Nine decades of progress in my lifetime
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 12
Issue Numbering: 2
Section: B
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 30
Formal Sub-Theme: None
Individual Publication Date: April 22, 2024
Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2024
Author(s): James Haught
Author(s) Bio: James A. Haught, syndicated by PeaceVoice, was the longtime editor at the Charleston Gazette and had been the editor emeritus since 2015. He was thought to have been the first investigative reporter in West Virginia. He won two dozen national newswriting awards and was author of 12 books and 150 magazine essays. He was also a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine and was writer-in-residence for the United Coalition of Reason. He died on Sunday, July 23 (2023), at the age of 91.
Word Count: 754
Image Credit: None.
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Keywords: civil rights movement, creationism, Daylight Atheism, Enlightenment, existentialists, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Great Society, human rights, Lyndon Johnson, Macbeth, personal freedoms, Playboy magazine, Progressive Party, secular humanism, sexual revolution, Supreme Court, Theodore Roosevelt, Trump era, U.S. Supreme Court, Warren Court.
Nine decades of progress in my lifetime
I’ll be 90 on my next birthday. My long life is sinking, shrinking, slip-sliding away. My wife is worse: bedfast, under hospice care. Soon, our world will end, not with a bang but a whimper.
Looking back over nine decades, I’m proud and pleased because secular humanism — the progressive struggle to make life better for everyone — won so many victories during my time.
When I came of age in the 1950s, taboos and bigotry ruled America. Gay sex was a felony, and homosexuals hid in the closet. It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. It was illegal to look at something like a Playboy magazine or a sexy R-rated movie — or even read about sex. Blacks were confined to ghettos, not allowed into white-only restaurants, hotels, clubs, pools, schools, careers or neighborhoods. Interracial marriage was illegal. Schools had government-mandated prayers, and biology classes didn’t mention evolution.
Buying a lottery ticket was a crime. Birth control was illegal in some states. Desperate girls couldn’t end pregnancies, except via back-alley butchers. Unwed couples couldn’t share a bedroom. Other puritanism was locked into law.
Now, all those strictures have been wiped out, one after another. Human rights and personal freedoms have snowballed. Society changed so radically that it’s hard to remember the old “thou shalt nots.”
The secular humanist crusade, a never-ending effort to help humanity, began its modern upsurge three centuries ago in The Enlightenment. Rebel thinkers began challenging the divine right of kings, the supremacy of the church, privileges of aristocrats, and other despotism. They envisioned democracy, personal equality, human rights, free speech and a social safety net.
At the start of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party sought many reforms. And women fought bravely for the right to vote.
Then, during my lifetime, wave after wave of betterment occurred.
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal passed Social Security pensions for retirees, gave unions a right to organize, provided unemployment compensation for the jobless and workers compensation for those injured at work, banned child labor, set a 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage, created food stamps and welfare for the poor, launched massive public works to make jobs, created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect bank depositors, and much more.
The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren transformed America: banning racially segregated schools, outlawing government-enforced school prayer, striking down state laws against birth control and mixed marriage, protecting poor defendants against police abuses, mandating “one man, one vote” equality in districts to stop sparse rural conservatives from dominating legislatures. The Warren Court gave couples privacy in the bedroom — which set the stage for a later ruling that let women and girls end pregnancies. Other subsequent decisions decriminalized gay sex, gave homosexuals a right to marry, and made gays safe from cruel discrimination.
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society leaped forward with Medicare, Medicaid, the Job Corps, Head Start, public radio and television, consumer protection, pollution curbs, senior citizen meals, the National Trails System and numerous other improvements. Major laws guaranteed racial equality.
Meanwhile, the historic civil rights movement made America honor its pledge that “all men are created equal.” Birth control pills freed women from endless pregnancy and triggered the sexual revolution against bluenose church taboos. Women’s liberation weakened male domination. Gays gained legal equality through historic breakthroughs. The youth rebellion of the 1960s still reverberates.
A 1987 high court ruling forbade public schools to teach “creationism.” Other progressive advances included marijuana legalization in many states, and the beginning of “right to die with dignity” laws.
Finally, the collapse of the Trump era and the disintegration of supernatural religion in western democracies are more victories for secular humanism.
Decade after decade, progressive reformers defeated bigoted religion and right-wing political resistance to wipe out hidebound strictures.
Barely noticed, humanist advances helped billions. War between nations has virtually ceased in the past half-century. In the 1800s, life expectancy averaged barely 30 years because of high childhood deaths, but now it’s over 70. Literacy and education have soared. Famines have almost vanished. Progressive values keep climbing.
We existentialists see the chaotic carnival of life — all the absurdities and idiocies. Sometimes we want to embrace Macbeth’s bitter lament that life is a pointless farce, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
But I know that’s only part of the truth. The marvelous rise of secular humanism in a single lifetime — greatly improving life for all — paints a much brighter hope for humanity. Let’s keep striving for more advances.
This article is adapted from a piece that originally appeared on Feb. 22, 2021, at Daylight Atheism.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Haught J. Nine decades of progress in my lifetime. April 2024; 12(2). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Haught, J. (2024, April 22). Nine decades of progress in my lifetime. In-Sight Publishing. 12(2).
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): HAUGHT, S. Nine decades of progress in my lifetime. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 2, 2024.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Haught, James. 2024. “Nine decades of progress in my lifetime.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 2 (Spring). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Haught, J “Nine decades of progress in my lifetime.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 2 (April 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime.
Harvard: Haught, J. (2024) ‘Nine decades of progress in my lifetime’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(2). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime>.
Harvard (Australian): Haught, J 2024, ‘Nine decades of progress in my lifetime’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Haught, James. “Nine decades of progress in my lifetime.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 2, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime.
Vancouver/ICMJE: James H. Nine decades of progress in my lifetime [Internet]. 2024 Apr; 12(2). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-lifetime.
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