Fabrizio Lopez de Pomar on Publications of Peruvian Humanists

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/11/11

Fabrizio Lopez is the Editorial Fund Director for the La Sociedad Secular Humanista del Perú. Here we talk about Peru, Humanism, atheism, psychology, and critical thinking. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Fabrizio Lopez from Peru. We got connected through Piero and Adrian. I interviewed them at the World Humanist Congress (Humanists International) in early August. It was sort of a rushed interview, but we got some really good content because I don’t think Peru has been covered enough in the international humanist landscape. So, I think getting some of these interviews out and, maybe, giving some funding would be helpful in its own small way. Also, the articles will just be online forever. So, that’s also another help. 

That’s my becoming involved with the Peruvian group and also being introduced to you. How did you become involved with the Humanist Association of Peru?

Fabrizio Lopez de Pomar: First, thanks for this opportunity. I really appreciate your attention in Peru. Thank you very much. Well, about my involvement in Humanism in Peru, some years ago, I published my undergraduate thesis in Psychology. My thesis was about magical thinking in Psychology; in students and in professionals in psychology. So, after my publication, Víctor García-Belaúnde, I know you know him, invited me to participate in this organization because he realized that in my thesis and in my talks. I was committed to spreading scientific thinking, humanist values, and fight against pseudo-science.  So, I think my thesis was the opportunity to get involved here in the organization. After that, I participated in different projects. Nowadays, I’m one of the directors, but I will always be grateful to Victor because he saw some potential in me. Since then, I’ve been involved and really committed to trying to spread the humanist values and the scientific thinking in a country like Peru. In a few moments, I will give more details about what it means to spread humanism in a country like Peru. 

Jacobsen: One thing I notice about, typically, global South humanists, generally speaking, is a hardiness. In the sense that, they’re dealing with a much more difficult circumstance. I don’t mean simply on socioeconomics or quality of life relative to other countries. I simply mean being in much more religious societies and having to stake one’s claim of intellectual territory and social territory in that context, much more difficult. And those who survive that, don’t get beaten down too much to stop, they come out much more steadfast in their ability to withstand the assaults from every angle in a society. 

Lopez: I agree. For example, if I want to develop some more about Peru, trying to spread the humanist body in Peru, it makes us acknowledge that this is a country with a fragile democracy. I’s a culture that is practically religious in its entirety. So, non-believers make up 6% right now. Only 6% of us are non-believers; we don’t have any religious beliefs. So, this implies that magical religious thoughts predominate. As we know, this magical thinking correlates with extra scientific beliefs and challenges critical thinking. So, on one hand, we have this fragile democracy – and just for the record here we have had six presidents in the last seven years.

Jacobsen: Oh my Gosh!

Lopez: I repeat; we had six presidents in the last seven years. Imagine that. So, the discontent with the governmental authorities is very high. It’s widespread. Trying to write about democracy, it’s like wishful thinking trying to convince people. 

Jacobsen: You have our prayers from Canada. [Laughing]

Lopez: [Laughing] I frequently read national newspapers and international magazines as part of my job as a researcher. I want always to be updated about current situations in my country and the world. So, we can listen to or read that analysts pointed out that something that may be obvious is that it’s becoming hard to believe in democracy because it does not deliver results from the perspective of people who don’t like democracy. So, yes, in this region, Argentina, for example, we will have the presidential elections in a few weeks. So, I mentioned that our democracy is fragile. We have a lot of work to do trying to regulate this situation trying to play a role trying to build a bridge between the scientific literature and how to understand politics here, how to help society to cooperate to try to enhance their critical thinking and also the empathy. 

As a psychologist, I believe that this is my perspective. I believe the work lies in training the new generations to master rationality and empathy in such an ambiguous world that requires individuals who can tolerate frustration, ignorance, and imperfection of human institutions. That’s why one of my personal projects, this free talk that I try to spread is called “parenting for the future of humanity.” In this talk, I present humanist values in a way and try to draw a guideline, a practical guideline to how to use some parenting styles to address our current problems, especially our global risk or existential risk. This risk that will be a threat to humanity in the long term. So, what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to look at different ways to raise awareness in a society, where, I will repeat the magical religious thinking that predominates.

Now, our last report said that, as I mentioned, non-believers make up 6%. So, it’s difficult to talk about value. I try to talk about moral values and spirituality with a nonreligious foundation. It’s difficult to talk. I started studying magical thinking 10 years ago. So, on the road, I try to improve my personal skills and my psychological skills to reach people, at least the Peruvian people with this culture, trying to understand their magical thinking, but trying to change it for this scientific thinking with the hope that this can help us to realize that democracy also needs a lot of critical thinking to learn to how to assess different sources of information. I don’t want to talk a lot. So, this is the main challenge that as a humanist we have here in Peru.

Jacobsen: How are humanists slandered in Peru? In other words, what are the epithets used? What are the terms used by religious demagogues to fearmonger about humanists?

Lopez: If I understand it right, what do the non-humans call us?

Jacobsen: Yes, in the sense, they want to keep their followers away from you and to not think about the issues of rationality, humanist values, and so on. I’m relating this more to a North American phenomenon where people might get slandered as secular humanists, might get slandered as demonic. That’s a little more extreme in the example, but those examples exist. Immoral and amoral, things of that nature. 

Lopez: Yes of course. Those are labels that also are used against us depending on the religious perspective. Some use demonic; we’re demons, but depending on the religion. Where I found more resistance is when we are trying to raise awareness about the importance of pure experts in one topic, and what I found is a lot of distrust in authorities, a lot of distrusting of scientists. Of course, from my psychological point of view, there’s a lot to do about learning to trust again in authorities. It’s like when you broke up in your relationship and you swear that you are not going to believe again in love, like, “Love is bullshit. I don’t believe in it anymore.” You have to learn to trust again. You will have maybe all reasons to trust forever in a relationship again, but trying to grow psychological means to learn to trust again. Even though, people can fail you again. So, from a sociological point of view, our society needs to learn to trust again. This is from my point of view. That’s what I want to do with my research building. I’m planning to apply for a Ph.D., trying to learn how we can use our best knowledge and psychology to make societies more cooperative, how to raise not only awareness but also how to enhance our self-knowledge and a lot of variables that I want to study to make us not only more able to think in a rational way, but also to improve our empathy.

I have some hypotheses. I want to try in my research field. but I think that we are very disconnected nowadays. It’s hard to believe in other parties. Sometimes this work is very discouraging for me, but I’m more optimistic. I think that if we keep this exercise of being around people like us who really want to improve things and with a lot of creativity. We can, maybe, come up with something new and try to improve things. Here in Peru, what I’m actually doing is as I mentioned before, spreading these talks about parenting for the future of our species, but in the next weeks; I’m going to give this talk to a very big school here. So, I’m going to talk with the professor and with the teachers. So, for me, it’s a great opportunity. This is a religious school by the way, but, for me, it’s a great challenge to try to spread our values or humanist values in a way that I can convince them and present enough arguments compelling them to try to consider that we can build a better world without religious tales. So, this for me is one of my principal objectives in my life, the purpose of my life: to build moral values without religion. 

Jacobsen: In the 2021 census for Canada, the national statistics for demographics on religion, and the belief in Christianity shrunk rapidly since 2001. It was, as of 2021, about half of the population. Now in Canadian Society, those halves don’t take religion seriously anyway. So, even though, it’s a large portion of the population. It’s not a sincere threat to the sociocultural fabric and can be beneficial depending on the values taken into account because there are inter-faith, inter-belief efforts for social causes; the things of this nature.  In Peru, as you were noting, it is overwhelmingly religious. How seriously do Peruvians take their religion? Since in Canada, it can be a mild political tool. In Peru, is religion a political tool? 

Lopez: Yes, I think that’s the short answer. Religion here is a political tool. Religions participate in the political life. So, that’s how seriously Peruvians take religion. It’s part of life. It’s part of political decisions. You can’t be a politician here and say that you are not a nonbeliever, then you are going to lose forever. So, you have to hide your atheism. In my case, I don’t hide my atheism. If the opportunity comes, I say, “I’m an atheist,” especially in the field. I want to contribute a little bit that is moral. The moral field or maybe you can call spirituality, the natives of spirituality, how to build spirituality grounded in science and psychotherapy. By the way, I try to spread knowledge from psychotherapy, which I think is a field that deserves more attention if we want to build a society without religion. So yes, I think that here in Peru; we Peruvians take very seriously religions in all decisions and that’s also why it’s very challenging here to try to propose different points of view without religion. 

Jacobsen: Sure. So, for the Peruvian humanists, you have a publication. So, how did those get started?

Lopez: I think was some couple of years ago when we realized that we need to spread these ideas and these values in different ways besides talks or some small or medium events. So, we realized that we needed another tool. That’s when we created this editorial fund to generate our own books and journals. We have two journals; Futuro Hoy and Revista Humanista. The first one is about how new technologies are changing our lives in these societies. So, in that journal, we focus especially on technology and – let’s say – social psychology, for example. The other journal, Revista Humanista, is totally focused on spreading humanist values. We try to choose topics that we consider important for the moment. Our publication is about democracy. So yeah, that’s how we create this tool because we need to spread more of these ideas and we always need more hands and more minds that want to help us try to move these ideas and these values. It’s not always easy to find authors and writers that want to collaborate with us. So, that’s another challenge if I may say. 

Jacobsen: How are the publications themselves presented? Are they print and online or online only or print only?

Lopez: They are only online.

Jacobsen: So, the expenses actually are reduced in light of that. 

Lopez: Yeah, those are free journals for the public. They’re free for people. 

Jacobsen: Are there other secular or atheist or agnostic or humanist or ethical society groups that you coordinate or collaborate with in Peru?

Lopez: We have our other organization; APERAT. It’s an organization of atheists in Peru. So, Henry maybe is a name that you may be or maybe someone that you met…  He was in the World Congress event with Adrián and Piero. Henry is the president of the Peruvian Association of Atheists (APERAT), this association of atheists in Peru. We work together in almost every event, but, as far as I know, they don’t have a journal or anything like that.

Jacobsen: So, for the publications and the communities, those two are it.

Lopez: Yes, as far as we know. Also, some books, we publish it from our editorial fund. I’m actually working on another book. I recently published a book about short tales. It’s a science fiction, but, now, I’m working on a book about magical thinking; a set of essays about magical thinking, astrology, conspirational thinking, and supernatural beliefs. It is a product of my 10 years in this field. So yes, we’re planning to publish this book from our editorial fund. I hope we can publish this book and have some attention.

Jacobsen: That’d be wonderful. I mean we certainly we’ll have that in the article. I mean when I looked around for humanist publishers, there’s one in Canada; it’s small. It’s had its ups and downs. So, the reach is limited. There is one in Norway. However, the Norwegian group is massive and gets government funding. They may be the most well-financed humanist group in the world, maybe, outside of Humanists UK. They just have community, public support, legal support, and financial support on their side. So, it’s a much different picture for them to be able to have a platform. However, when I talk to the main person for that publishing platform, their language is only Norwegian. So, it’s limited in its reach. I’m assuming the national language is either Spanish or Portuguese in Peru. So, that’s the language that you’re going to be writing these journals in as well. So, that’s another thing if people are reading this. If they have the time and effort, they could reach out to offer translations of articles to help bring in traffic from a more international audience or a Spanish, non-Portuguese speaking audience.

Lopez: Yes. Something we do for our journals is to ask for foreign authors’ permission to translate their articles into Spanish. And of course, we publish everything in Spanish. I think the biggest challenge for our journals is the financial topic. This is a job for which there is no financial compensation, at least for the moment. So, this affects the frequency of production as you can imagine. I think that’s the biggest challenge. Well, the other one is trying to gather enough authors and writers who want to collaborate with us in Spanish. When we don’t have Spanish contributors, we look for it outside and we translate some articles. That’s our current situation. 

Jacobsen: I can entirely sympathize. I’ve done lots and lots of article writing and interviews for free. I mean just massive amounts of time and effort and focus and coordinating and networking for the international communities of just atheists, agnostics, Satanists… every one you can think of. It’s really a fulfilling work. Yet, to your point, it’s very time-consuming without monetary return. So, you have to become very creative in the ways in which you generate income while partaking of this international community that doesn’t have church tithing or mosque zakat, land grants or bursaries, etc. It’s a much different situation. So, the fact that you are surviving and doing well and getting publications up entirely out of volunteer effort basically, is a testament to the Peruvian humanists and atheists over there.

Lopez: All for the cause. 

Jacobsen: [Laughing] Yes. How can people help? How can they donate time, money, skills, expertise, you name it? 

Lopez: I think honestly, first of all maybe money. I think that will help us a lot to gather more Peruvian professionals, very talented people who can help us with some compensation. So, I think money for me the first thing that can help us a lot to improve our situation here. And of course, new hands or new minds are always welcome, but trying to put in order, I think the first place is some financial help. I think that we need to improve our marketing area. We can call it that way. We need to become more visible to our society, to our own Peru Society. I think that we are not known yet as much as we would love to be. So, that’s something that we discuss in our group of directors, our directory, about how can we be more available to society and I think we need to invest more in sharing, like for example, these kinds of interviews or sharing more about who are the people behind humanist in Peru. I think that we are not doing so much in that line. So, I think that we are missing opportunities to say to the Peruvian Society, “Hi, we are a different option in the public debate from non-religious explanations or points of views.” I also think that financial support can help us to finally do something about this marketing issue. I don’t know if I’ve expressed myself clearly or if what I said makes sense. 

Jacobsen: It does. Fabrizio, thank you very much for your time today. 

Lopez: Oh, thank you, Scott. I really appreciate it. I hope we can talk more.

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