Santa Barbara Humanist Society Newsletter for February 2001 |
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Founded in 1995 by Keith Bailey 2000 - 2001 OFFICERS 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-rusans@aol.com Programs: James Kimberly 969-9686-drtunes@aol.com Social Director: Anne Rojas 564-6086-rusans@aol.com Membership: Mary Wilk 967-3045-wilk@electromatic.com Archivist: Bob Michael 963-5614 Publicity: Charlotte Carver 964-2773-charm@silcom.com Top of Page MEETINGS We meet on the third Saturday of every month at 3.00 PM at Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street, Santa Barbara, California (except in June and December when we have our biannual Solstice parties). It is not necessary to be a member to attend our meetings Everyone who is receptive to Humanist ideas and ideals is welcome. The views and opinions expressed in the Bulletin are the writer's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Society. Society Board Meetings are usually held on the Monday prior to each monthly Society meeting. All members are welcome. Locality changes so call the chairman or secretary to find planned meeting site. Top of PageMEMBERSHIP NOTES We have learned that two of our members, Bernadine Cagle and Horst Schaefer, are both home from the hospital. We wish them well and let them know that they are in our thoughts. Top of PageUPCOMING EVENTS 1. The Board Meeting of the Officers of the Society will be held on February 14, 2001 at 4.30 at Mary Wilk's home, 4384 Vis Presada. All society members are welcome to attend. THE UP-COMING SOCIAL SCENE BY ANNE ROJAS mmmm/Want to "Class-up" your act? Plans are in the works for a Humanist "get together-dinner" at the venerable Biltmore Hotel on the beach in Montecito. The fabulous Thursday evening buffet offers a sumptuous repast sure to delight every taste. (Loads of shrimp, wonderful salads, planked salmon, 'death' by chocolate desserts and much more). All served in the delightful Patio Dining Room. The cost for all of this (all you care to eat) dinner is a mere $25.00, which includes tax and tip! (Drinks are not included though). Plan to join us, Thursday APRIL12th @ 7pm. WEB SITE OF THE MONTH BY COLIN GORDON We humanists don't have a bible to quote from but many authors have written on the subject of humanism and much of their work is eminently quotable. For example: "Religion is like chemotherapy, it may solve one problem, but it can cause a million more." - John Bledsoe . "Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?" "God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight." - Friedrich Nietzsche (from Thus Spake Zarathustra) The site for this month, titled simply '2think', has many such pearls of wisdom collected together to make a page worth browsing, and a useful resource for aspiring authors. It is just one of three such pages crammed with quotes, which form a sub-section of a much larger site with areas devoted to related subjects such as astronomy, evolution, mythology and so on. Well worth a visit if you have time to spare - it is not easy to leave! Colin Gordon Top of PageBoston was Susie's birthplace , but she began travelling early in life. Her father, a civil engineer, worked on projects all over the states, Hanford WA, Tennessee, and Alaska and places in between. When he retired from engineering, he became a Beverly Hills business man. Susie's mother was a buyer for various department stores and traveled extensively herself.
Susie's father, a non-practicing Russian Jew, and her mother who had been reared with no religious training, raised Susie and her siblings as atheists.
Susie attended University High School in West Los Angeles. Her writing skills and democratic philosophy surfaced early; as editor of the school paper she wrote an article welcoming the Japanese back from their internment. The principal censored her for her warm cordiality; he feared an increased Asian enrollment.
Because she was more mature than her classmates, she never felt comfortable with her high school peers. When she entered college at seventeen, she fit right in with the returning veterans and, along with them, took advantage of the double summer sessions to pick up extra credits. In this way, she completed majors in Political Science, English and Fine Arts - all interests of hers today.
Advertising would become her career, but after graduation she was hired by the Los Angeles Daily News as assistant editor for Food, Fashion, and Real Estate and had a few exciting years as a result of that work. The Daily News was the last Democratic newspaper on the west coast. Susie, an officer in the Newspaper Guild, was sent by that group as a courier to New York where she met with Norman Hall of the Washington Post and a group of Democrats on the east coast who hoped to buy the "Daily News". Hall asked Susie to do a series of articles on women's lives in post-war Europe and, with tickets from the travel editor, she quit her job and set off - travelling through Europe. She visited the Scandinavian countries, Italy, Spain, Greece, Israel and France. In Paris, while leaving the press club, she was in an automobile acident. Because of injuries she suffered, she went to England to stay with friends while she recovered. At a party there she met Clement Atlee and his son Martin who became her beau for a while and, later, a friend. (She attended his wedding in Westminster Abbey.)
She returned to France to initiate a lawsuit to get compensation for her injuries and met a Polish/French attorney, a man who had been at the Nuremberg trials. He needed someone to polish his writing and Susie took the job. In return he supervised the suit against the drivers involved in the accident. Until her case came up in the French courts, she went to Milan, Italy to stay with American friends. Here she met her future husband Pierre.
When she'd won her lawsuit and had her $16,000 settlement in her pocket, she went home to California and took a job as copy writer for Revell of hobby kit fame. She told her new employers she'd be back in a month and flew to Milan where she married Pierre, who worked as an executive of Pirelli Rubber Co. Back she went to California and three months later Pierre followed. He worked for one year in L.A. then found a position more to his liking with an American rubber company in Akron, Ohio. Pirelli was furious that he'd gone to the competition and lured Pierre away with a better position with them in New York. During the twelve years they lived in New York, Susie worked for a number of advertising agencies where she did prize winning work. She also gave birth to their daughter Nicole. Pierre was promoted to higher and higher positions in his company. When Pirelli offered him one too good to refuse, which required a move back to Milan, they took it.
In Milan Susie took a job with General Electric as an advertising manager and to learn Italian. When she was fluent in the language, whe was hired by the international agency N.C.K. which shortly merged with another big agency(Foot, Cone and Belding). Suzie created prize winning ads and commercials for Colgate, Winchester Rifles, Old Spice, Wonder Bread, Seagrams, and Johnson Wax. Their son Giampiero was born during those years.
When Pierre became president of Pirelli, South America, he moved his family to Brazil, a training ground for a CEO. There they lived a very luxurious life style, But a great deal was expected of the wife of a Pirelli executive, so Susie found herself entertaining enormous groups of people. Dinner parties for forty or more were comonplace, but demanding. She gave her energy to furthering her husband's career and left the advertising world for ever.
Soon after Pierre returned to Milan to accept the position for which he had been groomed in Brazil, he and Susie were divorced. She stayed on in South America for another two years in order for their son to finish high school there. When he left for Princeton she headed for California where she traveled the coast from Sonoma to San Diego looking for a suitable place to live. She chose Santa Barbara
Soon after arriving here she joined Newcomers where she met Charlotte Carver who invited her to attend a Humanist Society meeting. She quickly joined. Susie also is a life-time member of - and worker for - the Democratic Party, has volunteered as a mentor, and supports the arts of every kind. Her hobbies are bridge, play and concert going, painting, carving and sculpting, and creating tasty recipes and meals. Top of Page |
FREE WILL I began thinking about "free will" when I read the story of Phineas Gage, so maybe this is the best place to start this discussion, but first I would like to define my terms and establish why this topic is important to us Humanists. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "free will" as 1. The ability to choose; free choice, and 2. The power, attributed to human beings, of making free choices that are unrestained by external circumstances. I have two problems with such a definition. First I wonder why "free choices" should be considered in light of "external circumstances". Take an admittedly extreme example, a drug addict who has "fried" his brain with drugs during his high school years. I would argue that such a person has very little free will to direct his subsequent adult life, no matter what his "external circumstances" are. He is totally constrained by his internal circumstances as dictated by his previous behaviors, not his external circumstances. My second objection establishes a connection to Humanism and involves the connotation of the phrase "free will" as used by the religious community, especially Christians. In this context "free will" is seen as a contest between God and the Devil. If good things happen it is God's Will; if bad things happen, it is because we are exercising our "free will" to violate God's Plan. (Never mind the obvious conclusion that God cannot be omnipotent if humans can vitiate his Plan). I do however wish to focus on this aspect of free will and Mr. Gage seems a good place to start. Gage worked as a railway construction foreman in Vermont in the Summer of 1848. He was admired by his crew and supervisors alike for his skill, dedication, and all around good character. Unfortunately,, one late aafternoon andaccident occurred that changed Gage's life forever. On that day, an explosion caused a 13 pound, 3 foot 7 inch long, 1 1/2 inch diameter iron spike to pass through Gage's head. It entered his left cheek, pierced the base of th skull, and exited at high speed out the top of his skull. He was dead on the spot, right? Nope. Not only did he live but he barely lost consciousness. He was transported sitting up in a wagon to a hotel about 3/4 mile away, where he walked, with some assistance, to a chair on the hotel porch. About an hour later, he was attended by a physician who had just begun his practice a few years earlier, Dr. Edward Williams. Gage was able to converse with Williams upon his arrival and was judged to be rational and alert at all times. Although he did suffer from serious wound infections in the succeeding weeks, within two months Gage had regained his physical health, and except for the obvious massive scarring, he showed no physical after efects. Unfortunately, Gage did not recover his mental health. He had become a changed man, a drunkard, a lout, and generally a "bad" character. He was no longer able to make plans or decisions about his future that served his own interests. As friends put it "Gage was no longer Gage". He was unable to hold down his previous job on the railroad and he drifted from one job and to one place after another. For a while he traveled with the Barnum and Bailey Circus and later traveled to South America. When those ventures failed he moved to his sister's home near San Francisco but never recovered his former "self". He died of severe seizures in 1861 at the age of 38. It is inconceivable to me that Gage exercised "free will" by consciously deciding to become an unsavory character after the accident. It seems obvious to me that he was a changed man because of his wounds. Yet it took more than two decades for Dr. Williams and the Medical Establishment to finally conclude that his altered behavior pattern resulted from his accident rather than from his "free will". How much real discretion did Gage have when he cursed at his bosses and thereby lost his job? Was he exercising "free will" when he broke the Ten Commandments, thereby violating God's Plan? Should he be condemned to Hell as the Bible prescribes? The saga of Phineas Gage is an example that serves to highlight the complexities of human behavior that cannot be simplified down to a battle between "good and evil". For example, recent and on-going studies of twin's behaviors demonstrate that genetics plays an incredibly powerful role in our daily lives. Choices that seem "freely" made appear to be almost foreordained by powerful genetic and environmental conditions. I think I decided to be a Humanist; you think you decided to read this column; and all of us think we decided on our careers, mates, pets, etc. How much discretion did we really exercise? Some scholars maintain that even the grammar of our native language influences how we see the world around us and how we react to it. For example, some languages don't have distinctive word for green and blue and people who speak these languages cannot perceive the difference between these two colors. Obviously what we perceive substantially influences who we are and the choices we make. Anyway we look at it, much but not all of our personal identity and behavior comes from forces (genetic, environmental, cultural) beyond our control. I don't have the answers to the difficult questions related to human behavior. I do know that masking the issue under the notion of "free will" and assigning the contest to a battle between God and the Devil serves nobody and harms all who are judged. - ROGER SCHLUETER
QUOTES OF THE MONTH Religion is regarded by the common people to be as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca Keith Bailey - Memorial Service On Saturday, January 13, 2001 a memorial service was held for Keith Bailey, the "Founding Father" of our organization. The 18 people in attendance included one of Keith's sisters, Petria, who lives here in Santa Barbara, Mrs. Cox, who had known Keith for over 30 years, and numerous Humanists.
After listening to some of Keith's favorite music, DickCousineau summarized some of the highlights of Keith's life. He had numerous interests and talents, including music, botany and, of course, Humanism. Keith was a nationally known expert on palm flora; many local homes will continue to show the results of his work for years to come. His sister told a delightful story of Keith's ability to sing arias to her while walking on the beach. His extensive library reflects Keith's lifelong search for Truth and especially his fondness for Robert Ingersol, the Great Agnostic.
Keith was remembered as a true gentleman who, while holding strong opinions of his own, would listen to others with attention and courtesy. He was particularly supportive of the rights of self-determination for women which is reflected in the fact that the bulk of his estate will go to Planned Parenthood.
This special service was organized and led by Dick Cousineau and was especially well done. Thanks a lot, Dick, for helping us to preserve Keith's memory.
Top of Page As noted in the article about Keith's memorial service, he had quite an extensive library of philosophical books regarding various religions of the world and works by various significant thinkers, especially Robert Ingersol. Thes books have been donated to our Society. Since we do not have a physical location to shelve these books and make them available to the membership, we have decided to sell them at a mini book sale to be held during our February and March meetings.
Proceeds from the sale of Keith's books will go toward the purchase of a plaque for Keith that will be set at the foot of an appropriate tree in one of Santa Barbara's beautiful parks. The Society challenges you to purchase books by promising to match all income up to the purchase price of the plaque.
Plan to attend our March meeting and take advantage of this opportunity to extend your own library. Bring a friend who reads. Bring two!
Top of Page THIS AND THAT, HERE AND THERE mmmm/Jim Alexander reminds us to bring canned goods to the meeting on February 17th for The Chairman's Food Hamper; this is our main outreach to the community. Please, this month let's all make a special effort to fill the Hamper with canned and packaged goods, bagged fruit, and toiletries. One of our special clients is the Shelter Service for Women, and they really apprecialte our gifts. Thanx Top of Page Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity. |
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