Welcome to Humanist Perspectives
Humanist Perspectives is the only English language Humanist Magazine published in Canada and is operated as a not-for-profit charity. Your donations will help our dedicated team of writers, editors and service providers to continue publishing this rational perspective on both topical and timeless issues. Tax receipts are provided.
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CONTENT FOR ISSUE
In the News... Who Am I? Who are You? Mysteries of Identity / Gary Bauslaugh
Identity both enriches human experience and diminishes it through prejudice, intolerance and violence. As we see every day, in the news, civilization is constantly under threat by the bad sort of identity
Humanist Perspectives Short Submission Contest 218 / HP
In our new section, we invite you to share your humanism with us in a paragraph or two. We’ll look at different topics in future issues, but for the upcoming one we’re focussing on three subjects that might have turned you on to humanism. After choosing one of our featured...
Editorial: Why I Am a Humanist / Gary Bauslaugh
What do we mean when we identify ourselves as humanists? HP Editor Gary Bauslaugh writes his answer to this question, as does Elka Enola of the Humanist Association of Toronto. We invite other Canadian humanists to give us their own thoughts on this matter.
In the News... What's the Big Secret? / Madeline Weld
On July 5, 2019, Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Dr. Keding Cheng, and Qiu’s international Chinese students were escorted from the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab (NML), Canada’s only Level 4 biosafety lab, and stripped of their security clearance.
Why I Am a Humanist / Elka Enola
Why do our readers (some of them at least) identify themselves as humanists? In what we hope will be the first in a series, Elka Enola tells her story. We invite other humanists to do the same.
EDITORIAL: Contrition and Cancel Culture / Madeline Weld
Late in May, an estimated 215 unmarked graves were reported to have been found through ground-penetrating radar on the premises of a former residential school in Kamloops, BC.
Who Am I? / James Alcock
The challenge for us and for all humanity is to work towards a time when society becomes a big tent that does not leave anyone out, where the benefits of positive social identities do not depend on the denigration of others...
The Origins of Timekeeping / Sheila Ayala
Our pre-historic ancestors needed a way to predict the arrival of recurring natural phenomena. Hunters and gatherers needed to track the behaviour of animals that could be hunted, such as the timing of the annual migration of caribou and the emergence of bears from hibernation…
Diversity: Our Greatest Conundrum / Dale Branscombe
Is the promotion of diversity really Canada’s greatest strength, as our prime minister doesn’t tire of telling us? Or should we strive to create a society in which the rights of all citizens as individuals are recognized and we don’t strive to promote with government money all the cultural traditions...
Identity Anthems – their comforts, uses and pitfalls / Janet Keeping
Violations of anyone’s human rights should be the concern of all, no matter one’s identity. Our shared humanity requires it.
The Paper Pogrom: Henry Ford, the Dearborn Independent and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion / Marc Luc Carrier
“Henry Ford: an iconic self-made man, a self-taught mechanical genius, a man of vision, a fearless innovator. And a virulent anti-Semite.” The man whose use of the assembly line made the car affordable for the average American, endorsed equal pay for equal work for women, and promoted many blacks to...
Identity as Choice / Christine St. Peter
But this devotion to a Party that has become so mean-spirited and violent does not fit the profile of those Republicans I know and love. These were — still are — generous, law-abiding, community-minded citizens.
To Kill a Mockingbird of Merit / Sophie Dulesh
“Meritocracy has flourished in the West since the advent of capitalism and particularly since the 1960s in the form of ‘equality of opportunity and before the law’… Recent books, such as those mentioned above, voice concerns about the ethical failures and corrosive individualism of meritocracy…. But certainly, the abolition of...
Identity and Identity Politics / Trudy Govier
While at present there may seem to be a strong analogy between transsexualism and transracialism, these phenomena are treated very differently in contemporary culture. Self-identification is allowed to define one’s sex and gender, but not one’s race.
Christianity 101: A reconstructed dialogue between two post-doctoral students of different backgrounds / Goldwin Emerson
A medical student named Li Min arrives from a foreign country to attend a university in Canada. She hopes to complete her studies in medicine and return to her own country as a doctor. On the first day of classes, she meets a friendly Canadian student, Kristen, who offers to...
A Blushing White Woman is not a Woman of Colour / Carol Matthews
We’ve never before been so aware that the lives of all people matter, that all the challenges we face are global, and that we are all in it together.
From Where Do Ethics Originate? / Goldwin Emerson
“Within most religious beliefs, it is held that ethical principles originate from God. Religion usually affirms that God has planned and created the universe… Many secular philosophers think that ethical values originate in the minds and everyday social and cultural experiences of people who think about ethics.” Goldwin Emerson discusses...
The Fluctuating Sense of Self in Anna Karenina / Gwyneth Evans
Russian history is marked by a search for personal and national identity, as the nation moved from czarist rule to communism to dictatorship under Putin. The novels of Leo Tolstoy presage this seemingly endless uncertainty.
Memoir / Terry Rapoch
The author remembers his search for self in the vivid loneliness of youth.
Addressing the Homeless Phenomenon / Barry Mayhew
The problem of homelessness is not something that has only recently come to light. It has, in fact, been with us for decades but only been brought to the forefront of our social conscience within the past few years. While I don't consider myself a socialist, I do believe it...
The Collapse of Two Movements / Lorna Salzman
As Germany’s Green Party ascends in popularity and electoral support, American environmentalism slips deeper into eclipse than ever before… It was a similar situation with American socialists and their toothless appendage, the Democratic Socialists of America… These two movements share some critiques of industrial capitalism but have wildly different visions for human...
Book Review: Atheist Overreach: What Atheism Can't Deliver (Smith) / Frosty Wooldridge
There is much to praise in Christian Smith's Atheist Overreach: What Atheism Can't Deliver. The prose is fresh and clear, and the ideas are painstakingly presented with considerable academic precision, yet with little of the endemic turgidity…
Book Review: Blip: Humanity’s 300 Year Self-Terminating Experiment With Industrialism (Clugston) / George Williamson
America supports 330 million people who eat food, drive cars, consume everything in sight, and utilize over 80 different minerals and metals that make our civilization work. Those non-renewable natural resources (NNRs) allow us our extraordinarily mechanized, chemicalized and advanced society—as well as our extraordinary standard of living…
This Planet Ain’t Big Enough for All of Us / David M Reid
Two hundred years ago this small planet was inhabited by one billion humans. Now Earth has 7.8 billion and possibly 10 billion by 2060. Some argue that population growth will soon slow when rural people move to cities, but given the rapid population increases in cities in Africa, Central and...
Left Populism: A review of an organized mobbing / HP
I stopped watching Don Cherry’s “Coaches’ Corner” more than two decades ago. If I was watching a hockey game and his program came on, I would turn the television off. Mute was not good enough. I did not even want to see his image on my screen.
