Humanist Society of Santa Barbara
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Secular Humanism is a philosphy of life guided by reason and science, free from religious dogma, motivated by an appreciation of life and the life of others, seeking to reach goals of human happiness, personal freedom and growth with responsibility and understanding on this earth, in this life, at this time.
We meet at 3pm on the 3rd Saturday of each month at The Patio Room of Vista del Monte, 3775 Modoc Road, Santa Barbara. If you would like a copy of this bulletin mailed to a friend or someone you believe would be interested in our Society please drop a line to us with their name and address to P.O. Box 30232, Santa Barbara, CA 93130. |
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BULLETIN OF THE HUMANIST SOCIETY OF SANTA BARBARA OFFICERS 2002 - 2003 Chairman - Roger Schlueter 962-6316 rogers@west.net Secretary - Colin Gordon 682-0545 colin3@juno.com Editor - Dick Cousineau 687-2371 rcous1geol@aol.com Treasurer - Russ Boggie 564-6086 russboggie@cox.net Programs - Bea Duncan 964-3109 bfarwellduncan@cox.net Social Director - Anne Rojas 564-6086 annehrojas@cox Membership - Mary Wilk 967-3045 mwilk@cox.net Archivist - Hope Smith 967-5143 hsmith1923@aol.com Major Events - James Kimberly 969-9686 dr.doboy@cox.net Interviews - Bob Perry 968-1951 bob.perry3@verizon.net Member at Large - Art Brody 692-8898 brodybiz@silcom.com Publicity - Diane Freeman 964-8603 diane@silcom.com |
UPCOMING SOCIETY EVENTS
Dec. 21st. Seventh Annual Winter Solstice
party of the Humanist Society of Santa
Barbara. If you haven't got your ticket
please call Anne Rojas immediately.
Jan. 18th. Plans are still to be finalized for the regular January meeting. Feb. 15th. Mike Newdow, parent and physician, and now prominent citizen will speak and entertain our society on his recent attempts to have the term "Under God" stricken from the pledge of allegiance. His presentation will be held at our regular meeting place. Tickets will be $5 to visitors but only the normal $2 donation for regular HSSB members. Plan to get your seat early for we expect a full house and possibly a SRO crowd. Very special thanks go to Elaine Brody
for all her efforts in the planning and
administration of the Adult Ed
Program for our Society this year. The
Humanist Film Festival and Humanist
Lecture Series at Karpeles Museum
were marvelous. Thank you Elaine.
Please don't forget to bring canned foods and non-perishable goods to our regular Society meetings. These donations are given to the Crisis Shelter (Domestic Solutions) and they are well appreciated by the clients and staff. |
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This month I want to focus on what I believe to be the single most important problem on Earth, namely, overpopulation.
To begin, imagine a coke bottle world. For nostalgia sake, imagine it to be that old style light green coke bottle in the classic shape that is making a comeback. It's translucent and so serves our purposes nicely.
Suppose that one day a single-celled spore lands in this coke-bottle world and likes the sugary nutrients sloshing around in the bottom of the bottle. It settles in and begins reproducing as it and its pgrgeny divide every hour. What happens?
Not much at first. After an hour, there are two spores (the Adam and Eve of our imaginary world? Do they have belly buttons?) After two hours there are four. And so on. Assuming there are no resource constraints and no coke-bottle world wars this process will continue indefinitely. We'll skip the next several hours because its pretty boring (spores don't have much of a day life).
Now let's make some reasonable assumptions about this coke bottle world. We'll assume the coke bottle is of the 12 ounce variety. And we'll assume that our single-celled spore is among the smallest known to reproduce in this manner (less than 1 micrometer in diameter).
After nearly 48 hours, the coke bottle world is half full. This is a pretty alarming situation! Something must be done. Spore conferences are called. Spore debates are held. What can be done? How long will it be before the coke bottle world is completely filled up?
Just one more hour!Remember that the population of this imaginary world doubles every hour. So if the bottle is half full after 48 hours, it will be completely filled one hour later.
In desperation, the spores plead to their coke bottle god for help. They ask that another whole world be created to take the overflow population. Their god complies with this request (this is an unusual world) and creates a whole new coke bottle world to take the overflow population. Surely this will solve the problem for a while. How long is "a while?"
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Just one more hour!Coming back to the real world, the lessons are clear. First, a continued population growth rate is impossible to sustain. Something has to give. In our real world, resource constraints and increased death rates limit population growth in very, very ugly ways. Starvation and disease are two obvious results of resource constraints. War is a very efficient means to accelerate the average death rate and limit the number of potential sperm and egg donors. So next time you read about these phenomena, forget about the purported cause. The real cause is overpopulation.
This problem manifests itself locally. Smog. Sky-high housing prices. Traffic congestion. Gang wars. Beach closures due to water pollution. "Paper water" (water that exists in a delivery contract by not in the real world) used as a rationale for further growth. There is no end to the issues that arise but the root cause is seldom mentioned: overpopulation.
Second, once the problem reaches alarming proportions, there are no good solutions. In fact, there are no solutions at all that are under human control. Its too late. "Nature" will take over and any efforts we may expend will seem puny in comparison. Coastal flooding, earthquakes and similar phenomena that result in the deaths of thousands and (cumulatively) millions of people are not natural disasters. They are overpopulation disasters.
Where is Humanism in this picture? There's good news and bad news. Obviously, most Humanists don't view sex as solely for procreation, don't subscribe to the biblical theory of "dominion" and do value life in the here and now, not in some ethereal future world. This fundamental groundedness provides a rational basis for effective population policies.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, Humanism as a philosophical movement has not formally identified overpopulation as the critical problem of our time. I am unaware of formal alliances between our movement and the various organizations that focus on population problems. Perhaps we Humanists of Santa Barbara can make this happen. Now that's an exciting concept that could have worldwide ramifications.
Roger S. Schlueter |
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Hints to Editors 1. Don't use no double negatives. 2. Make each pronoun agree with their antecedent. 3. Join clauses good, like a connections should. 4. About them sentence fragments. 5. When dangling, watch your participles. 6. Verbs has to agree with their subjects. 7. Just between you and I, case is important too. 8. Don't write run-on sentences they are hard to read. 9. Don't use commas, which are not necessary. 10. Try to not ever split infinitives. 11. Its important to use apostrophe's correctly. 12. Proof read vour writings to see if vou any words out. 13. Correct spelling is esential. |
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Here is another suggestion by Chairman Roger, the web-site of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) at
and its Southern California affiliate
Whether you like these sites or not will depend on your political slants and opinions about some vexing problems such as immigration, gay rights, privacy issues following 9/11, and many others.
One of my pet peeves is that the distinction between legal and illegal immigration seems to get more blurred by the day. For example the ACLU opposes an initiative that would give local and state police the power to enforce immigration laws, and urged the House of Representatives to allow "...some lawful non-citizens to benefit from the federal food stamps program." Do I hear an oxymoron there?
On the other hand a recent move to require citizenship for airport screeners would bar legal immigrants from working as airport screeners even though no such requirement exists for members of the U.S. military, airline pilots, baggage handlers, flight attendants, cargo loaders, mechanics, guards or plane cleaners. The federal government will have to replace the current workforce, resulting in a situation where new workers replace experienced workers, possibly decreasing the safety of our nation's airports.
The ACLU warns, with some justification, that the Administration's calculated attempts to limit our constitutional rights and liberties could change the definition of freedom in America, and points to their arch-enemy, John Ashcroft, as one of the prime movers in this direction.