PROGRAMME
 PLEASE NOTE
We have temporarily suspended our monthly public meetups whilst we review our plans for the year. We apologise for any disappointment or inconvenience this may cause.  In the meantime you can keep in touch with what going on by following us on our Facebook Page. You might also like to check out our Activities and 'Big Issues' pages...
Programme
"Be kind. It’s really not complicated. Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t like done to you. We don’t need priests, monks, gurus, imams, shamans, or druids to tell us that. And enjoy yourself. Your existence is miraculous, you have won the lottery. Seize every minute
on this glorious planet. Run, laugh, shout, hug, kiss, dance, climb, taste, touch, and
swim while you can. For most of eternity, we are nothingness.”        Dan Snow

We hold our public meetings on the second Thursday of the month at York House [London Road, Stony Stratford, MK11 1JQ — shown here]. But not in August and December. At our meetings we discuss all kinds of issues, and always try to keep meetings topical and relevant to what's going on locally and nationally. The main topic areas are listed below. We occassionally have invited speakers, perhaps one a year.
Our meetings are held on the first floor. They are open to anyone who is genuinely interested in finding out more about humanism / secularism, and they are free to newcomers — and you get tea and biscuits!
Meetings start at 19.00 and typically conclude around 21.30. Please use the rear entrance so as not to disturb other activities that may be going on in the main hall.
Meetings Held in 2023 
12 Jan    What is Humanism, and why isn't it thirving (more)?
10 Feb    How to be a Good Person — and ‘Good Ancestor’ — without annoying Everyone   
09 Mar    Great Wome n — a selection from the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2022 to coincide with International Women's Day, 8th March.
13 Apr    What's Wrong with Inheritance? — a discussion about the different forms of inheritance and the rights and wrongs of leaving one's monety to one's descendants.
11 May    Artificial Intelligence: Should Humanists be Concerned?
08 Jun    Is Anti-Social, Non-Violent Direct Action Ever Justified? + AGM
13 Jul     This Awe-full World: living with wonder in times of uncertainty
14 Sep    [This Meetup was postponed to October, due to clash of dates]
27 Sep    AGM [held on Zoom]
12 Oct     Vegan, Vegie or Ominvore; does it matter?
 09 Nov    What's Gone Wrong with Democracy?
Meetings Held in 2022 [meetings held on Zoom; some Room & Zoom]
10 Nov  Critical Thinking -- Even Gran Norwegian Humanists Association
13 Oct  The Future of Humanism
14 Sep  Humanistically Speaking -- David Brittain (Editor)
14 Jul   Is it Time for a new Enlightenment? What Role should Humanists play?
09 Jun   AGM + Pivotal Moments: Things That Changed My Life (person, people, event, book or writing)
12 May  Social Media: friend of foe?
14 Apr  Hitch: Remembering Christopher Hitchens & his extraordinary life
10 Mar   Great Non-Religious Women (to celebrate International Women’s Day, Mar 8th)
10 Feb    Ethical Jury on a key contemporary issues, as in the Moral Maze
13 Jan    How do you Define Yourself? — Does humanism feature? / What does humanism offer / add?
Meetings Held in 2021 [meetings held on Zoom; some Room & Zoom]
Minutes of Meetings available on Request.
11 Nov   Intergerational Justice
14 Oct    The Importance of Dialogue
  9 Sep    Democracy: which is the best system? [We plan to focus on Proportional Representation]
  8 Jul      Humanism & Climate Change [Do Humanists have something special to bring to the table?]
10 Jun     The Enlightenment
13 May    The Wonders of Technology
   8 Apr     Bad Information & Human Rights
 11 Mar    Great Women [March 8th is International Womens Day]
11 Feb     Conspiracy Theories & Denialism: How much is social media to blame?
14 Jan     Ethical Juries
Meetings Held in 2020
Minutes of Meetings available on Request.
12 Nov     Great National Trust Houses: Built on Colonialism & Slavery?
  8 Oct       How Should We Treat the Past?
10 Sept    Unconscious Bias  [Susan Guiver]
23 Jul      Populism & Polarisation: Should we be worried?  [Alice Thwaite, Founder of the Echo Chamber Club]
11 Jun     Does the Covid-19 Cloud have a Silver Lining?
14 May    Simple Pleasures [Life in lockdown] -- informal discussion

Zoom Meetups Started in May 2020
  9 Apr     MEETING CANCELLED because of lockdown
12 Mar    MEETING CANCELLED because of lockdown
13 Feb The Climate Emergency -- what needs to change / what can we do?
The Global Crisis in a Nutshell
•    After more than two decades of detailed analysis the scientific consensus is that the world is facing an environmental disaster — climate breakdown, habitat loss, species extinction and depletion of some key resources — all exacerbated by population growth.
•    We’re seeing unusual and unprecedented weather patterns — a run of the warmest years on record [2018 was the sixth-warmest year since national record-keeping began in 1901; 11 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2004]; suffocating heat waves and prolonged droughts; immense hurricanes and tornadoes, polar ice sheet melting, sea level rise, and worrying falls in bird, insect and other wildlife populations. Some events have occurred with a ferocity or in places they haven’t been seen before;
•    In 2015, world leaders signed up to the UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. However, we appear to be on a path to reach 3-4°C, which will be catastrophic to all life on Earth. There is no Planet B.
•    There is a long time lag between society taking the benefits/generating pollution (that’s us) and the world reaping the consequences (future generations). “By the time we see that climate change is really bad, As Bill Gates has written: your ability to fix it is extremely limited... The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.”
•    Climate breakdown will affect everyone — it already is — but the main losers /casualties will be people in poor countries, young people and generations yet to come. [The recent migrant crisis will be as nothing if as expected we see more and more extreme weather events and a rise in sea levels...]
9 Jan On Stigma, Human Rights & Protected Characteristics

A tribunal ruled recently that ‘ethical veganism’ is a ‘philosophical belief’ and so is protected in law. At our first meeting of 2020 we want to explore this and other ‘protected characteristics’, along with stigma and human rights, and see what lessons we can learn from some recent cases where protected characteristics and human rights are in conflict — protests from Muslim parents in Birmingham, where their young children were learning about same-sex couples (haram in Islam); or the issue of a parent’s right to circumcise their child (over-riding the rights of the child); or the ritual slaughter of animals; or the right to wear full-face coverings in Western society.
But we will start with an examination of stigma, which is often associated with conditions such as mental illness, or having cancer or HIV, or being blind or have some other disability (especially where the person involved looks different / strange). Stigma is another form of discrimination, and it has consequences for the victim — people with mental illness can feel diminished, devalued and fearful because of the negative attitude society holds toward them. Indeed, many sufferers report that the prejudice they encounter because of stigma is nearly as bad as the disorder’s symptoms themselves.
Meetings Held in 2019
11 Jan  Values - where do they come from; why do they matter?"  [Mike Flood]
No definition of 'values' appears to be universally accepted — here are two suggestions: "a value is a belief upon which a man acts by preference”; values: "anything capable of being appreciated / wished for." Moreover, no-one has been able to identify a core set of values on which people from different societies and cultures can agree -- although this does not prevent frequent reference by major organisations and other authorities to the 'fundamental importance' of values. Mike Flood will introduce the topic.
14 Feb  The New Normal:life after Brexit  [introduced by Mike Flood]
How might Britain and British democracy  redefine itself and its place in the world after losing an Empire and separating from the comfort or clutches of the European Union? Right now we are a sorry sight: divided, directionless and lacking leadership. Our friends wonder what on earth has happened to us... At our meeting we explored what we have learned about ourselves after three years of bad-tempered squabbling, with suspect, often dishonest arguments tossed back and forth by Brexiteers and Remainers. We now know what Britain is not (‘strong and stable’); but is the alternative (‘for the many, not the few’) any more credible/workable?
14 Mar  Great Women[Team effort!]
Eight of our members have volunteered to talk about women who they consider ‘great’, and they explained their reasons. In the discussion we explored what ‘greatness’ means in practice and what if any lessons there are for us ordinary morals. There was also discussion of moral relativism (was Confucius sexist?); the difference between being ‘famous’ and being ‘great’; and whether it really matters that some ‘greats’ were not very nice human beings.
11 Apr  Media Bias[Mike Flood]
[Text to be added!]
9 May  Crowded Planet[Dave Patel]
[Text to be added!]
13 Jun  Climate Breakdown(Ethical Jury) [introduced by Mike Flood]
At our June meeting we looked at one of the defining ethical issues of our time, climate breakdown, and more specifically, what we can and should be doing about it. If scientists’ predictions are correct, we may not have very long before we reach a ‘tipping point’ when no amount of effort on our part will avert an environmental catastrophe.
We’re already seeing unusual and unprecedented weather patterns — a run of the warmest years on record; suffocating heat waves and prolonged droughts; immense hurricanes and serial tornadoes; polar ice sheet melting and sea level rise; and worrying falls in bird, insect and other wildlife populations. Some events have occurred in places where they haven’t been seen before and with a ferocity and consequences that are hard to take in.
11 Jul Great Art [introduced by Susan Guiver]
In previous meetings we have talked about people we admire and poems we appreciate but we had not then talked about paintings that move or inspire us. At this meeting Susan led a discussion of great art, by talking about some iconic paintings. She did this under four broad headings: the human form; the human face; the natural landscape; and painting as protest. This Self Portrait is one of Susan's favourites: it was painted in 1889 and may well have been van Gogh's last portrait. Today it is exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. One of the features that Susan says she finds particularly intriguing about the painting is the way that van Gogh makes his figure emerge from (or is that blend into?) the very similarly coloured background, as if he is not sure of his own identity.
12 Sept   Humanists UK's Convention 2019
At our September meeting Susan and Mike reported back on Humanists UK’s 2019 Convention, which took place in Leicester on 21-23 June. They gave an overview of the speakers and discussions, and focused in particular on two items — Professor Alice Roberts’ Presidential address on ‘Morals without Religion’, and a powerful motion at the AGM arguing that HUK should change the basic definition of what it stands for and “explicitly state that the natural world and humans are inseparable, and that actively respecting and caring for the Earth’s fauna, flora and environment are as important as any other ethical responsibility.”
The motion was defeated but it has led to quite a discussion within the organisation (which is on-going)... In her talk Alice showcased two 1955 radio essays by psychologist, broadcaster and humanist Margaret Knight, which stunned post-war Britain by suggesting that moral education should be uncoupled from religious education.

Other speakers at the Convention included Prof Sir John Curtice (on ‘Navigating a polarised society: is Brexit breaking British politics?’), Natalie Haines (‘A Woman’s War’), Christina Patterson (‘The Art of Not Falling Apart’), Adam Rutherford (‘On being human: an evolutionary humanists journey’) and Joan Bakewell (‘At the front lines of humanism’). It concluded with HUK President, Prof Alice Roberts and the AGM.
10 Oct Transhumanism 
Transhumanism is a movement that aims to “transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.”
Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, and they debate the ethical limitations of using such technologies. The most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.
14 Nov  War & Humanity
In the 2018 Reith Lectures, Professor Margaret Macmillan explored the “tangled history of war and society and our complicated feelings towards it and those who fight.” She assessed how wars bring about change in society and, conversely, how social and political change influences how wars start and are fought. And she discussed that dark paradox of war: that it can bring benefits and progress. She pointed out that: "We like to think of war as an aberration, as the breakdown of the normal state of peace. This is comforting but wrong. War is deeply woven into the history of human society. Wherever we look in the past, no matter where or how far back we go, groups of people have organised themselves to protect their own territory or ways of life and, often, to attack those of others.
Over the centuries we have deplored the results and struggled to tame war, even abolish it, while we have also venerated the warrior and talked of the nobility and grandeur of war. We all, as human beings, have something to say about war... We might never have had penicillin or radar or rockets when we did without the impetus of war. Women, who have so often been the objects of violence in war, have seen their position in some societies change for the better as the need for their involvement has grown.”
Meetings Held in 2018
11 Jan  - This Awe-Full World (living with wonder in times of uncertainty)
Mike Flood & SusanGuiver

8 Feb  - Is Democracy in Crisis Post Truth? (AC Grayling’s latest book)
Andrea Quayle + Book Group

8 Mar  - Vegan, Vegie, Insectivore or Omnivore: who’s right?
Mike Flood

12 Apr  The Sex Robots are Coming...
Jane Whild

10 May 'The Dark Side' (of the Universe)
Stephen Serjeant [OU]
Most of the Universe is invisible to us. Most of the matter is dark matter, and most of the energy is dark energy. For brief moments, the biggest outputs of energy in the Universe are in gravitational waves. This talk will describe some of what little we know about these dark sides to the Universe, and try to answer some deep questions such as: What would happen if you tried to drink a pint of dark matter? What would happen if you stuck your head in the Large Hadron Collider? What is the fate of the Universe, and the ultimate fate of the atoms in our bodies?
14 June  'What can Britain do about its Colonial Past?  
Daphne Soundy & Mike Flood

12 Jul      '2018 Humanists UK Convention in Newcastle'             Susan Guiver
Susan talked about what she learned at the HUK Convention in Newcastle, and Mike will report on the Atlantic Council's 360/OS (Open Source) Conference in Berlin which is examining a range of security issues raised by 'fake news' and disinformation.
13 Sep     'Great Lives'  

This was a joint effort from 8 of our members who talked about the lives of Tycho Brahe, Benjamin Franklin, Louis Pasteur, Linus Pauling, Dorothy Hodgkin, Richard P. Feynman, Jocelyn Bell Burnell & Brian Cox.
11 Oct    'The Women's Equality Party'                                             Jane Whild                
2018 marks 100 years since the first women in the UK were allowed to vote – 90 years since universal suffrage.  But why has suffrage not brought women equal representation in government, commerce or civic society? Humanists UK are actively campaigning for Human Rights and Equality; where does this intersect with the Women’s Equality campaigns in 2018? Jane Whild is an active member of the Women's Equality Party and an Ambassador for the 50:50 Parliament's Campaign to #AskHerToStand.
08 Nov  'Communicating across Cultures'                                       Tom Bulman
Tom gave us an overview of the work of the Weaving Trust, which is part of CitizensMK. Tom also said a few words about the work he does through WorkTree, which helps young people in the MK area. To set the scene, Mike Flood said a few words about culture and the dimensions of cultural difference.
20  Dec    Christmas Meal
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