Date/Time
Date(s) - 18/04/2024
19:30 - 21:30
Location
White Rock Hotel, Hastings TN34 1JU
Hastings Humanists: Global Problems in an Age of Abundance?!
(Those who are unable to attend the meeting in person can do so remotely: Join Zoom Meeting.)
Stephen Milton writes:
Springtime is a period of optimism and renewal and there is now an unprecedented hope that in the next few years we could be entering a period of wealth and abundance greater than any we have known in the history of mankind. And yet we are bedevilled by stories of dystopian futures that provide such a depressing backdrop to so many young lives that it has even created a crisis of mental health issues.
Historically, the surplus value generated by society has been directed at building pyramids or cathedrals or more recently, in building vast and unusable war machines. These have all been driven by the mistrust and fear that divide nations and distort our interest in collaboration towards fixing things that really matter.
Today, the world faces a lot of serious global problems ranging from climate change to inequality and to the potential impact of AGI (artificial general intelligence). But I do not think that anybody doubts that we can solve each of these problems if we could only find a way to direct our colossal resources of human ingenuity and talent into the effort to resolve them.
War is the biggest impediment to that brighter future and even as it becomes clearer than ever before that war has no winners and only losers, the conflicts proliferate – look at the decimation of countries like Syria, Ukraine and Gaza that have been economically ruined and see no prospect of recovery for generations. And yet our institutions for avoiding such conflicts seem weaker than ever.
I know that there is very little that we can do sitting in Hastings. But spreading a message of hope and understanding might be a good start.
Finish at 9:30pm.
Our next meeting will be on 16 May 2024.
You might also like to look at the magazine Humanistically Speaking.
For more information, or if you have any problems, call Stephen Milton on 07973 312422.
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