Tag Archives: Read

Little Book of Humanism

August 24, 2020 humanistfreedoms

A timely new book by Humanists UK President Alice Roberts and Chief Executive Andrew Copson is to offer universal lessons on finding meaning, purpose, and joy in our ever more uncertain world.

The Little Book of Humanism, published on 27 August, shares over two thousand years of humanist wisdom through an uplifting collection of illustrations, stories, quotes, and meditations on how to live an ethical and fulfilling life, grounded in reason and humanity. The book quotes everyone from ancient philosophers like Epicurus and Mencius, through to contemporary humanist sources of inspiration such as Frozen and The Good Place actor Kristen Bell, the novelists Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood, and the playwright and poet Wole Soyinka.

It examines how humanity came to be, our unique place in the world, and why humanists reject religious explanations, before offering reflections on how to be good, how to live well, and how to think clearly. It emphasises the need to celebrate diversity and promote equality and why we should rely on science for the answers to many of life’s most important questions. Finally, it offers some particularly timely reflections on death and dealing with loss. It does all of this whilst drawing upon a cornucopia of humanist thought from many of the world’s greatest thinkers, accompanied by beautiful original illustrations.

Welcoming the publication of their book, authors Andrew Copson and Alice Roberts commented: ‘In the past, people were more likely to turn to religion during times of crisis than look to other sources of guidance. But there has always been an alternative – the humanist approach – and in today’s UK, where most people are now not religious, that alternative is more relevant than ever. We hope this book offers timely sources of guidance, comfort, and inspiration, in a way that has a positive and lasting impact on people’s lives.’

The book can be purchased from Waterstones, Amazon, Blackwell’s, and all good bookshops, with both hardback and eBook available at £7.99 RRP. It is published by Piatkus Books, an imprint of Little, Brown. Author royalties from the book go towards supporting the work of Humanists UK.

About the authors

Professor Alice Roberts is a writer, broadcaster, and President of Humanists UK. She is the bestselling author of eight popular science books including Evolution: The Human Story, The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being and Tamed: Ten Species that Changed Our World. Making her television debut on Time Team in 2001, she has become one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters and has written and presented a huge range of television series for BBC2, BBC4 and Channel 4, including The Incredible Human Journey, Origins of Us and Ice Age Giants, and several Horizon programmes. Her humanist ‘mini-sermons’ on Twitter have been liked and shared many thousands of times.

Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of Humanists UK and President of Humanists International. He has provided a humanist voice on many television and radio programmes and written on humanism for publications including The Economist, New Statesman, Guardian, Prospect, The Times and Buzzfeed. With AC Grayling, he edited the Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism and his most recent book is Secularism: A Very Short Introduction.

The views, opinions and analyses expressed in the articles on Humanist Freedoms are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the publishers.

Featured Photo Courtesy of: http://www.lbabooks.com/cover-reveal-the-little-book-of-humanism-by-andrew-copson-and-alice-roberts/

Americas, Canada, World

Books: Tom Rand’s The Case For Climate Capitalism

August 19, 2020 humanistfreedoms

Tom Rand is on carbon mitigation venture capitalist, business-owner, author and speaker. He is Managing Partner of ArcTern Ventures and sits on the board of a number of clean energy companies and organizations. He also developed Planet Traveler, a low-carbon hotel project in downtown Toronto. His first book Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit (2010) was winner of the 2011 Whitepine Non-Fiction award; his second – Waking the Frog – became a bestseller in Spring 2014; his third – Climate Capitalism: Economic Solutions for a Planet in Crisis is out now.

And yeah, it is worth reading.

Particularly as federal elections in both Canada and the United States seem to be rapidly approaching. And particularly if you could benefit from a pragmatic, mostly-positive and capable exposition of the economics and politics of carbon pricing. It is in the title, after all – Climate Capitalism.

First, – about pragmatism. It is rare to see the word so fondly,

Buy The Case For Climate Capitalism by Tom Rand With Free ...

deliberately and repeatedly used in books dealing with climate change, economics or politics. Perhaps it should not be a surprise since Rand holds a BSc in electrical engineering (U of Waterloo), an MSc in philosophy of science (University of London and LSE) and an MA and PhD in philosophy (U of Toronto). Rand is, no doubt, fully up-to-speed regarding the origins of pragmatism with Charles Sanders Peirce and all that this origin implies.

Indeed, Rand seems to be fully up-to-speed on all areas of the book: economics, climate science, politics, business ownership and being a thinking human faced with a planet with finite resources and a seriously-damaged environment. In the preface, Rand, a new father, states, “The prospect of hitting catastrophic tipping points in the next few decades bring more than sleepless nights – it makes having a kid a complex moral question. First, there’s the issue of bringing yet another person to our profligate emissions party. It’s uncomfortable (to put it mildly) to say climate change is as much a population issue as an environmental one. Having kids is no longer as morally benign – or even good – as it was in previous generations.“

Rand’s thesis is that carbon pricing is a good thing. That the planet needs it. And even if – all of us from economists and politicians and from billionaires to minimum-wage earners – we manage to take the pragmatic step of implementing sensible carbon pricing strategies, humans are still in for some tough environmental situations in the future. That sounds a bit glum – but the book’s subtitle is Economic Solutions for a Planet in Crisis. Rand delivers information that can be put to use now and in the near-future. Overall, Rand’s 200+ page book comes across as having an appropriate attitude.

Not coincidentally, having the an appropriate attitude is a perspective that Rand seems to want to recommend. Addressing climate change, and we might emphasize global population issues, are an issue of attitude. Rand’s book approaches the topic with a pragmatic, solutions-oriented and appropriate attitude. Rand says that climate capitalism is “about coordinating an accelerated response across the globe. How we might move from the level of independent (often bickering) sovereign political entities to something larger…” Note that Rand includes individuals in his consideration of “sovereign political entities” and sovereignty which he defines as making one’s own rules in one’s own interests.

Recommended Soundtrack for this post and reading Tom Rand’s The Case For Climate Capitalism.

Wondering about politicians who may be open to investigating solutions to a planet in crisis? Have a look at our page on Andrew West – one of several contenders for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada in 2020.

Citations and References

The views, opinions and analyses expressed in the articles on Humanist Freedoms are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the publishers.

Featured Photo Courtesy of https://www.tomrand.net/

Uncategorized

Books: Friendship by Lydia Denworth

August 2, 2020 humanistfreedoms Leave a comment

Lydia Denworth is a Brooklyn-based science journalist whose work is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A contributing writer for Scientific American and Psychology Today, she has also written for the Atlantic and the New York Times.

Friendship: The Evolution, Biology and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond was published by WW Norton & Company in 2020. Just under 300 pages in the hardcover, it fits snugly in the contemporary genre of popular science journalism. Denworth’s tone, like the book itself, is neither too-heavy nor too light.

The book’s introduction is titled “A New Science” – setting up Denworth’s stance for the book. Denworth asserts that science has, until recently, mostly ignored the question of friendship’s purpose. The book, Denworth states, is intended to “consider the visible and the invisible aspects of friendship.“

As is typical of popular science journalism, Denworth spends considerable time recounting the stories of scientists past and present and the studies that they’ve undertaken. That should not be taken as a criticism but as a compliment as the stories of researchers ought to be more-widely shared and discussed. Heroes are, after all built in the telling. In the first chapter of the book, titled “Fierce Attachment”, Denworth suggests that the new science of studying friendship was seeded in 1954 with the meeting of John Bowlby and Robert Hinde when they spoke at a meeting of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association. From the humanistfreedoms.com perspective – this is an excellent place to begin. Bowlby was an ethologist (ethology is the study of animal behaviour) whose final work (published posthumously) was a biography of Charles Darwin. Hinde was a developmental psychologist and zoologist who counted Jane Goodall as one of his students. Hinde had written that “‘it does not matter too much what you believe, for many different cultural beliefs bring meaning to believers’ lives (though differences in religious beliefs can lead to horrendous conflict). But what does matter is how people behave.”

Whether by intention or not, the influence of developmental psychology (and thereby the above-noted protagonists) is present throughout the book. The book’s chapters tend to progress through the developmental stages of life from newborns and infants early on to older adults at the back of the book. In the second chapter, Denworth introduces new work being completed to study the brains of babies and infants using fNIRS ( functional near-infrared spectroscopy) explaining that this technology uses light to study brain activity in people too young and sensitive to bombard in an MRI machine. Denworth’s exposure to this work leads her to the conclusion that human “experience matters on the order of minutes, not months.”

In the third chapter, Denworth explores the influence of friendship on health. In the healthcare setting, this concept may often be identified as social determinants of health and is an area that continues to see increased attention, particularly in elder care. Social determinants of health include a person’s social networks and engagement but there are humanist-oriented initiatives to widen that to consider the delivery of health-care itself. Consider The Gold Foundation’s Tell Me More program which attempts to build better connections and bonds between healthcare providers and their patients. Stated more simply – growing friendship between providers and patients.

The middle chapters deal with issues of youth and early adulthood. There’s a chapter titled “Middle School is about Lunch” and another “Digital Friendship”. Each chapter explores recent studies of friendship relevant to the stage of life. Chapter Five, “A Deep Wish for Friendship” includes noteworthy observations of primatology and animal friendship which acts as an interesting challenge to concepts of human exceptionalism. Yes, animals do have the capacity of friendship.

In the sixth chapter, “Digital Friendship”, Denworth reviews the work of “an affable Canadian who runs the Social Media Lab at Stanford“, Jeff Hancock. Hancock completed a meta-analysis of the effects of social media on measures of well-being from 226 papers over 12 years. Without giving away the plot, Hancock’s analysis resulted in six categories of effect: depression, anxiety, loneliness, eudemonic happiness, relationships and the delightfully final category of hedonic happiness (happiness of the moment).

Borrowing from Hancock’s categories, reading Friendship: The Evolution, Biology and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond was a genuine hedonic happiness of its own. It is a reminder that friendship (and so many other experiences in a human life ) does not need to be a mystery. “Our social lives have a backstory,” Denworth writes, “and it’s time that story was told.”

Citations and References

The views, opinions and analyses expressed in the articles on Humanist Freedoms are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the publishers.

Featured Photo Courtesy of https://lydiadenworth.com/

Uncategorized

Event: Webinar Book Series: Unveiled by Yasmine Mohammed

May 6, 2020 humanistfreedoms

Sunday May 17, 2020 – 3 pm EST

Unveiled

With Yasmine Mohammed

Canadian human rights activist, Yasmine Mohammed, advocates for the rights of women living within Islamic majority countries, as well as those who struggle under religious fundamentalism.

Her book, Unveiled, is a memoir/polemic that recalls her experiences growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic household and her arranged marriage to a member of Al-Qaeda. In it, she sheds light on the religious trauma that so many women still today are unable to discuss.

Yasmine Mohammed is an activist, writer, college instructor and the founder of Free Hearts Free Minds, an organization that provides psychological support for freethinkers living within Muslim majority countries, where the State-sanctioned punishment for leaving Islam is death.

To learn more about Free Hearts Free Minds visit www.freeheartsfreeminds.com.

References and Resources

https://centerforinquiry.org/speakers/mohammed_yasmine/

Americas, Canada

Book Review: There is No Difference by Peter Best

January 2, 2020 humanistfreedoms

According to the back cover of his book and his website, Peter Best is “a lawyer who has practiced law in Sudbury, Ontario for 43 years. Raised in nearby Espanola, favored with lifelong personal and professional relationships with indigenous Canadians, he brings a personal, literary and historical perspective to the greatest social crisis experienced by Canada today- the perilous state of its original peoples.”

What is the book? The long-form version of the title probably acts as the best summary of its contents: There Is No Difference: An Argument for the Abolition of the Indian Reserve System and Special Race-based Laws and Entitlements for Canada’s Indians. In a regular book review, we might investigate the overt arguments and contents of the book. Certainly the title contains enough potential for drama and controversy to whet almost any intellectual appetite. But that’s not what we’re going to do here. What we’re going to do, instead is feature, an underlying theme presented by Mr. Best.

On page three, he writes that when he was growing up in Espanola, “there was a sense that old religious and ethnic prejudices were hollowing out and being overcome, and that increasing social unity and equality was happening.” It is the first of many hints (and outright declarations) of an underlying theme of humanism to be found in the book. This is what we will consider.

How many books are currently published with an overt declaration of humanism or humanist values? More specifically, how many books are written about contemporary issues wherein humanist-based positions are asserted, explained, referenced and documented? These aren’t questions with precise answers. These are startled observations of an avid reader. I haven’t seen humanism asserted and affirmed so clearly and frequently in a long time. Water for the thirsty.

On page seven, Best writes…”the humanist assumptions were ones that emanated from the confident, busy, properous people we were then. They seemed to be shared by everyone, right to the political and economic top of the country. They highlighted what a civilized, progressive, ‘ideals in action’ society Canada was becoming.“

The book is written as a series of essays which, across 700+ pages, delves the matter outlined in the title in pains-taking detail. Frequently Best grapples head-on with various ideologies and asserts arguments and positions contrary to those from Canadian intellectual and political “elites” (Best’s term). The book is thoroughly referenced and widely sourced. The overall theme is that “somewhere along the way, liberal, humanist aspirations once common to our entire country have ceded to various forms of petty and chauvinistic ideological tribalisms and, with respect to our Indian peoples, to actual racial tribalism.”

And then again, Best asserts that he believes “that the vast majority of Canadians profoundly disagree with this trend towards further legal and social racial apartness between Indian and non-Indian Canadians. They want our humanist values – with their emphasis on equality and the rights of the individual over the rights of any racial group – respected, maintained and promulgated in all areas of society….why this rejection of 200 years of enlightenment thinking?“

The point to be made is not that all of Best’s arguments represent a clear, consistent and authoritative humanist approach to the topic. It seems highly unlikely, not to mention undesirable, that a singular humanist outlook should be asserted on any substantive matter. Nor should this article be read as an endorsement of every argument Best makes. Instead, Best is here approved on the basis of making an attempt to present a considered humanist-principled perspective on a hot and fraught topic.

Best makes an argument about his chosen subject that may be stated about any number of contemporary issues: “this issue is being driven and dictated by…a minority elitist theory of democracy, where on an issue of this importance the majority is being asked for and being offered no say.“

Peter Best has asserted his version of a humanist-informed opinion. More humanists need to step forward to assert similarly cogent humanist perspectives on whatever contemporary issue seems to require the attention.

Uncategorized

Freddy Redfin: The Story of Huntley Creek

December 25, 2019 humanistfreedoms

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Carp, Ontario is a village in the Township of Huntley lying in the western-most ward of Ottawa. As of 2012, the human population was estimated to be approximately 2000. The village sits on the edge of a geological fault running through the Carp River Valley know as the Carp Escarpment or Carp Ridge. Carp has been an Eastern Ontario centre for agricultural activities since the 1800s, perhaps best featured in contemporary events as the annual Carp Agricultural Fair. Close by the Diefenbunker, another well known local museum attraction, huddles underground – a persistent reminder of postwar fears of nuclear war. It is a bunker the politicians had planned to retreat to in the event of a devastating nuclear attack.

A group of Carp residents are concerned about a different kind of devastation – a devastation that is entirely local and entirely preventable. They are appealing the city’s decision to allow a Concrete Batching Plant at 2596 Carp Road. The group objects to the rezoning because they believe that the city has ignored a number of municipal and provincial planning regulations as well as the welfare of its citizens. The group’s main concerns regarding the placement of a concrete batching plant at this location are: significant increases in heavy truck traffic; significant air pollution and increase in hazardous airborne substances; contamination of groundwater; contamination of Huntley Creek and degradation of the surrounding area; detrimental impacts to homeowners who live adjacent to this site; detrimental impacts to the heritage cemetery that sits directly across the street and has done so for 160 years (well actually, long before there even was a street to be named).

“Freddie Redfin the Story of Huntley Creek” is the result of a few of the local residents in Carp to take responsibility to try to prevent the devastation of a precious local eco-system. It is a children’s book written by local Carp, Ontario resident and author Dan Mayo and illustrated by local artist Jana Rothwell to highlight this struggle.

In Huntley Creek, every spring, a spectacle of nature is seen as hundreds of redfins migrate back to their spawning ground. This creek has born witness to the redfins annual migratory spawning for millennia, long before Canada existed! The carcinogenic dust from the plant will settle into these clean waters and contaminate it with heavy metals and silica. This pollution will necessarily flow downstream and poison the redfins, their offspring and an enormous diversity of wildlife, including many threatened and endangered species that live in or rely on the creek and spring waters.

These waters are the spawning grounds for the River Redhorse, known locally as redfins due to their red-colored fins. The redfins come to Huntley Creek because of Bradley Falls, a large spring-fed waterfall that cascades into the creek creating a pool of clean, cool oxygenated water and riffle rapids. These specific conditions are essential for the redfins’ to spawn!

The redfins are a heritage fish in Carp, Ontario and have lived in Huntley Creek long before Canada or the City of Ottawa existed as legal entities. In fact, the Town of Carp owes its name to the redfin fish. When early French settlers first discovered the river that was to be named the Carp River, they marveled at the thousands upon thousands of redhorses and related suckers to be seen during their annual migration. These fish were called “carpes à cochon” by the French, though the fish they were witnessing weren’t carp at all, but redfins. In the end the name stuck, and the town of Carp was named for the river it was built next to. None of this would have happened without Huntley Creek, however, because this creek is the only reason these fish make the migration up the Carp River.

Canadian governments and officials, at all levels, ought to respond to the demands and concerns of local residents who know and love their communities and Eco-systems. Placement of a polluting industry next to a pristine creek and natural springs will result in devastation of that local system. The City of Ottawa’s decision to allow heavy industry has failed to respect and act on the wealth of local knowledge and heritage. The local residents – whether counted as 2000 humans or the far greater number of non-human residents – will be the ones whose habitat is devastated. Perhaps, like with the building of the Diefenbunker, the politicians think the best way to contemplate devastation is to hide from it.

To help protect Huntley Creek, consider a donation:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-carp039s-water-supply-save-huntley-creek