Godless Ethic in Hispanics: A Demand of Love
To Kamilo, Kamila and Karina for being present.
And to Jim White’s 65th Birthday.
By Dr. Jorge Piña
“Every dogma, every philosophic or
theological creed, was at its inception a
statement in terms of the intellect of a
certain experience”
Felix Adler
Let me start by saying that this talk today, in Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture (RYSEC), is a celebration of the Hispanic spirit in the United Stated and a tribute to the commemoration of the more than 500 years of the “Discovery of the Americas” by Christopher Columbus in 1492. This date is now celebrated on the Second Monday of October. In 1937, Columbus Day became a holiday across the United States but Columbus Day originated as a celebration of the Italian-American heritage and was first held in San Francisco in 1869.
Felix Adler
“In Hawaii Columbus Day is also known as Landing Day or Discoverer’s Day. Moreover, ‘Native Americans’ Day is celebrated in South Dakota, while Indigenous People’s Day is celebrated in Berkeley, California. “The date on which Columbus arrived in the Americas is also celebrated as the Día de la Raza(Day of the Race) in Latin America and some Latino communities in the USA. However, it is a controversial holiday in some countries and has been re-named in others”.
I wanted to have this conversation with you all in last month, specifically on Sunday October 14, my birthday, but that day was taken. It was proposed to me to give it today, in our dear Leader Jim White birthday. And I really don’t know if it was a wise move from the leader part and his influence and power in our society or that indeed the day was really taken. In any case I am happy to be here and to dedicate my words to my two wonderful children: Kamilo and Kamila and to my wife Karina.
To Kamilo for his courage to be here and enjoy it. To Kamila for his obvious love to use the microphone in the Joys, Concerns and Sorrows moment of our ceremony on Sundays Morning on any time she is given the opportunity to talk. And to Karina for accompanying us all, with love, every single Sunday Moning that we attend, that we come here.
My thesis is that, somehow, God is in the “gene of Hispanics”. By the way, Gregg Braden, in his book “The God Code” of 2005, sustains the premise that God’s name is literally encoded into every human body. I quote: “Beyond Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Native, Aboriginal, white, black, red, or yellow; man, woman, or child, the message reminds us that we are human. As humans, we share the same ancestors and exist as the children of the same Creator. In the moments that we doubt this one immutable truth, we need look no further than the cells of our body to be reminded. This is the power of the message within our cells.” The fact that the discoveries of the Hispanic Lands in the new hemisphere more than 500 years ago brought a culture, a language and the inscription of the word of God as a heritage are a testament to this vision. We Hispanics breathe, transpire, and let God to run freely in our veins. And it is the catholic faith that we follow with favor since then.
It was in the Dominican Republic, my country, in the Hispaniola (the undivided space of the Island from Haiti), where the first mass was pronounced and the first catholic cathedral was built. And the first university of the western hemisphere was established. The first hospital was built in Santo Domingo. One of the first concordats within state and religion was signed there too. Indeed Santo Domingo is the center of this new civilization since Christopher Columbus came to us from Spain in October 12, 1492. “Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of the spreading of the Christian religion”.
But more and more millions of Hispanics in the Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic), in the United States and around the world are “un-churched” searching for meaning alone, looking for a sense of community, longing for enduring connections beyond dogmas and liturgies.
I don’t know if this believing in God is so rooted in our reasons, thoughts, hearts and minds that will deny any opportunity to congregate and participate in different experiences such as the ethical movement and societies where there are not saints to pray to, a God to follow, and no irrational faith to hold on or sacred principles and given irrefutable truth to sustain ourselves.
Jacques Lacan
The fact that the ideologies of the past, the experience of the revolutions inspired by the theories of Marx in our Latin-Americans countries in the 50s and 60s, except in Cuba, condemned believing in God, putting religions as the opium of the poor, the opium of the people or the opium of the masses did not have any enduring and significant impact in our faith, in the extreme cases, our faith was transformed into a theological liberation faith.
Marx with God, God with the revolution for and to the people. Disarrays faiths with God and war. And in our youngest day we were atheist because for some of us, communism, Marxism and atheism were the same. The propaganda and marketing of capitalism told us that they were always the same and that they were always together. Imposing an ideology of intimidation and terror for everybody.
We know as a fact that according to our experience in the ethical society movement, within our principles and ideas, theists, atheist and non-theists can connect together and coexist in an effort of promoting a culture of peace and love with the purpose to put the human being in the center of our indomitable conquest for the responsibility of our existence in the searching for meaning. But I also know that my family, my mother and my very religious sisters will say that I might be going crazy. For them there is not a world without God and for them again and for many Catholics protestants, Christians Hispanic family will never put together “the impious” such as me now, as they call it, with the strict and faithful believers. They will definitely say this is the mad poet talking. Es el poeta loco que habla.
Christopher Columbus
You have to be kidding said my friend Joel Almonó, an Episcopal priest in Lawrence, the church where I usually go when I travel to Boston after the classes of my PhD in “Psychoanalysis and Culture” in the Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis, when I spoke to him of my joining the ethical society movement and my ideas to become a leader within the society. He thought of it as another delusional and transitional moment of my life equal to the one I had in the 90s when we created the International Metapoetry Movement (MIM) with the ideas of Freud, Lacan, psychoanalysis, surrealism and the Dominican Literature; nowadays MIM, after 22 years of existence, is the first international movement of the Dominican Republic, with co-creators, writers, poets and followers all over the world and with already five congress held in Santo Domingo, New York, Massachusetts, Venezuela and Spain. “A religious movement without faith or God will never prosper”, he finally said to me.
Three questions are important to ask to ourselves now in the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture (RYSEC): First, is the Ethical Cultural Movement, founded by Felix Adler in 1876 (136 years ago), as Jim White puts it one day in reviewing my approach to this writing, “ready to engage in expanded and sensitive outreach to those Hispanic who are open to developing an ethical life beyond theology?” Secondly, will we see one day officially Hispanic services given in our societies in the Spanish language of our other people? Because you are my people. I am the people of my people. No doubts about that. And finally, will the first Hispanic Society for Ethical Culture (HiSEC) be created in the United States in any time soon?
I have to continue by saying that my use of the word “discovery of the Americas by Cristobal Columbus” instead of the word colonization or extermination which if I use I will never be here today celebrating this extraordinary journey of Columbus, I might be joining the Taino Nation in the United States and the Caribbean as my many friends did, changing their name to tainos names, which I respect, or I will be asking for partition or revolution in favor or our indigenous and disappeared people.
I use it because if we have to be consistence with our word and with our believes. If My Word Is My Bond. “Dictum Meum Pactum”. And if I become fixated myself in a different word other than discovery and use the word of colonization I will have to become a warrior and fighter to re-establish the dignity of a lost race full of tradition and culture, which by the way were my ancestors. This is what we do, if we were to follow ideologies. We respect our founding fathers, for many of us with blood, hate and irrational demands.
Discovery is a poetic word for me. It is a romantic one. It means the invention of love, the revelation of the spirit, finding of the Self in other and a breakthrough for reasons in the mysteries of life . It invites us to reflect and dream of unconquerable places and islands. To dream on beautiful hidden islands on wild oceans. It is an invitation to discover ourselves in our more intricate purposes and goals of adventure. In this way we can become ourselves as Columbus ready to persuade and seduce the power and favors of other with the idea to fly and find other new worlds, new spaces, and new people.
That’s exactly what I want us to do in RYSEC to discover the new hearts, the wandering hearts of the Hispanic people and communities in the United States of America. To become and really be Columbus in this reaching out, in this of becoming one with other “to elucidate the best in other” because “The Place Where People Meet to Seek the Highest is Holy Ground”.
Sigmund Freud
Freud considered himself to be a Columbus by discovering the Unconscious. The Unconscious that according to Lacan is structured like a language. Freud thought that he discovered a new continent of the mind as Columbus did. In that sense Feud is Columbus of the Unconscious. He gave a new structure for the human psychic for people to find his or her own desire, wishes and lost infantile love and helps all individual, group and family to conquer their own fears, pain, traumas and anxiety through the method and theory of psychoanalysis.
But we are also human being of faith, rational men with or without liturgies or rites; men and women of dignity and integrity bound by a profound need of Belonging and creation with the purpose of join us all in a world of peace, prosperity and a meaning life. This is what we want. This is what we need. This is what we are looking for. A life together to grow and educate our children and friends under the same roof of knowledge, intelligent guidance and intelligent conversation, communion of love, favoring art and culture and continuing help for each other.
For these ideas, mission and vision I will go beyond the oceans as Columbus did to establish and conquer a new territory for all ethical societies within the American Ethical Union (AEU). And the creation of the first Hispanic Society for Ethical Society in the United States is a demand of love because as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote: any demand, between need and desire, is a demand of love. And isn’t love what we do and have here at RYSEC and in all societies of the “American Ethical Union”. So, let’s give this love to many other in their own languages.
Now the endless question will be: can Hispanics have a “godless ethic”, as a religion, and nurture it as a permanent devotion in their life forever?
Thank you.
_______________
Pronounced in the 4th day of November, 2012 in the “Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture”, Bronx, NYS-USA, as a platform, initiating the foundation on this day of the Hispanic Movement for Ethical Culture in the United States and in the world.
Dr Jorge Piña
About Dr. Jorge Piña
Dr. Jorge Piña is a poet and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York. He is the author of 6 books of poetry. In 1990 he founded the International Metapoetry Movement (MIM). He is a member of the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture and a graduate of the 2012 Summer School of the American Ethical Union (AEU). Dr. Piña lives in Riverdale with his wife Karina Rieke and his two children: Kamila and Kamilo. Dr. Jorge Piña is currently a doctorate student in the Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis for the PhD program in Psychoanalysis and Culture.
Dr. Jorge Piña is a poet and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York. He is the author of 6 books of poetry. In 1990 he founded the International Metapoetry Movement (MIM). He is a member of the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture and a graduate of the 2012 Summer School of the American Ethical Union (AEU). Dr. Piña lives in Riverdale with his wife Karina Rieke and his two children: Kamila and Kamilo. Dr. Jorge Piña is currently a doctorate student in the Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis for the PhD program in Psychoanalysis and Culture.
In Spanish: http://my.vcita.com/jorge.pina
