21st Century Network

Global Warming

2008-04-11T13:16:00.001Z

We are now holding our meeting on Global Warming on Tuesday, April 29th 2008 at 6.30pm. It will be held at the premises of EnlightenNext in Islington where we held our successful meeting in January this year. Those of you who attended will know what excellent premises they have there and how welcoming they were.

We are all aware that climate change is here. Everyone can choose to make a difference just by considering the options they have in every day life. What should we be doing? What should we not be doing?

We have an impressive array of speakers lined up to join us and these include,

Nathan Allen who will speak about his experience as a scientist and an artic explorer of the impact of global warming on the artic.
Mike Granville will then talk what can be done about it at city and regional levels and he will site the transitional village initiative
Bremley Lyngdoh Founder and CEO Worldview Impact, a social enterprise working to mitigate climate change and flighting poverty.
Suzy Edwards a Sustainability Consultant who Chairs Camden Climate Action

UK Aware will also be there and will have information about their LondonAware08 Expo on Saturday and Sunday May 10th and 11th 2008 and to be held at the Barbican. They say of it,

Join us on April 29th to discuss one of the most important issues of our century. You can register here .........

Humanism In Guyana

2007-06-07T07:54:00.000Z

One of the new members of 21st Century Network, Gareth has written asking if we would be interested in the work he and others are doing in developing humanism in Guyana. I said that is something we would be keen to discuss and help with as the problems facing Guyana are huge and humanistic principles all important.

Guyana is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Chronic problems include a shortage of skilled labour and a deficient infrastructure. Until recently the government was juggling a sizable external debt against the urgent need for expanded public investment.

Gareth tell us - There's a huge and untapped constituency for humanists, plus people who probably are humanists but just don't know it yet, to do great things. The likes of CAFOD, Christian Aid etc do some terrific work - but we could do better. Environmental Humanism Guyana is an opportunity for humanists to actually do something, and bind us together whilst we're at it.

The organisation Gareth is involved with - Environmental Humanism Guyana - seeks to apply common sense, proactive environmental concern and a Rationalist approach for Guyana. This includes,

Acceptance of moral responsibility - where it becomes difficult to agree the correct way forward, then agreement that common sense plus a humanist instinct should guide us forward. Ideals are a good thing - inflexible dogma is not.
Realisation that fighting back from the precipice of environmental catastrophe is a priority.
Nurture environmental initiatives in Guyana.
The recognition that natural resources cannot be separated from the economy, is key to the reduction of poverty, and the establishment of a sustainable economy.
Society needs to cross racial lines, whichever cricket team one chooses to support.
Protecting the secular nature of society.
Respect for religion, whilst being freed from its demands.
Evolution over revolution.Humanism is a worldwide movement, based on Rationalist thought.

Guyana is a unique country with its particular strengths and weaknesses, and Env Hum Guyana is tailored to its needs. It is time to try something new.

Gareth tell us - We seek to create a group of people who understand and believe in environmental humanism as a way forward for the people of Guyana.?

They have developed a website which you can visit here ...

Climate Change & Human Values

2007-05-27T08:42:00.000Z

The G8 Summit is coming up in Germany on June 6th to 8th. That has direct relevance to the ideas of 21st Century Network because that summit will be discussing climate change and all the signs are that president Bush will oppose measure to halt CO2 emissions that is wanted by many others and required to slow down global warming. President Bush's links to the oil industry and the fundamental Christian right in the US is a major problem for humanists who want human and planetary values placed ahead of dogma and commercial interest.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged the G8 summit of the world's top industrialised nations to take measures to combat climate change, warning that inaction would be costly. In a statement before the G8 summit in June at Heiligendamm in Germany, Ban said the eight participating nations should "devise and implement a long-term global framework to tackle climate change that addresses the needs of all countries".

There will be major demonstrations at that Summit and information can be found here ?

Power Of The Internet & Meet Up

2007-05-24T10:11:00.000Z

One man to use the Internet as a method of political and social action was one of the democrat runners for the democratic presidential candiadte in the 2002 elections. Dean never became the candidate but was for a time its front runner. His campaign slowly gained steam, and by autumn of 2003, Dean had become the apparent frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, performing strongly in most polls and outpacing his rivals in fundraising.

Dean achieved this with the help of Meetup.com and hundreds of bloggers,

"We fell into this by accident," Dean admits. "I wish I could tell you we were smart enough to figure this out. But the community taught us. They seized the initiative through Meetup. They built our organization for us before we had an organization."

Meetup is a Web tool for forming social groups. In early 2003, Dean himself was lured to an early New York City meetup where he found more than 300 enthusiastic supporters waiting to greet him. Meetup quickly became the engine of Dean's Internet campaign.

21^st Century network is also using meet up because of its powerful networking capability.

Is Fundamentalism New?

2007-05-22T06:30:00.001Z

Here is one message I received as a result of us starting up 21st Century Network. I have also added my reply. An interesting debate!

Message
What do you mean, the "growth" of religious fundamentalism? Hasn't it always been a force to be reckoned with throughout the centuries? The Cathars, the Huguenots, whole Latin American tribes, the Armenians, were slaughtered in the name of some belief or other. It is just that we are more informed than ever, and react quicker, but this is nothing new! The lethal combination of ignorance & intolerance unfortunately rules a large part of the world, Eastern and Western bigots are brainwashed by politicians dressed in robes...

Reply
You are right religious intolerance has always existed. The Cathars suffered terribly at the hands of a Church using power to maintain the status quo. I think what is different now as Karen Armstong argues in her book "The Battle For God" is that fundamentalism today uses the concept of "reason" to argue their traditional case. Before the enlightenment then belief was based on custom and myth. Today people use reason in a way that creates irrational intolerance. It is this that we oppose - and this goes for the secular extremists too - the free market international gloablisers who impose an economic religion on people in the name of reason

Most of this reason is suspect and is often no more than a projection of fear or self-interest. What we hope to do is encourage those who believe in tolerance, with any religion or none, to come together as a cultural force to act as an overwhelming counter force to this because if we do not then our freedoms are in danger and our life diminished.

First Meeting

2007-05-21T08:07:00.000Z

21st Century Network held its first meet up last week. It turned out to be very successful. People there got to know each other and everyone was keen to see the group develop and expand.

One member volunteered to help make contact with possible new members and we also agreed to draft out a set of principles and objectives for the group. We also agreed that we would like to see 21st Network groups start in other cities in the UK and internationally as well. So all in all it was a great outcome.

2007-05-19T18:50:00.000Z

21st Century Network now has a group on the Meet Up web site with over 70 members to date. We would love you to join us if you believe in these principles and wish to strengthen the humanist philosophy contained here. At the moment we have started a London group but hope to start others both in the UK and internationally. We want to bring those together who want to start a new world where diversity is valued.

We hope to hold regular meetings and events and also through the calendar give you information about other events going on in London as well. Our next Meetup will be on June 14th where we hope to further discuss the activities of the group and how we can expand and have an influence. It would be great if you could join us there but your support online is also valuable to us.

Progressive alliance ......

2007-04-06T07:17:00.000Z

Humanism has to be both rational and understanding. This means understanding that rationality should still be the organising principle of our actions but also that at an individual level it is not irrational to find a personal way of understanding and coping with uncertainty and change. Those who seek inner knowledge and self-discovery are not those who take a dogma and try to enforce it on others like the fundamentalist and arch moderniser. They are people who create within themselves a way of understanding the world from their own knowledge. They have a value base as does the secular humanist but one that does not preclude self-doubt, enquiry and rational discourse – something the fundamentalist and arch moderniser does not understand.

So the new progressive alliance of the 21st century has to be a humanistic one – but one that embraces those who seek both self-knowledge as well as external enquiry. In time, such an alliance will have a positive impact on both religion and politics leading to religion becoming more personal and less organisational and politics being more personal but yet again based upon values around which choices can be made. For the humanist, this is the imperative of the 21st century.

To achieve this humanists must become a part of the cultural change that makes all this possible both at a community level and at a global one so that such alliances of humane progress can take root and help us survive the 21st century as a human race.

Changing cultures .......

2007-04-05T06:24:00.000Z

The impact on this on religion, politics and culture will be profound. Already the alliances of the 20th century are breaking down. Political parties are almost indistinguishable from each other as the seek to show how they can best manage a modernising economy rather than having a set of alternative values from which the electorate can make a reasoned choice. The traditional established religions of the last two centuries have been in decline for some time with falling membership and attendance. And our cultures are becoming more diverse leading to both increasing cosmopolitanism and parochialism at the same time – a contradiction that has the potential for disharmony and conflict.

The challenge for humanists and those with humanist values is to inject some cohesion into the chaotic and uncertain culture of change that surrounds us like a whirlwind. The danger is that humanists will get sucked into the old debate and tensions and as if the 20th century is no longer over. Rather than create alliances with those who hold similar values of compassion and self discovery, they may fall into the old trap of attacking all those who do not sign up to a 19th century rationalistic perspective. If they do then they will end up joining forces with the very movement that has led to arch modernity that seeks to impose and control. Humanism has to be both rational and understanding.

The Challenge .....

2007-04-04T04:23:00.000Z

The challenge for humanism in the 21st century is to make it all embracing by helping to develop a self-discovery and compassionate culture on a global level. Those secular champions of modernity who want the world to conform to a single dimension of progress are now as regressive and restricting as the religious fundamentalist who champions what they consider to be a revealed creed in a total way. Both are compelled by inflexible conviction. And like the opposing forces of communism and fascism in the early 20th Century had much in common, so these apparently divergent forces of religious fundamentalism and fanatic modernity also have much in common. Their battle like the religious wars of the 17th century could be devastating to a world with weapons of mass destruction.

The alternative culture to such forces of potential destruction is the humanistic one that includes people of all religions and none but who embrace humanistic values as the basis of their actions. These are values of global compassion, personal self-discovery, shared development, planetary concern and a love of community. This is the culture that needs to be fostered in society to prevent the twin dangers of religious fundamentalism and fanatic modernity consuming us all.

False dichotomy ....

2007-04-03T06:21:00.001Z

The 19th century was one of industrialisation when the forces of modernisation were pitted against those of tradition and resistance. The voices of despair from those who suffered from the excesses of modernisation would eventually find a home in socialism or social democracy paving the way for the late 19th and early 20th centuries divide between modernisation verses modernisation with a human face. When that division broke down at the end of the 20th century then the world was forced back into the old polarisation of tradition verses modernity – often now seen through a growing religious framework.

The danger of that divide is that we will look upon all modernisation as progressive and all religion as regressive. A false dichotomy will be set up that will lead the world into an unnecessary conflict of opposing fictions. Some forms of modernisation can be regressive too as they force people into conformity and eliminate choice whilst some forms of religion can be humanistic and expand choice, seek self fulfilment and encourage compassion.

Finding our common humanity .........

2007-04-02T06:51:00.000Z

But not all religious people are fundamentalists and not all secularists are arch modernisers. The countervailing movement of the 21st century are those who see self-discovery and compassion as the driving forces of both self-fulfilment and global concern and this movement embraces those of both a humanist and a religious background. Those who hold this view have no dogmatic creed that they wish to thrust onto others, are not interested in control or adherence to a mass movement. They are more concerned with finding the humanity that lies within us all and applying that to our global environment.

The new alliance of those interested in self knowledge and compassion include a growing spectrum of people from humanists committed to a rational approach to the world, Eastern religions with their quest for the inner self, many Christian traditions that are open and questioning including a new interest in Gnosticism and some of the more mystical as well as progressive approaches to Islam. There is a growing alliance of people who know that tolerance and understanding must be at the root of self discovery and social action. And this growing culture will have a profound impact on both religion and politics in the 21st century.

Overcoming ..

2007-04-01T19:35:00.000Z

In overcoming and adapting to this new world of chaos and suffering the destination we are seeking is difficult to predict but it is important that our starting point clearly be redefined. The debate between tradition and modernity will have to be reshaped into a significantly different one where the opposing tendencies are between those who are “externally” driven by the desire to control, own and convert and those who are “inner” driven and whose desire is to discover, understand and involve. If the inner driven culture becomes the organising principle of the 21st century then some interesting and surprising alliances and allegiances will begin to form.

On the one hand those who seek to control, own and convert will be looked upon as the regressive forces of the global environment. It will not only include the fundamentalists who seek to make the world uniform based on some man created creed or revelation but also the arch modernisers who wish to mould the world according to one model of development calling it falsely progressive and imposing it on all. They are the new alliance of regression and in their opposition to each other have become strikingly the same.

Global turmoil .......

2007-03-18T12:48:00.000Z

Often the compassion that is needed to square the equation between the inner self and the outward world is fashioned at times of turmoil. And today we are living in a time of great pain through war, natural disasters, famine, poverty and disease. It seems as if the natural world, that the science of the post Enlightment age was shaping for our benefits, has taken revenge on our actions as resource depletion, global warming and pollution take their toll. Now we are openly beginning to question whether we can survive not just as a postindustrial society but whether our species can survive itself. Many of those debates are covered in melodrama and charged emotion but the fact that we are debating it in a reasoned environment as well indicates the seriousness of our global condition.

And the problems that we face are not ones any longer hidden away in some far off part of the globe. Modern communications has brought them into our households on a daily basis. We are brought face to face with the fact that suffering is an inescapable fact of human life and that it impacts on all of us whatever part of the globe we inhabit.

Directions ...........

2007-03-17T09:01:00.000Z

Saying that the post war era was one where we became inner directed to satisfy our own personal needs rather than outer directed to change the wider world seems to challenge the view held by those who believe that people who are outer directed are those who value goods and status over inner thoughts and self reliance – and that the latter is the essence of the genuinely inner directed person. When the external world becomes the focus of our desires then it is how we are perceived in that world that is important to us – and how others see us is the measure of our worth. When we are inner directed then it is how we value ourselves that is important – and to many even how we indeed escape from the very concept of self. The selfless person is the one who shows the greatest compassion.

How we equate being inner directed and still have the capacity to outwardly direct our compassion to the wider world without losing the selfless nature of inner directed reflection is the key to understanding change and coping with it.

False securities ...

2007-03-16T14:19:00.000Z

For a post war generation then uncharted territory was new. We had been brought up in an environment of certainties. War and depression had plagued the first fifty years of the twentieth century and now we were in an age of reconstruction where each generation would benefit from the effort of the previous through economic growth. The horrors of war had been replaced by a cold war with rules that allowed its battles to be fought in less developed countries than our own whilst we felt the impact hardly at all.

Family life and security had been restored after the disruption of War and “normalcy” meant reverting to the family values we thought we once had even if that meant exercising a little creative imagination.

All of this constructed for the post war generation a sense of false security sheltering us from the fast changing world around us and so we became inwardly directed on our own personal needs rather than outwardly directed to change in the wider world. It was only a matter of time before that world caught up with us and when it did then it was a different world with new problems and agendas.

Uncertainty again ......

2007-03-15T21:06:00.000Z

Twenty years ago and the world had order or so we thought. The age of reason had come into it’s own. What started as a dialectic process in ancient Greece when Socrates exalted the power of reason to order a good life for all citizens, eventually blossomed into the Enlightenment of the 18th century and with it, the age of continuous progress had arrived. By the close of the twentieth century it appeared that history was over and the steady state world of human satisfaction was possible for all.

But into the first decade of the 21st century all that had vanished and a new dark age of suffering and fear had arrived. All the old maps and guidelines that gave navigation to our public and private lives had been torn up. We had to start all over again but we no longer knew the starting point or the destination. It seemed that we were all in uncharted territory.