David Warden
When James Croft spoke at Dorset Humanists in August, he said that the human needs which religion tries to meet don't simply vanish when someone becomes non-religious. They often go unmet. Those three needs, he suggested, are Belonging, Becoming, Beyond: A sense of belonging, the deep relationships with other people and a sense of your place within a community; becoming: the ability to learn and grow, aspiring to live more in line with our highest values; and a connection with something beyond ourselves. I felt a deep sense that all three of these dimensions were being met at the World Humanist Congress in Copenhagen. It was a joyous reunion, a celebration of our humanist values, a sense of belonging to a global family, and a connection, of course, with something much bigger than our individual lives. We hope you will be stimulated by our reports and pictures.
Our main theme this month is 'woke' or 'wokeism' – what it is and whether it is compatible with humanism. There is some timidity about tackling this subject in the humanist community at large, but here at HumSpeak Towers we think that it's too important to brush under the carpet. I hope you will agree that we have succeeded, as usual, in conducting the debate in a vigorous but respectful manner. But if not, you can let us know.
I was personally very sorry to learn of the death of Jim Herrick. He was an excellent writer on atheism and humanism and he spoke at Dorset Humanists in 2006 about how humanists deal with suffering. I think this was shortly after his partner died. I last met up with him at the World Humanist Congress in Oxford in 2014, when he gave me a signed copy of his book The Atheist Centre: Unbound by Cages (2012), which is a brief account of the pioneering Atheist Centre in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, which was founded by the Indian social reformer Goparaju Ramachandra Rao, known as Gora, and still run by his family.
If you like our articles, please share them on social media. Humanistically Speaking is a volunteer-produced, grassroots humanist magazine and we'd love to reach as many people around the world as possible. Thank you for your support! We loved meeting many of you in Copenhagen.
There are some good articles on wokism in this edition of the magazine. But for me they all seem to over intellectualise what it is. As I see it, it's a phobia - the fear of upsetting or offending a sub-section of society, usually a minority. The unreasonable/irrational backlash that often ensues when this happens is what causes the phobia. As humanists our thoughts and actions are directed by what we see as rational and fair. So we should stand up against wokism regardless of the backlash if the sub-section's case is not reasonable and/or rational.
Also just a little anecdote to provoke some thought on what might be reasonable or rational. A few years back I went to visit…
Surprised to read a comment on a humanist website praising Jordan Peterson. While he's right about some of the excesses of the Canadian and US left, he has become more and more extreme in his views: - In response to a report about a Unicef report on malnutrition in mothers in Africa, he blamed action on climate change: "Feature Not Bug: a billion starving women and children? Why? Higher food costs? Why? Higher energy costs? Why? Idiot anti-human apocalyptic doomsaying faux-moralist utopian globalist anti-industrial policy. Causing death. By starvation." He calls the UK government's Net Zero policy "idiocy". - He doesn't support gender equality and is a hero of the so-called "incel" movement. He seems to want a return to the worl…
I enjoyed the limerick!
Anyone who wants to see wokism in action should investigate Canada. To learn that cultural re-education camps are found in other country’s than China. In that major Commonwealth country, a court has ordered a practising clinical psychologist to go through a “sensitising programme” because of what he has put on the internet, or lose his licence to practise professionally.
Go online and enter Jordan Peterson The Daily Telegraph. Also, enter Jordan Peterson Off Script to find the interview with the Telegraph’s Stephen Edginton on You Tube.
Peterson has said: “As a professional, practicing clinical psychologist, I never thought I would fall foul of Canada’s increasingly censorial state. Yet, like so many others – including teachers, nurses, and othe…
Part 2
The new religions - such as climate change, global warming, inclusion, diversity and self-identification - seek to have expressing 'common sense' banned - or, to use the wokist word, 'cancelled'. Thus putting the inmates in charge of the asylum. Sorry! - putting the customers in charge of the mental health facility.
Russia and China are getting away with calling the shots because of the lack of cohesion in the West. Western governments refuse to tackle real problems, for example: halting the global trafficking of foreigners to Western countries for fear of being called racist, xenophobic, etc; very-well-paid workers going on strike week after week, and wrecking the lives of many people worse off than themselves; there i…