to freedom of thought – it should be remembered that freedom of thought is linked to maturity and WIDE experience.
By not allowing children access to all aspects of opinion one deprives them of the ability to form a solid opinion of their own.
This then is where – in my opinion – philosophy, as a subject comes to the fore. If, for example, in today’s world, philosophy was taught as a high school subject, then all aspects of developing religion and atheism could be examined.
Adult who impose their beliefs on the young do the young no favours. There’s no short cut to unbiased, honest and open discussion.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Insofar as scientific, skeptical inquiry becomes an ideology that admits of nothing else, raising kids in that atmosphere might be considered brainwashing. However, the parents I know who are freethinkers usually don’t close their kids out from exploring ways of thinking other than the parents’ own. In fact, they encourage it. Such parents, faced with a child who might want to explore the religions his/her friends embrace, might be tolerant of this without necessarily being affirming of it. Or supportive of it because the child was interested in it, not because the parent felt moved to go along.
There is a paradox, it seems to me, in the question that is being raised here. Can one be so open that one is closed? Can one so thoroughly embrace the idea of open inquiry that one labels as irrational anyone who comes to a faith based conclusion without evidence, and therefore does not respect the conclusions that person came to?
The converse can also be true. It can be seen in conservative religious people who have an extremely closed (often holy book based) viewpoint, who for instance push back on the secular humanist point of view, referring to it as secular fundamentalism (while they push their own religion-based fundamentalism). The paradox is that they are in essence claiming that freethinkers are closed because the freethinkers refuse to open themselves to the option of being closed in the way the religious fundamentalists are closed.
May 28th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Well put Joseph. I have lost count of the times I have been accused of having a closed mind simply because I didn’t lock in to someone else’s religious point of view.
The point remains, I suppose, is the, perhaps, artificial structure of the scenario as it is presented a fair ‘question’. Life in any society is not quite as black and white.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I have worked in education all my life and it seems to me that if education is to avoid brainwashing it must be based on the promotion of critical examination of whatever is being studied (and why). This in turn requires that people are as widely informed as possible (a task which is of course never complete) and have a wide range of skills which can be brought to bear in this examination. They will also bring this to bear on what is proposed here recognising the possibility they may decide to reject it.
June 9th, 2009 at 9:34 am
I can relate to the heady years when the faces on the poster. Well, mainly Mao, Marx and Engels; for once lenin’s leadership rode in, through the tortuous phrase -the vanguard of the proletariat – it was back to square one. It did for a time, regardless of lenin to Stalin, meant towards a new, “real” (Socialist) future – a sense of an end to poverty and the misuse of power and wealth. Now you might call that a form of brain washing, but the air was full of ideas of equality, and which, as an ideology appealed to many young people. It was this sense of belonging to something that would transcend the present differences, rather like, in form at least, a belief in a all encompassing heaven. It turned in to a rather squalid oppression and a form of social control that denied any freedom of thought; whereas ironically,it was that freedom to believe in a socialist utopia that was supposed to transcend capitalism. Well it didn’t and in its socialist state embodiment stifled free thought. And now we have no ideal future, on earth, to which we can all be at one and having experienced the collapse of the wonders of the free market with the untrammeled greed of arch capitalists, we are floundering around for a new belief to wrap ourselves in. Is it really, secular humanism? I once attended a talk on Thomas Paine given by the Humanist Society. I was struck by the seeming necessity to deny at any and ever juncture, religious belief. I eventually realised, and it wasn’t too long in coming, that these rational individuals, the so called “secular humanists”, were equally tied to their belief, rather than free from any dogma. Reason might be as cold as Immanuel Kant, but at least we can ask the question – “How is it possible?” This is a question i find liberating. How is evolution possible?; How is a transcendent God possible? That is not so much a secular Humanism, but an independent reasoning. I dont see why I have to start with God, I might end up with him, but I want my own intellectual pilgrimage, not one of any established dogma.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:54 am
This is a bit silly Jeremy. You know that brainwashing, in the common sense of the word, is the kind of process that happens in North Korean schools. Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling have big public profiles, and seek – as do all writers, yourself included – to convince their audiences. To describe this process as brainwashing is a fatuity not worthy of someone of your clear intelligence.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
`To describe this process as brainwashing is a fatuity not worthy of someone of your clear intelligence.`
But I didn`t suggest either of those people were brainwashing people.
And don`t you go suggesting I`m intelligent!
Tsk!
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
To me, “They know that their way of understanding the world is the right way, but they wish it were otherwise”, says it all. I wouldn’t want to have been responsible for my children believing of themselves either part of that statement, especially the second. To me, this clearly indicates brainwashing in the very real sense of it.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
They say they are damaged: isolated, and estranged by their upbringing. But were they “brainwashed?” This is the question.
Succinctly: Can a person be forced to “think critically?”
It reminds me of Rorty’s discussion of Orwell in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
To know more about whether or not Richard and Dan were brainwashed I would want to know more about what happened to them while they were “closeted away” during their teen years. I am guessing for the purposes of your thought experiment they were treated very well, but they were also very vigorously held to high standards of logic, evidence, coherence of inference from premises, etc. etc. but not otherwise threatened or harmed. Though it must be noted “closeted away” does seem to indicate restrictions on their social contacts, their freedom of movement, and their ability to comingle with their friends who they presumably enjoyed prior to their incarceration in “critical thinking school.”
I think it is probably incoherent to apply the term “brainwashing” to someone who comes to critical thinking of their own accord. I sometimes wish I could “simply believe” (about all kinds of things). It would make many aspects of my life much much easier. But I came to my current thinking entirely of my own free will. If I wanted to, I think I might be able to get myself on a path back to dogmatism though it would require me to give up a very large part of who I am. A kind of death if you will.
But if I had been “closeted away” and subjected to a rigorous program that built habits in me that led to various ideas about how the world is it is difficult to separate out the set of values: critical thinking, choosing theories that best fit the evidence, coherence of beliefs and separate it out from the fact that these habits were instilled in me via a system that smacks of social control.
Thus I am generally agree with Rorty, or at least what I take to be his position, that brainwashing is dependent on HOW beliefs are shoved into people’s heads and that it doesn’t really matter what the content of the beliefs are. Brainwashing is not about teaching people the wrong thing. It’s about teaching them things in a way that prevents them from coming to any conclusion but the one you want them to come to.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:14 am
It’s a very difficult topic. To call it “brainwashing” is a bit too much, that involves for me the presence of an elite that is not brainwashed and keeps us in ignorance. The case here is that we adopted one view over the world and we are teaching it to our kids thinking that this is the correct one. And we may be wrong!!! But how can we find out if we have no other alternative…
July 20th, 2009 at 9:35 am
First off, it can’t be “brainwashing.” Brainwashing implies inculcating beliefs according to epistemically illegitimate processes: in order for us to call something “brainwashing,” rather than just “learning” or “teaching,” we have to presuppose that there are some ways of acquiring beliefs that are better–more justified, more warranted–than others. Since we’re assuming that the scientific method is a good way of getting these beliefs, and Richard and Dan’s atheism is justified, they’re not brainwashed.
But are they abused? My first thought was that they couldn’t be, because you can’t abuse someone by telling them the truth. But this is false: if parents spent a long time telling their children, in graphic detail, about the horrors of the holocaust, or let them watch the BDSM orgies they participate in, this could well be a form of abuse.
What makes the difference? I think the only thing that can is the thought that there is something objectively good–worth teaching to our children, whether or not they immediately appreciate it–about looking at the world honestly and unsparingly, with a concern for the truth even when it hurts, in a way that implies (I think for many of us) at least agnosticism.
July 21st, 2009 at 9:57 am
[...] indoctrinating children with religion is a form of child abuse. But couldn’t secularism, as Jeremy Stangroom recently wondered, constitute its own form of indoctrination? Might the attempt to impart one worldview or another to [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:47 am
I think perhaps there’s an assumption involved here which isn’t addressed in the OP: that raising children as secular humanists necessarily involves raising them to be “restless and questioning.”
This certainly should be, but is not always, the case.
It is possible to teach the scientific worldview as dogmatically as it is possible to teach religion; the potential for those raised to entirely secular beliefs to become questioning, intellectually engaged persons will surely depend entirely on the quality of the teaching.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 am
Catherine
The problem with that claim is that it is vulnerable to an argument by definition.
In other words, defenders of secular humanism will simply claim that the kind of education you’re talking about isn’t secular humanist, because part of what constitutes secular humanism is a commitment to scientific rationality, which iself is defined in terms of the fact that every truth claim is subject to a restless scrutinisation.
I have some sympathy for your point, though. Certainly stuff that passes for scientific education can be precisely as you describe.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I think that Richard and Dan’s estrangement and isolation from their communities have more to do with the particular mode of parenting skills utilized by the parents to pass on their ideology, than whether the parents were Secular Humanists.The parents demonstrated fanatical tendencies and employed brainwashing to pass on their ideology to their boys. The author could have plugged Buddhism or Rastafarianism into the story and if the parents’ modus operandi was as described above, the results would be similar. It follows therefore that if a Secular Humanist functions in the same way that a fanatic does, forcefully pounding his or her truth into all within hearing, then that Secular Humanist operates in a way that fosters fanaticism. Brainwashing would be the step utilized by such a one to sustain the number of followers. But let me be clear, it isn’t Secular Humanism in general that poses a problem. It is the manner in which the individual practitioner of the principles of Secular Humanism operates that could become problematic.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Ah, but wouldn’t be doing the exact same thing using another belief system be brainwashing as well?
The point of the matter is that the brainwashing part is the morally ‘bad’ in this picture, but the belief system is rather innocuous. It was merely the method the parents used to share them with the children.
Anything can be brainwashing in the right hands.