On Thursday September 26, 2019 Humanists Victoria hosted a presentation by representatives of Sex Work Law Reform Victoria (SWLRV), each of whom is a sex worker.
Review(s) of: Sex, drugs and the electoral roll: My unlikely journey from sex worker to member of Parliament (book), by Fiona Patten, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen and Unwin, 2018 - 366 pages.
Review(s) of: Man's search for meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust, by Victor E. Frankl, Rider, Great Britain, 2008.
Australian Humanism had a powerful impact in the 1960s and 70s, but has been a receding force in recent decades. A better world, a better Australia, needs a better humanist movement, flourishing as a beacon of hope, reason and decency. We need to build a second wave of Australian Humanism focused on the issues of today.
What we are seeing today is a real evolution of racist sentiment. Whereas once we would have understood racism - I'm using racism and xenophobia interchangeably here - only in the sense that a lot of racist sentiment is directed at those who are not regarded as part of Australian society, who come here as migrants. While in the past racism typically involved the doctrinal belief in superiority, its expression today need not be predicated on a view of racial superiority. I would say that racial hostility, even if it's born of ignorance or fear, could still rightly be described as racist. You don't need to necessarily subscribe to biological racist theories in order to do or say things that have racist implications. In other words, you don't need to be a card-carrying member of an organized racist movement in order to engage in xenophobia or racism. I only mention this because I believe that in our public discourse today there still remains a great deal of resistance to recognising or acknowledging or labelling things as xenophobic or racist, because we have in our heads that you need to be an egregious moral character or essentially a Nazi in order to be a racist. And I don't believe that is the right approach to these issues.
The adoption by nations of universal human rights arose from the vision of those who were appalled by the tyranny of arbitrary, belligerent state sovereignty with its mass persecution because of race, ethnicity, and political or religious beliefs. The final impetus came from the carnage of two world wars. This gave inspiration to nations for a worldwide Human Rights revolution, by adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), following earlier human rights declarations by the US and France.
I received the final report of the Ministerial Advisory Panel on Voluntary Assisted Dying, and on the following Tuesday the long awaited VAD Bill 2017 (133 pages) was tabled in the Victorian Parliament. These events followed wide consultations over the past year, during which time I called at the offices of 49 MPs to ask them to pass the Bill so that, if assailed by unconquerable pain from prostate cancer in two years' time, I could legally request a prescription of a lethal drug to end my suffering.
At the Australian Humanist Convention in Melbourne in April, two 'humanist chaplains' spoke to us about their work as chaplains in a hospital and at a university. They were the very prominent and respected Lyndon Storey and Geoffrey Ballard.
The questions that humanism addresses stretch back to the Ancient world. Modern humanism draws on a rich and long intellectual legacy. 'History of humanism' looks back at this legacy, which includes Ancient Indian thought; Confucius; Greek philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes; the Roman Empire; Averroës; the Renaissance; the Enlightenment; and the last two centuries. In many countries, humanism became part of the mainstream during the second half of the 20th century. In Europe, religious belief declined. Many prominent 20th-century thinkers were humanists. Religion may have declined but fundamental religion increased in strength.
Review(s) of: Moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them, by Joshua Greene, Atlantic Books, London, 2014, pp.422.
Review(s) of: Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities, by Martha C. Nussbaum, Princeton University Press, 2012, xv + 168 pp. $27.95.
Nobody at this conference should disagree that freedom of expression is a political principle of fundamental value.
